Another Door Opens

42 - Bloody Geminis

- EDEN -

I have mixed feelings about the hike.

Thankfully---and perhaps also surprisingly considering how bush we actually are---we’ve only seen the one snake, which promptly slithered off when Austin and I got near enough and it heard him talking at me about one of the albums he’s recording for a friend at the moment, therefore I've so far lived up to my promise to Miles to not get bitten. I honestly can’t say so much that the company has helped at all in making me feel any better today, but the fresh air and green surroundings are doing their magic duty in cheering me up some. 

Emotionally, that is. Physically, however, is an altogether different story.

My body wants to kill me and leave me out for the eagles and hawks and crows and other assorted carrion to tear at my overworked muscles on the top of this here mountain on the Dandahra Crags walking track. I feel like I’m dying, and probably could have gone without the hour-long boxing class this morning considering this hike was advertised at the base of the track as being for ‘experienced bushwalkers,’ with ‘very steep gradients’ and ‘many steps.’ I believe the fuckers at the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service should also be fired for stating this hike is a 7.1km loop and can be walked in between 2-3 hours, because those assholes lied and underestimated the required time by at least another hour, and I’m not unfit. I’ve never been in better shape thanks to Wolfe, Miles, Grayson and Hades, and all my regular gym-going and dog running.

But fuck me, this shit is something else. We just reached the top and it’s already been two and a half hours, and that was after another two and a half hours just to drive here. By the time we get back down and home it’s going to be so late and me so exhausted that I doubt I’ll even get The Lost Boys in---Dad’s favourite---before I pass out. Let alone The Warriors or The Godfather.

“What do you think?” Austin said proudly, looking chuffed with his hands on his hips as he stared out at the view in front of us. “Worth the blood, sweat and tears?” And boy, has there been a fair amount of all three on my part. I slipped on a wet rock I didn't see and ended up tearing a hole in my leggings and grazing my knee on a jagged part of the rock, have sweated out what has felt like my entire body weight, and may or may not have shed a solitary tear when I rounded the last bend and saw yet another endlessly steep incline.

But I do agree with him. The view is spectacular. Even Dad would have enjoyed this… if I blindfolded him, doused him in the heaviest-duty mozzie repellent and deterred all living things by singing so loud the whole way up and down the mountain to keep all fluffy, furry and scaly creatures at bay.

Almost any other day of the year, I’d probably do it again. But I still really didn’t want to do it today, and a temporary glimpse of heaven here on Earth, a higher dose of vitamin D in my bloodstream and less-polluted oxygen in my lungs sadly won’t make that go away so easily.

Austin is looking so hopeful though, that his idea has helped me forget the day, so much so that I just told him yes; it was worth it. I don’t want to be the downer to make all his effort in planning this and driving us out here a disappointment. He even packed us a picnic and carted it all the way up in his backpack, which he is now laying out for us on the top of a huge, flat-topped rock overlooking the valley.

“Come on, babe,” he said, gesturing me over to his makeshift dining table. “Let’s eat and digest so we actually have energy to head back down,” he laughed, though there’s every possibility that if he hadn’t have made us these salad sandwiches, or packed multiple apples, bananas, Cliff Bars, water and Gatorade, I may not have been able to get back down and would have just fallen asleep splayed out on this very rock until I felt alive enough again to just roll my body down the hill. The many steep and dangerous hills back to his car.