Crossing the ridge on Kepler, if one is smart, one considers the potential for crosswinds and fog and summer snow and Avalanches any time of year. No matter the actual conditions when you set out, the island factor must be considered and you must always be prepared for things turning on a dime. If you can't see the way ahead, you might spend useless hours going the wrong way and you must carry basic tools to deal. A few die every few years on the trail, losing their way in the wrong conditions or not taking seriously the potential for things not going as intended.
Sometimes I think I chose this particular track because it must have somehow felt familiar due to the unpredictability factor. Maybe I chose the whole damn country because of that, as well. My making my way was symbolic. A pack strapped to my back, it was more than a tramp, it was a statement to myself, to the world that I can do this thing called living on my own, independent of my ex.
The truth is, I'm not so sure I can.
Most of the trail I spent thinking just how ridiculous my own anxieties actually are--at least while hiking. My world, my future all felt so crisp and clear and at hand. My intuition, my true self felt so close, it was as if the real authentic me who has felt a long way off was back--central, rooted, strong like the trees on the trail growing straight out of the rock.
Even crossing the spine, the fog rolled in and out like anxiety sometimes can. When it was close at hand, the visibility was sometimes 6 feet. But, even still the sense of things lurking behind the fog did not disturb me. When it cleared you could see for miles. While trekking, I enjoyed the clouds dancing with the mountains like some ballroom choreography set to the rhythm of the winds. So relaxed, as if dancing with my lover on the ballroom floor.
But once back, my anxieties and worries seemingly grabbed on, clinging with a fierce death grip like the moss and trees that clung to those rocks on the sides of the mountains of Fiordlands--waiting to topple and strip a clearing in one giant tree-slip avalanche.
I'm not sure why I chose to hike Kepler in Fiordland. And maybe I didn't choose it. Maybe the track chose me. It was fitting on most levels. The concerns of such variable weather conditions taking me off the trail hit close to home. Much like the narcissistic storms that come out of seemingly nowhere, blind siding my purpose or day or stability and necessitating tools to find my own way, yet again. I perpetually worry that I've lost my way in life--that I'm not getting out the right way, that I'll never find my own somebody to connect with again, that I'll continue at failing on every front in life over and over again. I feel like I've been tramping alone for so long, with a pack so heavy that I'm not sure I can relate anymore to most people. I'm tired of explaining to people who don't listen, who think they get it, who compare their drifting divorce experience to the one where you leave a narcissist who won't let you leave, ever.
Even four years out from "waking up," with his soon to be new wife settled in to the new house they bought together with the pool and the potted planters, you might still get blindsided by deep indescribable sadness as it once again strikes you that he never did love you and the years were just an illusion. The torture of potential memories that you haven't yet grieved for what they really were blowing in like a snow storm on Kepler in the middle of summer can keep you edgy. You do traverse a ridge.
You might never doubt the decision you made to leave the narcissist, but the overwhelming endlessness of the trek floats in like the clouds at times. I still worry I'll never fully escape his orbit. I worry he'll never get bored and leave me alone. I worry he'll never tire of trying to take or find something else to take from me. I worry that this track has no end or that it loops on forever like Kepler.
But looping though it is, Kepler does have a bridge at the end or beginning, however you manage it. And the name of the bridge is called Rainbow Reach. And I'm sure we can all imagine the symbolism of a Rainbow.
I know there were lessons in tramping this track. I'm still sorting out what those lessons might be. Part of that sorting out unfortunately appears to involve still more waiting--waiting for the fog or winds or weather to change.
