A love affair with the mountains
on the wonder of the wilderness and the thrill of adventure
Dear friends,
I hope you are easing into this new season. I am home from an incredible week in the mountains. A huge to-the-moon-and-back thank you to my gorgeous mother who cared for our four children and our home while my husband and I were away.
A wild adventure calls for exciting writing and this story has a heart and a beat. I hope you enjoy reading and that it inspires you to head outside and explore your favourite pocket of wild.1
Thank you for reading and for your messages of support, I read them all and love hearing from you.
With love and kindness,
Kate x
It’s a woman against the elements kind of day.
1100 metres above sea level, in the heart of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, I am hauling myself and a heavy pack up the shoulder of a wild mountain.2
It is raining and windy and so cold it might as well be Antarctica. Visibility is down to the end of my arm, and after that nothing but grey and white. And the scrub3 is vicious and thick and I thought you said there was a track?
Somewhere above my husband is fighting his way through to the saddle. He calls out and I reply with a string of wicked words, lashing and cutting because I’m just too bloody wrecked to care — a stick has gone clean though my waterproof pants, my hands are numb, I’ve lost my water bottle4, and I’m bleeding. Just one slip from miserable.
Of course I don’t notice he is taking a video with his phone.
Can’t show that to the kids, he yells.
Later I’ll remember that all of the above was in the forecast. And I’ll think perhaps, that I was a little too hopeful.
But that’s the way that all good adventures begin — with a dream and a bag full of sparkling optimism, isn’t it?
*
Three days earlier we had loaded our van with hiking packs, a double kayak, and 1 kilogram of dehydrated bolognese, said goodbye to our four children and my mother, and driven a couple of hours to a huge inland lake called leeawuleena / Lake St Clair.
I had planned a trail run and dinner at the local pub, but the clouds lifted and the wind dropped, and my husband said, What are we waiting for? So we stuffed 7 days worth of gear and food5 into our hull and paddled for some hours to a little beach below the summit of a spectacular mountain.
She was named Ida, after her likeness to a mountain in ancient Crete, the birthplace of the Greek god Zeus.6 So many of the names of Tasmania’s mountains were inspired by classical mythology.7 But like you, I wonder what the first peoples of leeawuleena would have called her. And I wonder what stories and songs they would have shared.
All afternoon Ida had sung to us, her rocky top rising from the water and pointing like a needle into the sky. And I had listened, perhaps a little more than my husband, because this was the place where I first fell in love with the mountains. My first wild summit at the tender age of fourteen.
But also because I was anxious that we might capsize in the dark roiling waters of the lake8, and I had wanted to get there, fast. I had longed for the safety of the land, just like I had longed for an adventure like this.
It was meant to be an early celebration for my fortieth birthday later this year. Something remote and challenging. Something to make my heart electric and my mind wild. Something to make me feel alive.
But now, 3 days in, on a tricky and mostly trackless traverse of the Du Cane Range, I am beginning to wonder if this was really what I wanted? My dreams and reality having merged and now stuff is getting real and my life is on the edge. Even the alpine daisies are worried — drawing their golden petals upwards to take shelter from the elements.
*
At least the inside of our little yellow tent is always sunny. I like her positivity, her slight fabrication of warmth. I unzip the fly and look out but the sky is grey and pitchfork and though we are camped beside a pretty tarn ringed with ancient Pencil pines, Deciduous beech, and magnificent mountains, there is not much beauty to report. The day is doing its best impression of winter. I crawl back into my sleeping bag and find my book. There is nothing to do but wait.
With enough time, even the coldest days give way to something different altogether, even here, on this high plateau called the Labyrinth — a maze of water and alpine gardens, a wild world inside a wilderness. Look, the sun is peeking through the mist and I can hear birds. Oh, how I’ve missed you. And up there, Mount Geryon, rising like a three headed monster from the lake.
We set about drying our wet clothes, draping them over the rocks nearby. Don’t rain, I plead with the low hanging clouds as I keep watch. Steam rises from my leather boots. The soggy soil exhales. And all about there is the heavy tang of unwashed bodies and humanness. But I no longer care. The day is finally on an upswing.
*
Two days and three summits later, on a ridge between two mountains,9 I am stretched across an abyss. My fingers grip a narrow ledge and my walking boots smear against the sheer wall below. I am terrified. But in this moment I do not think of my children, my life, or anything poignant.
I think cat. All instinct and heartbeat — pure sensual grace.
And though I am older and not as strong as I once was, I know there is time yet to take my body back and claim it as mine.
And I do. Hand by hand, foot by foot, I move until exhausted and sweaty I reach my husband resting on a gentle ramp. I look down at my red-raw palms and my legs all cut up and bruised.
You must have held on harder than me, he says.
I exhale.
If we can survive this, we can survive anything.
And I think of the plastic container in the top of my pack, containing 5 perfect poos in compostable bags — we are forging a new relationship with the wild, less impact, less trace of our visit.10
If we can carry our shit. Then what?
*
My husband laughing now and climbing ahead because there is a swarm of ants crawling up his legs. Even here, on top of a mountain range, almost touching the clouds, there is life — insects, water, flower gardens, and lichen — tiny organisms that grow on the rock — that somehow always seem to be shaped like a heart.
Perhaps you have spent time in the wilderness too, and you understand the duality of being in the wild. How it hurts but also how you notice things, and how grateful you are — the way the wind picks up the moment the sun lifts its head above the horizon. The pink scats filled with crushed berries on the track, evidence of elusive mammals. The old boot print in the middle of a mint-green cushion plant, a trespass that takes hundreds of years to recover. The white Leatherwood flowers floating on the surface of the River, like potpourri, beautiful enough to pull you in.
And the Black currawong on the edge of the rocks, at the head of the valley, watching the sunrise, surveying her domain. Just like me. We are not too different, her and I. Out here, you notice how everything is in relationship with the other, how we all connected, how we all have the same fate.
But you know this as much as I do — we are nothing without each other, we are nothing without the wild places.
*
On our last night we pitch our tent on the summit of Falling Mountain. I walk to the edge and look out at the ridgeline of the Du Cane Range — all sheer cliffs, huge boulders, and green skirts. I watch the light creep down the range, painting peak after peak in gold, the mist settle into the valleys, and the sky, with clouds infused with wild-fire smoke, erupt into flames. I am giddy. It is almost too much. For out here we are rich in time and wonder and some sort of hard-won grace. And there is peace in this simple existence of walking and climbing with just your means of survival on your back. Your pack is heavy, but it is lighter than all the things you carry in your life at home.
*
Home, that place we are heading for now — falling down the side of a mountain, more boulders and shrubbery and those thick words, hours of hardened track (finally) and the long kayak across the lake to our van, because an adventure that begins with water must end with water. And of course the wind blew hard and kicked up waves and white caps, so that I was paddling for my life, while my husband was having a wild old time.
And when we reach the beach at Lake St Clair, I stagger ashore with my boots and paddle and sit down where the bush meets the sand. There is a woman reading a book in a green bikini, but she does not notice me — a woman returned from a week in the wild.
I look out across the lake to the mountains and my eyes water, just a little. I am not broken or wounded. I am blood raging, heart thrumming. For it is here, in the wilderness, that I have learnt what it means to be truly alive.
And on the drive home, we name our purple and red kayak, Ida.
More great wild writing from Tasmania
Conglomerate by Ben Walter. ‘… a curse on
their bodies and a blessing for their minds’.
The Abel Mountains by Bill Wilkinson. ‘The Abels is a love affair with the mountains. Like all love affairs, it can be as intense as you desire’.
Dove Lake Tanka by Pete Hay. ‘Sun, pink as a possum's ear. Sounds drift and startle.’
Until next time dear friends,
wishing you time in the wild,
where the earth still works its magic.
Kate xx
Last week, a friend told me about his bush walking plans. All arranged by his wife. She’s hooked. Into it. Just got back from a weekend hike with their daughter.
Sounds like your wife its having an affair with mountains!, I tease.
Yes, he says, I guess she is.
Tasmania — a small Island at the bottom of Australia, at the edge of the world. The mountain we are climbing is called Mount Gould.
Alpine heath, Eucalyptus coccifera, Richea scoparia. The term scrub refers to trees, shrubs and plants that grow close together and are difficult to navigate through.
and one week later, a friend of a friend sent a message to say that they had found my water bottle on the track. Incredible!
including cucumbers and lettuce and a six pack of beer.
But also — Mount Ida was the peak from which the Greek Gods oversaw the Siege of Troy. The Aegean Sea lay between the peaks of Ida and Olympus, just as leeawuleena / Lake St Clair lies between two Tasmanian peaks of the same name.
for example — Mount Olympus, Ossa, Pelion, The Acropolis, Geryon, Hyperion.
the deepest in Australia, 167 meters in depth.
one named Massif, the other Falling.
"The soggy soil exhales." I know what that is but never heard it described. Thank you.
I couldn’t stop reading! You are an amazing adventurous woman and so glad Ida kept you safe during your travels through the waters. ❤️