How to return to your life

after a wild adventure

Hello dear wild and wonderful readers,

I love how this newsletter has blossomed into a community of adventurous souls.

How wonderful it was to receive your messages of support when I was running through the vast red desert of central Australia last week. I was thrilled that my girlfriend N and I finished our Run Larapinta trail running adventure (you can read more here if you missed it) and that we raised over $3000 for the brain tumour community in Australia.¹

Perhaps you’re away on a wild adventure too? Or you are planning one? I’d love to hear what you have been up to.

I arrived home last week, returning to my small and wonderful domestic life. It’s been a mixture of rest and re-calibration.

In this edition of Wild and Wonderful: a short story (because I am moving in small distances right now) and a gorgeous poem written by an indigenous Arrernte² woman from Central Australia. Thank you, as always, for you presence here.

With love and kindness,

Kate xx

---

Waterhole near Alice Springs. My last swim in central Australia before catching a plane home.

I have given up my body to rest.

I could lie in bed for hours, drunk with the night and the warm sweetness of sleep —

slow beating heart,

feet stacked on top of each other,

knees cradled in my belly,

steady body heat.

My children³ are impatient. They rustle through my bags for presents brought home from my adventure to central Australia.

Mum, Mum, Mummy, come on.

Their voices a jumble of noise in my ears.

I slide my blistered and bruised feet into woollen ugg boots and wrap my body in a grey dressing gown. I sway a little and in my clumsiness I am reminded of those groggy mornings with a newborn baby — when I was tired all the way to my fingernails.

The day fills with small things. Mundane things. Everyday things.

Breakfast. Lunch boxes. I clean out the cutlery draw, put the old bent forks in a box for charity. Fold washing. Visit the library with my youngest daughter in search of inspiring words. Sip a mug of weak warm tea. Buy food. Feed the chickens. Do the school run.

*

Two weeks ago I was in central Australia for a trail running race — Run Larapinta. The race follows sections of a 210 kilometre walking track called the Larapinta Trail. It weaves through the spectacular West MacDonnell Ranges⁴, a mountain chain that extends as far as the horizon, like a backbone, or a restless caterpillar moving across the fiery red desert, the Arrernte dreaming story for this landscape.⁵

A wide blue sky. Blinding sunlight. A hazy tangerine landscape. Rocks every shade of orange. Deep gorges with pools of dark cold water. Flower gardens on impossible ridge lines and a tangle of green growing in the dry riverbeds.

running through Stanley Chasm, West MacDonnell Ranges (photo by Narelle Webber)

I hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be running for four consecutive days in this desert landscape. Each day grew more challenging. The ascents and descents were grueling. The heat was brutal. Sweat evaporating from my skin so that I was covered in a thin veneer of salt crystals. My feet blistered and each day I stuck more brown strapping tape over them. It was a real adventure —

rapture, exhaustion, endurance.

But equally,

friendship and salvation.

Kate, are you alright? Do you have enough water?

Grins as wide as the sky.

Who are these people?, a tourist asked at Ellery Creek Waterhole.

Trail runners. People who enjoy pushing their bodies to the limit in a wild place. People who are radiant, restless, and alive.

*

On my last day running, 18 kilometres in, I slowed down. It was hot. My fingers were tingling. I stopped under the canopy of a small Mallee Eucalypt tree, sheltered under its small slither of shade.

Get it together, Kate.

I drank long and deep - tepid electrolyte water the flavour of orange — and chewed a few jelly beans. I felt the rush of sugar, my heart beating a little quicker.

A bunch of Mulla Mullas⁶, their flowers like pale yellow lanterns, swayed in the warm afternoon breeze. I took a photo. And I thought of my friend N, somewhere behind me on the trail, and the couple I had run with earlier in the day, on top of the next hill looking back and wondering where I was.

I started running again. Then the sound of feet crunching on the trail behind me. I turned but there was no one there. Just the sun warming the country, happy in its own company, the only thing meant to be alone out here,⁷ with the orange-red rocks and the thin grey trees. I felt then a desperate need to get to the end.

As the plane flies over the city of Hobart⁸, and drops its wing for the final descent, I lean my head against the small smooth edged window and look out.

Home.

Its blue grey-green shades familiar and repetitive — colours I can trust.

I gulp the cool moist air as I walk through the sliding exit doors. My husband waiting beside our van in his blue woollen jumper. The kids at home asleep. A short drive across the Derwent River and up the base of kunanyi / Mount Wellington marking the end of my desert running adventure.

*

The next day, on my computer, I look up an international footrace I had heard about from a runner on the Larapinta Trail.⁹ Four deserts — Namibia, Mongolia, Chile, Antartica — 28 days, 1000 kilometres. I spin the silver globe in the lounge room on top of the fish tank. The continents whiz by. I remember my 25 year old self, adventurous and free — it feels like a lifetime ago.

Later that evening my husband and I meet with friends at a bar for a drink. Both are heading to Antarctica for a year long stint. We talk in colours — blue and white. And beards. How long will they grow? And how they will stay sane in a small building in the dark Antarctic winter? I am envious. Their girlfriends are not.

*

At home in the shower I look down at my feet. The nail on the third toe has a deep purple bruise underneath. It wasn’t there when I got home. A late onset inflammation. I probe the tiny splinters in my fingers with a needle. Satisfied when a golden liquid releases and some of the pressure falls. I leave the strapping tape on my foot, it feels comforting, reminds me of my desert adventure. Holds me together as I fall head first into my life.

Inversion.

Re-entry.¹⁰

There is no in between. I am hurtled from large astounding wondrous things to small ordinary repetitive things. Caught between two extremes, like a returned astronaut lying on the grass looking up at the moon.

*

On a school night, my youngest daughter and I peel the potatoes. Determined to help she slices into the tender flesh of her thumb. Blood. We find an Elsa¹¹ band-aid, only a Disney one will do.

The boys¹² have moved on from Lego to scooting in the hallway. School bags as obstacles. I can hear something thumping against the wall. Our pet cockatoo is screeching from her perch in the kitchen. My eldest daughter flicks through cookbooks for an alternative dinner. And my husband announces that we are going on a surprise holiday in two days time — somewhere in Australia, ice and pharaohs. Can you guess?

And I smile, as wide as the wedge of moon in the sky above our home.

For I have always known.

This family, this time, here and now, is the greatest adventure of my life.

---

A poem from the Arrente women of Central Australia.

In a bookshop in Alice Springs I found a poetry anthology written by local Arrernte women — Arelhekenhe Angkentye Women’s Talk.

There is healing in this poetry. These are our words. From our country. Our lands. Our spirits. For all the troubles we gave every day, we are a passionate people. When we hear these poems, we know, we are lovers of life.

Lyapirtneme II
By Sharon Ampetyane Alice

when the rain comes
it fills

this is love

when you are falling in love
when the rain gives
when it comes back
your love will grow

and when the sun comes out
your love will shine
like the fire

---

Other things

I’m excited to be attending a writing workshop in November with the brilliant Australian author

Bri Lee

.

Bri has started a new initiative to connect readers and writers. It’s called #WriteAWriter. She received a beautiful letter from a reader and it inspired her to write to an author whose work has had an impact on her. You can read Bri’s letter here.

Tasmanian author

Jodi Wilson

and Australian academic

Annabelle Lukin

have also written letters. I am writing one too. And I’m looking forward to sharing it with you soon.

I finished Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. I was so enchanted I didn’t want to leave the wilds of America. Her prose is sublime. Here is a review.

And I’m reading a beautiful novel called Orbital, by Samantha Harvey. I am enjoying hanging out in the International Space Station and watching the Earth spin far below in the inky blackness of space.

Did you guess where we are on holiday?

Wishing you a smooth landing when you return from your next wild adventure,

With love,

Kate x

1. If you are interested in learning more and supporting our fundraiser, link is here.

2. The Aboriginal people who have lived in Mparntwe / Alice Springs for 30,000 years and continue to be its custodians.

3. Lottie 10, Sidney 8, Arthur 6, and Sylvia 4.

4. 300 million years ago the earth experienced a violent upheaval which deposited layers of rock and tipped them on its side, giving birth to the West MacDonnell Ranges. 

5. Aboriginal culture is intimately connected to country. For local Arrernte, the ranges, mountains and rivers of the Mparntwe /Alice Springs hold spiritual significance. These sites were created during the Dreaming when powerful ancestral beings travelled through the country and shaped its many forms. The caterpillar ancestors were the major forces for this area and three powerful caterpillars, yeperenye, utnerrengatye, and ntyarlke are amongst the most sacred and important of all totems.

6. Also called Pussytails, the flowers of Ptilotus obovatus were used by the local Arrernte people as decoration in ceremonies. The soft branches were used for lining the wooden dishes used to carry children.

7. This image is from the novel Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff.

8. In Tasmania, a small Island at the bottom of Australia.

9. Racing the Planet is the name of the race.

10. Australian author

Kate Mildenhall

wrote that her mother used the word ‘re-entry’ to describe the feeling of returning home to domestic duties after a family holiday.

11. The character Elsa from the Disney movie Frozen.

12. One eight years old, the other six years old.