There was one moment in each of my favorite trips where I stopped and thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing here?” It’s happened on a portage that climbed and climbed, during a week of rain that resulted in trench foot, when barely making headway in 120-kilometer-an-hour winds, or, quite literally, just being a stranger in a strange land. It’s that undeniable, holyshit- I’m-in-over-my-head moment of total discomfort. Not to be confused with the sickening lurch of a backcountry, “Uh oh.”
On every trip that’s meant something to me—really meant something—there’s always a moment where I stepped so far outside my comfort zone that a panicky, almost painful sensation entered mychest. Hours of pushing an 80-pound bike weighed down with camping gea up a steep Cape Breton road, only to crest it, enjoy a short-lived, white-knuckle 70-kilometer-an-hour descent and do it all again. A 30-kilometer day in a weeklong hike through Torres del Paine, where, only two-thirds of the way there by late afternoon, I threw off my pack, fell onto my back and raised swollen feet to the sky in absolution. Standing in the Wabakimi landscape I’d been tracing on a map in my living room for months, watching the floatplane disappear…
This article appeared in Canoeroots & Family Camping, Spring 2013. Download our free iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch App or Android App or read the rest here.
