It's August 1st, 2020 and I got a text message from my insurance travel provider congratulating me for completing my trip and wishing me a warm welcome back. Only I didn't complete my trip. I didn't even start it.
I was supposed to complete the 120KM of the Dolomites's Alta Via 1. I was in the best shape of my life, having spent the corona stay-at-home period eating well, exercising and climbing the steps of my 5-story building almost every day. I started at 25 floors, and made it to 125 within a few weeks.
It’s summer, and where I’m from , this means no hiking. Oh, some people do. But it’s the kind of hiking that can get you dead if you are not careful. Sunstroke and dehydration galore, that's what it is.
This year has been particularly bad for hiking. First I had business travel and then winter started. Our winter is typically mild, but recent years have brought on storms - anything between 1 to 4 days of heavy rain and winds. It doesn't get very cold, but you don't want to be out. And then Corona came, and with it - a two months long curfew. In May it looked like international travel will shortly be resumed, having gone through the first wave successfully and with a low number of deaths. And then the second wave came, and although we were still in the low hundreds for morbidity, our infection rate was one of the highest in the world.
I was supposed to start Alta via 1 in mid July, planned on perhaps the UK's south west coastal path in September with my mom, to mark the end of her cancer treatment.
Clearly, none of this happened.
More than a year later, i'm getting antsy. I know that people around the world are hurting. I know that i'm lucky to be vaccinated. I know all of that. But I can't help but dream of other places, of mountains and fresh air. Of meditating by sitting in front of a snow-covered mountain, and just being.
No phones, no internet, no other people I can disappoint.
No people who can frustrate me, hate me, annoy me, scare me.
No failures to communicate.
No one to measure myself against.
No expectations other than my own. And those are very humble.
No friends who don't call. No texts I don't want to answer.
No decisions to make. No life-that-have-not-been-lived to measure.
No stress.
No expectations.
Only me and my body and what it can do for me.
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