Let’s go climb a mountain

on adventure dates, playing in the wild, and taking risks

Dearest wild and wonderful readers,

So many of you wrote to me after my last letter — To the woman sleeping in an MRI Machine. Thank you for your kindness and support, it means so much to me.

It’s the school holidays here and my family and I are on a road trip exploring our beautiful Island home, Tasmania. We are driving north then west to the ‘Edge of the World’ (more on this soon). In lieu of new words, please enjoy an adventure story from my archive.¹

I hope it inspires you to step outside your door and visit the wild and wonderful places near you. A heartfelt welcome to all who are new here.

Yours in friendship and adventure,

Kate x

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the view from the Organ pipes, kunanyi / Mount Wellington.

When the days were fat and we were young and full of spirit, my husband and I would go climbing together. Just the two of us, the Mountain, and a wide blue bowl of sky.

Now our ropes and hexes, helmets and shoes rest in an old travel case in the attic. Not forgotten, just a little lost, waiting for life to adjust. Days pass, years even. And it is our children who climb the stairs, open the lid and haul out our climbing gear to play pirates on the landing.

But this year will be different. I know it will. I have made a promise to make adventure fit.

*

Let’s go climbing, I suggested one morning, as my husband and I stacked the breakfast bowls in the dishwasher. With our three children out with their grandma, a burst of freedom had arrived.

The usual things nagged — washing, clutter, emails — and the broken things — the floor lamp that will not give us her light and the red bricks in their herringbone pattern birthing green shoots of grass. But so too did our local Mountain, kunanyi — its steely shoulders rising above the rim of the kitchen window.

How about the old access route on the Mountain? my husband asked, the bucket of chicken scraps in his hands.

I looked up the local guide on my phone —

An easy yet exposed scramble. A short walk then leads to the pinnacle.

Yes, I said. Perfect.

*

We parked our car on the Pinnacle road below kunanyi’s tall dolerite columns, known as the Organ Pipes.² As we started up the climbers track, I glimpsed the city of Hobart far below us through the eucalyptus trees. Houses, roads, and power-lines wrapped around the foothills of the Mountain. Responsibility and the chaos of family life swirled down there. But here on kunanyi’s slopes there was a different rhythm. A wild beat of wonders small and large — a confetti of brown and yellow myrtle leaves under my feet, the towering amphitheatre of rock above and black currawong birds circling, calling.

*

You go first, I’ll spot you, my husband suggested, as we contemplated the exposed rocky corner in front of us, our first challenge. A sensible idea, I thought, though I hoped he wouldn’t need to catch me.

I calculated four moves at most before easier ground could be made. I placed my hands inside the crack above, wedged a foot high and pulled. In the moment of commitment I forgot about the 20 metre drop. The rock bit into my hands and scraped my ankles. But before long I was smiling from atop a pillar.

Don’t stand up, he yelled.

I’m fine. I called back, trying not to show the joy I felt from my solo ascent.

*

Climbing was seductive. I loved the feeling of moving my body up the rock, the way it demanded my full attention, and the wild places it had taken me to. Years ago we had traveled the world in search of rocks to climb. And even got engaged atop a 300 metre sandstone cliff in Jordan.

And here we were now, perhaps a little more calculated and cautious, climbing a mountain, playing in the wild, just the two of us. And how wonderful it was to do something just for fun, for the pure whimsical joy of it.

Remember when you were young and full of spirit, bolting up the lane and yelling, I’ll race you there? And everyone chasing, though you were going nowhere in particular. That’s it, that’s the kind of thing. It is as important as eating a balanced diet and exercising.³

As the great naturalist John Muir once wrote —

Everybody needs beauty, as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

How do you play?

*

The top of the Organ Pipes was almost in sight but as we rounded a boulder, another challenge presented. I scanned the steep wall for a sequence of holds. My husband wasted no time. He started up the open chimney to the left and quickly gained the safety of a ledge. After a few exposed moves he was topping out. My turn.

You’ve got this, I whispered as I pressed my body inside the chimney, my feet on one side, my back on the other. One foot up, then a wriggle, over and over until I was like a beached whale — tummy over ledge, legs flapping. And as I lay there, my palms growing slick with panic, I began to wonder whether this climbing adventure had been a little brash?

What if something went wrong? Would it have been worth it?

*

While I have lived enough to know that climbing mountains is dangerous, I have also come to know this, that taking risks is how one feels most alive.

That blood rush trumpeting, that sensual terror charging, your life as if it is on fire.

Taking risks brings an urgency to living, to hold things, to move with passion.⁴ And it shows our children how to be strong in the world, how to do what it is they desire.⁵

*

But by now I imagine you are anxious to know how it is I get off that ledge. And you’ll sigh with relief that my husband climbed down and talked me through the next moves. And that before long we were topping out. He is a good man who can keep his head. And this is a story with a good ending.

Here it is —

The two of us sitting atop one of the Organ Pipe’s columns, looking down at the tapestry of the city below. Both of us thinking about our children and all the fun we will have with them — climbing trees, exploring river beds, and riding bikes — until we can make it back.

And you?

Where will you play in the wild?

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A poem for you

I have thought much about our connectedness and shared grief in the past week. I do not know enough about the ongoing international conflicts to add commentary, but I can give you a gift of words, a poem. Something made by another person in the hope it may bring people together.

On A Starless Night
by Mosab Abu Toha

On a starless night,
I toss and turn.
The earth shakes, and
I fall out of bed.
I look out my window. The house
next door no longer
stands. It’s lying like an old carpet
on the floor of the earth,
trampled by missiles, fat slippers
flying off legless feet.
I never knew my neighbors still had that small TV,
that old painting still hung on their walls,
their cat had kittens.

Things I have loved reading on Substack

• The Gift and the Grief by Australian cartoonist Gillian & Li’l Bean — a cartoon about the duality of being human.

• Outside the Ladies Lounge by Australian writer and journalist Alia Parker. When is it OK to discriminate? And should we do it? Read about the ongoing saga about a space just for ladies behind a green velvet curtain.

• Good Shit: The Pasta Edition Vol. I by Sian Nelligan, writer and Nutella enthusiast. Who knew writing about pasta would be so sexual.

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Other things

• Exciting news — the Peregrine falcon chicks have hatched. You can watch the live stream of the nest here. And read more here —

  Soaring above it all

• My mum joked that It wouldn’t be the October school holidays without a lamb in our family. We have spent the last few days looking after a friends’ gorgeous farm and an orphaned lamb. I wrote a story about lambs and love last year, you can read here —

  What I Learnt about Love

• The Turbo Chooks raced our spring legs in an adventure challenge last weekend at the Freycinet Peninsula National Park on Tasmania's east coast. What fun we had running, biking, and kayaking in a wild place of orange-pink granite peaks, secluded bays, white sandy beaches.

  

  tagging J for the kayak leg, Freycinet Peninsula National Park, Tasmania

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I’ll be back with a big-hearted story from my beautiful Island home of Tasmania, a few wonderfully wild photos, and a few more things at the end of October.

Until then,

wishing you a wild adventure or two,

Kate xx

1. This story was written in 2018 and has been revised recently. Back then we had three young children (aged 4, 2 and 1) and escaping into the wild was almost impossible (if not for my amazing mum, thank you Grandma Lizzie).

2. Dolerite is a dark, medium-grained igneous rock. The Organ Pipes is the name given to the tall fluted columns of dolerite below the pinnacle of kunanyi / Mount Wellington.

3. How to Add More Play to Your Grown-Up Life, New York Times. Play is also a pivotal element of Tasmanian elite trail runner, writer, and mother Hanny Allston’s philosophy for training and life. Read more here.

4. Please engage in activities that are suitable to your skills and knowledge. Understand the risks and make responsible decisions. Please know that I am not suggesting that you engage in rock climbing. Find an activity that you enjoy and are comfortable with.

5. Lisa Ford, It’s time to trust our children again, The Resilence Co.