The beginning of a hiking love affair

The first decent hike I went on was in secondary school, during Year 10 camp. I know it was Year 10 because of a photo I still possess – me standing awkwardly beside a DIY raft, with short, coarse tufts of hair poking out from under my safety helmet.

The day before I was to commence school that year, my mother had cut my hair into the shape of mushroom. With the difficulty in finding symmetry between each side of my thick, wavy hair, she had taken my request for a layered, shoulder length cut to heights that gave my hair the volume of a small country. When I arrived for the first day of school the next morning, after what was a teary night lamenting the hair I could previously wrap my face in, I was met at the gate by friends who looked at me in horror and said almost in unison, ‘what have you done to your hair?’, and not in a good way.

For this first ever lengthy hike while on camp, I did have the benefit of manageable hair, for which I was grateful. The year level was camping in the Cathedral Ranges in central Victoria, a dense silvery green bushland surrounding Lake Eildon. We were broken up into small groups and spent a couple of days hiking, each taking turns to orienteer and lead the group. I had always loved maps and compasses, but I hadn’t realised until it was my turn to orienteer how much I loved being on a path with the sole responsibility of getting from point A to point B, no distinguishable feature in sight. While this was a happy discovery about myself, the rock-climbing and abseiling adventures that followed revealed, in turn, the depths of the terror I could feel, as well as brief euphoria, when at the top or the bottom respectively. The hiking was an even-keeled and prolonged quest into the unknown, and this suited me considerably more.

When I began travelling in earnest in my 20s, hikes were days spent exploring new and sprawling cities on foot. The device tracking of kilometres acquired had not yet been invented, however I remember poring over maps when back at the accommodation of an evening and using my fingers to gauge the extent of explorations. As many a traveller has said and I will nauseatingly repeat, going for a walk when arriving at a new destination, even and especially when exhausted/grumpy, became the quickest way for me to come into sharp presence and begin to intuit the essence of a place, allowing its unique smells, sounds and colours to settle into weary bones.

The big cities had much to offer this walker – twists and turns, crevices and delights appeared available when not in search of an end point. With childlike curiosity and the beautiful freedom of being without time constraints, I found worlds within worlds and lives lived in myriad ways that I could never have previously fathomed.

Walking made a traveller out of me, more than the thrill of flying far from home or the purchasing of a first backpack. The rite of passage was through the blisters formed breaking in the first pair of Birks’, their hard-working cork soles pressing rhythmically into my feet as I ascended and descended the merciless curves of San Francisco, turning to the bay to glimpse Alcatraz when a moment to catch my breath was needed. I returned home after those months away with the shape of each foot deeply etched into those cork soles, the soft skin of the tops of my feet scored with sandal-strap tan lines; the soles of my feet hardened and vibrantly pink.

It was to be a few years before the next significant walk, life taking me on another journey during this time. When I arrived in Riomaggiore in 2007 with a husband and those same Birks, ready to walk along the famed Cinque Terre, my feet slotted comfortably back into their cork moulds. I walked and marvelled at the sheer drop down to the Ligurian Sea that was inches from my feet, but also at my feet, which seemed to have a kind of foot-sense for the hard earth beneath, moving me steadily, step after step, kilometre after kilometre between each of those five spectacular towns. There were no blisters this time.

To join me on a hike of a unique and gentle kind, please head to the Hikes for the Soul page for information or go to Humanitix to book for the upcoming Sunday 19 March hike.