Perspective

I'm tired. Mentally, physically, literally, figuratively, every way possible, I'm tired. Little Man has figured out how to get to sleep pretty much on his own now, but still wakes multiple times a night. In the lab, my project is slowly, slowly moving forward, but I still keep thinking about so many things I'd rather be doing then the tedious benchwork I have ahead of me for the next few weeks. This week has been dark, gloomy, damp, and gray -- the kind of weather that can make your bones ache and your body sag. So, in so many ways I'm tired.

But I had a thought this morning as I plodded up the stairs from the parking lot to my building. This weather reminded me of the Blue Mountains in Australia, and the most perspective-altering vacation I've ever taken. Five years ago, my husband (then still my boyfriend) and I took a trip to Australia for a friend's wedding in which he was Best Man and I was singing. We spent two weeks there, the first week before the wedding in and about Sydney, staying with our friend's parents and in a Sydney hotel, and the second week we took three days to go backpacking in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and then 3 days in the coastal town of Umina where our friend's family had a vacation home. The whole trip was incredible, but the backpacking trip was in many ways life changing. I look back on that trip as being important for testing my limits, and for learning to see the wonder in many things.

It started out like so -- we took the train to a town called Katoomba, where there was a natural monument called The Three Sisters, a hiking trail called the National Pass, and (we were told) plenty of places to camp. We stopped at the information center and asked where we should go. The woman there told us we couldn't just camp anywhere off the trail, like we had thought, but that there was a spot called Ruined Castle on the trail that was a popular backpacker destination. We could camp there, she said, and all we had to do was walk down some stairs down to the bottom of a cliff, where the trail was, and we could easily walk to Ruined Castle in an afternoon. It was about 1pm when we started, so we hoped we could get there by sundown. We found the staircase, called the Giant Staircase, and started our descent.

Now, keep in mind that my husband and I were in only mildly good shape, and this was our first time backpacking. We had loaded our packs with enough food for three days, and water for at least one. They were heavy. and the Giant Staircase consisted of a metal scaffold staircase, straight down, for 1000 ft or over 800 steps. We very very carefully made our way down, but when we got to the bottom, we considered ourselves to be doing pretty good. The path was wide and inviting, and the scenery was lush and green. We walked along the path for a bit, and we passed the train that went up the side of the cliff back into town -- the normal route for tourists wanting to explore the area. We figured we had just a few hours, and we'd be able to set up camp and enjoy a magical night.

After we passed the train, however, the path abruptly changed character. What had been easily wide enough for three people and fairly smooth shrank down to a narrow, rocky, one person trail through plenty of brush. Undeterred, we kept onward, knowing that we had to find two landmarks before we hit Ruined Castle, one called "Landslide" and the other "The Golden Stairs". We kept walking and walking, thinking maybe we found one or the other, but it wasn't until we hit Landslide that we knew we were in trouble.

Landslide was exactly that -- a place where the cliff had slid down into the valley back in 1928. The path, once we got there, went from being a narrow but navigable trail to a boulder climb, marked with the occasional metal pole or painted white arrow. The ground was littered with pebbles, and getting a sure footing became very difficult. The cliff was on the right of us, and on the left a steep descent into a tree-filled valley of unknown depth. We also thought we were in the middle of nowhere, and far from any civilization by this point. Now, I am 5'3", and some of these boulders we had to climb over and then jump off of were easily a few feet high -- so for a short, somewhat clumsy woman carrying 25% more weight than usual, and with a deep fear of falling off of precipices -- this was absolutely wretched. So wretched, in fact, that at one point, I had a breakdown. I sat down, started to cry, and told my husband I just could not go on. I still remember the fear in his eyes as he tried to figure out how the hell he was going to get me out of there. Finally, after much coaxing, he got me to move again, and we made it past landslide, and back to the walking trail.

At that point, I got a second wind, and we marched on swiftly, looking for the Golden Stairs and then on to Runined Castle. But the day's hours were becoming fewer, the light was lessening, and we still had not found the Golden Stairs. Finally, after about 7 hours of hiking we came upon a sign. "Golden Stairs. Ruined Castle, 6 km". We were ready to die. 6 kilometers??? And night approaching. We looked at our map, and found that at the top of Golden Stairs there was a gated road. So we climbed up the cliff -- this time on uneven rock stairs with no real railings, just the occaisional rope at the steep parts -- using up the absolute last of our energy, and got to the top of the cliff. We put up our tent behind a sign on the side of the road, and spent an uneasy night. It was windy, and we thought we were in the middle of nowhere, but we kept seeing a mysterious white van drive by -- and since my mother-in-law had decided to regale us with stories of campers being murdered by the mob after seeing secret activities by accident right before we left... my husband slept with our camping shovel in his hand, ready to bludgeon any invader at a moment's notice.

The next day, we found that what we thought was the middle of nowhere was a commonly used dirt road. People jogged by, walking their dogs, and we found that the mysterious white van was one of potentially many camping vans. At one point as we packed up, a group of tourists came to hike down the Golden Stairs on the way to Ruined Castle. We started walking back to town, and discovered that at the top of cliff where I had my breakdown was a housing development -- if I had yelled loud enough, a whole mess of suburbanites would have heard me. We also discovered that what had taken us 7 hours at the base of the cliff took us two hours on top -- if we had walked to the GOLDEN stairs instead of the GIANT staircase, we would have easily made it to Ruined Castle in an afternoon. We still want to find the woman at that info center...

So the next night, we decided to take it easy, and took the train to a town where there was a designated campground, just a 5 km walk from the train station. Of course, though, that night, it started to rain. And it rained all night. My husband and I were crammed in our tiny two person tent all rainy night. But at least we felt safe, and the next morning, the mist still falling, we saw a beautiful sight.

The mountains where we stayed had hugged the mist to themselves, so it looked as if we were walking above the clouds. We walked back to the train and breathed in the damp air, determined to find a nice dry hostel to stay in for our final night in the Blue Mountains (which is a whole other story), but I remember the dampness seeming not that bad. It felt clean and cool, especially with the promise of a warm bed that night. In retrospect, it seems even more magical, that morning in the mountains. We had survived a crazy ordeal and had made it out better.

Later we looked up the trail in that stretch and found that it was rated "expert" -- pretty much as difficult as you can get without needing special equipment. We were nieve and full of bad information when we attempted it, but that trip gave me a lot of new perspective. I had found my limits and surpassed them. I had felt like I couldn't go on, but I pushed through. And after all that, we found that so many of those percieved dangers were really not -- we had been safe all along, but for lack of knowledge, we feared the worst. And we got through to a beautiful misty morning, and a few days later to a glorious sunrise over the ocean after we reached the vacation house in Umina. Those moments would not have been so beautiful, so glorious, if not for the rough experience the days before.

So now as I look, bleary eyed, out the window to the grey, damp day, and prepare myself for my workday, I think about that morning with very similar weather but in a very different time. What makes this day dreary and that day soothing and magical? Perspective. I was tired then too, but tired with triumph and the promise of good times ahead. If I just shift my perspective just a little, I can remember the feeling of that morning back in the mountains, and suddenly my fatigue doesn't feel so overwhelming.