Travel isn't always pretty...holidays v travel

I got knocked down but I got back up again...

My news:

I moved mountains for months to make it to the base of the highest mountain in Europe, to climb said mountain and, well, I bloody-well got a raging fever/virus thing, didn’t I. Which rendered me…unable to move.

The symbolism is dripping, right!

We rigid A-Types often need a behemoth symbol to stop us in our tracks. A mere hill won’t do it.

So a few details:

I’d always wanted to hike Mont Blanc. I don’t normally go for blockbuster hikes. I have no desire to do the various Caminos, for instance. But the Swiss/Italian/French-ness of the Tour de Mont Blanc (TMB) lured me.

It was the refugios that serve polenta and wild mushrooms. It was the heights. All that vibrant Gortex and the warbling languages.

So I started organising it via an awesome guy who set up a hiking business that, well, organises all kinds of hut-to-hut hikes around the world based on how much you can afford and how much luxury you want. You can check his business, Pygmy Elephant, out here. When you live so far away, and unless you book yonks in advance, you kind of need someone to link up hut bookings, shuttles, maps, etc, especially when place names and refugios often have names in three languages.

This hike was my reward for finishing This One Wild and Precious Life (almost three years ago!). Expectations were high. I caught a train from Paris to Geneva. The tunnel up the mountain was shut that afternoon, so I had to stay the night in Geneva. Serendipitously, an ex-lover from a trip to Paris three years ago happened to be in town for work that night; he took me in, even though I was unwell.

Finally, I arrived in Courmayeur, the starting point for the TMB, got to my first accommodation, a little hotel in the centre of the village, and collapsed. And not figuratively.

So I have sweated it out in a feverish FOMO (from my room I could hear other hikers pass, pole-clacky and excited, below), for three days.

Surrounded by seductive climbable mountains.

Rendered choiceless.

Absurd. Perfection.

I shared a picture (above) of my predicament and got this comment (below) from @vixpips. I teared up.

I love this quote and it was wonderful to hear it again.

Yep, travel hurts. And it’s often not as pretty as the IG grid makes out.

Travel is not the same as holidaying.

Holidaying is about escaping, leaving stuff behind, zoning out. Taking it easy. It’s about sinking into neutral, or even further back - into negative. Many people love and need this.

Travel, on the other hand, is about extending, reaching forward, enlivening, going to farther risky, uncomfortable edges because you need to see and connect more. It’s taking it hard.

You travel if you believe that life’s riches mostly come best via hurting and risking, friction and having your heart broken.

If you believe that joy is produced from the work you must do to rise again.

If you believe that peace comes from the lessons you must learn in order to rise (and that you can only conclude are spiritual).

If you believe that the best most lasting growth comes from being out on your own, out of your comfort zone, without your usual salves or crutches, where you must draw on your own internal strength and character.

Yes, that’s the key difference. Holidaying is comfort. Travel is discomfort… that you do in order to rise again.

I can’t holiday. It’s not good for me. But I travel.

What about you?

(Holidaying as a single person is very difficult, I think. Travel as a single person can be hard, too, but that’s what you sign up for (discomfort) and so it doesn’t induce existential panic, as holidaying has for me when I’ve tried it.)

Of course, as some of you may know, it’s not the first time this has happened to me. There was the time I was meant to do a massive hike in Slovenia and the day I was to head off I found out I was pregnant (you can read about this in This One Wild and Precious Life) and I share the details in a previous post:

I found The Lady in Red and the tale turns bonkers

I do believe there is always a lesson or message to be heeded when absurd behemoth symbols get dumped in our tracks. The message is generally, “Stop! Back the fuck off! Release your grip! You’re being too rigidly attached”.

The message this time? It’s not quite as above. I think it’s more about pausing, not stopping. For, as it turns out, after five days of feverish FOMO, I indeed recovered enough to be able to use all my A-type, hyper-planning, strategising, worrying abilities to - along with the wonderful Pygmy Elephant gang over a flurry of WhatsApp messages - work out various ways to do bit of the trail I missed and rejoin for the final two days into Chamonix.

I think I’ll share more refined ideas around this “refinement of lesson heeding” in my next Europe Diary post (I’m doing this for paid subscribers…sign up if you’re interested.)

Some other stuff…

My podcast chat last week with Julia Cameron who wrote The Artist’s Way goes into some of these ideas above a little. A listener pulled out a quote and put it into a tile:

“Perfectionism is a bully trying to keep you in place.”

This probably won’t be the last time I ask you guys….but if you could be bothered….I’d love you to rate the podcast and share it with mates. You can do it here on Apple and here on Spotify. I failed to do this kind of heckling for the first six months and the Powers That Be have asked that I make up for lost ground. You rating and sharing will keep me going.

I’m giving $63,000 of my money to an Indigenous Women’s Ranger Program and I’d love you to donate what you can by tomorrow (to make it for EOFY). It really matters and I wouldn’t donate everything I’ve got to it unless it really had impact. Keen?

I have had 48 hours of reflections about the overturning of Roe v Wade. I’m sickened and bewildered by what it says about where we are at. But I don’t have the words to say enough on it just now.

Ciao,

Sarah xx