So a few weeks ago, I posted about unplugging from the technoverse and getting back to nature. I posted about getting stuck into writing without distraction and spending quality time with my wife.
Yeh. That’s totally not what happened. I never picked up my kindle, and my notebook and pens went untouched.
We spent so much time either hiking or relaxing/sleeping after hiking, there wasn’t much time for anything else.
It turns out that wasn’t such a bad thing though.
Firstly, I had my very own Biggest Loser Fears Week moment, when (scared of heights) I climbed a huge rock called The Pyramid. When we finally made it to the top, I was so over-whelmed I cried like a baby. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a release of all the emotion I stuffed down into my boots during the climb. My wife was suitably impressed and proud of my achievement, which made it all the more emotional for me. I never want to hold her back from doing anything, and since we love to achieve things together, me climbing to the top with her was a huge achievement – for both of us.
The fact that I sat for two hours waiting for her and a friend to attempt to scale the Second Pyramid was penance for my cursing all the way up the first Pyramid.
The coming down bit was just as hairy as the going up. At least going up, I could look ahead and not see the ground. Going down, I had no choice but to look where I was going.
The beer after that climb was well worth it when we got back to camp I can tell you.
If that climb wasn’t enough, I decided to do it all over again, climbing to the top of Bald Rock in NSW. We also stopped off at the border for a quick pic, and then went down to Tenterfield, where we found a bakery that had THE best meat pie I’ve had in a very long time. (No photo of that though – it was extremely messy, as all great pies are).
Wifey (a park ranger) also had a hilarious confrontation with a killer possum. In the dead of night, we could hear the possum trying to get into various things in ours and our friends’ camp kitchens, and rustling through our bin. Wifey got up to chase it away, but it decided it was going to go down fighting. It took a run at her, she screamed, and I laughed. I stopped laughing when I realised wifey hadn’t closed the door of the tent. She closed it though, which saved an even more hilarious (and dangerous) scenario of having a rogue killer possum rampaging through our tent.
What was even more hilarious is that every night after that, that same possum would come down into the camp, strut around and eye wifey off, trying to entice her into another confrontation. Wifey didn’t take the bait though, and they ended up mutually respecting each others’ boundaries.
So, even though the trip didn’t turn out like I had planned, it turned out pretty great. The weather was fantastic, we saw some fantastic sites, and I got to spend some quality time with wifey and our friends.
Would I do it all again?
We’ll see…
