Fear and Excitement
Passing beyond what’s comfortable or known, whether that means barriers or borders or walls.
Patagonia 2014
In the Chilean slice of Patagonia, there’s a particularly notable hike in Torres del Paine National Park. Reaching the endpoint wasn’t exactly a herculean task, but I could label it as a decent challenge that I pursued a few years ago. I hiked about 1,000 meters upward in elevation one morning, and during that time I covered about 18 kilometers. I took the usual circuit from base to summit, which rotates between all rocks, all greens, and what might be loosely described as trails. In the early morning, I was soaked from a cold rain; by midday, my jacket was a drawback in the intense heat; throughout the hike, a fierce wind was my companion. The only land that’s farther south is Antarctica, so I needed to judge the sunset time right, as I preferred to avoid coming down the mountain in darkness; base to peak and back at a brisk pace takes about eight hours.
One slight impediment to the trip was to simply reach the mountains. A flight took me first from Santiago to Punta Arenas, the southernmost city in South America, with its nearly polar climate, absence of ozone, and preposterous winds; a bus then took me for three more hours until I reached Puerto Natales, a small town that’s nuzzled along the shore, about ninety minutes from Torres del Paine, and is a typical springboard for the trip.
And that long journey affected the hike, shaping how I experienced and interpreted the day. A feeling of discovery can be electrifying, even enchanting, but it only comes once you’ve passed beyond what’s already comfortable, or already known, whether that means barriers or borders or walls. Each stage—the plane, the bus, the car—brought me a step farther from home, and obviously increased the length of my return trip, but the journey acted as a necessary threshold before I began the hike.
Those physical thresholds of distance and difficulty quickly become psychological thresholds: when what’s comfortable and familiar is shattered, the intensity of what’s left only grows.
Traveling a long distance prompts the mind to think differently, to question what’s expected, and it forces your body to become more attuned to your surroundings and perceptions; the length and trials of the journey are important for the journey itself. Can you imagine reading only the climatic scenes of a novel? If you merely read the finale, would the effect of the novel be the same? You need the toil and sweat of pursuit to actually appreciate the finale—whether that means the early background chapters that prime you for a climatic moment, or whether that means the difficult climb before you reach the top of a mountain. If the peak had been only steps from my bed, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the view.
This focus on thresholds, and on the rewards that redound when you cross thresholds, reminds me of a different time, which is now just over a decade into the past. For a little while, I lived along a beach, just outside of New York City. Most weekends brought crowds from the city and packed the shore, but there were times—a Tuesday morning at dawn, for instance—when the entire beach would be empty.
The ocean likes to slap and cut and scare those nearest the shore, but if I swam a bit farther out on those mornings, the slope of each wave would be gentler. Even though I sensed how my body lifted higher and fell lower in the much larger waves, all the violent crashes were closer to shore.
Each stroke brought me farther from land, and there was always this wonderful mixture of excitement and fear as I swam away from the beach, knowing that the distance behind me—the distance home—kept growing. Swimming in the morning would carry me toward the rising sun, with the city’s skyline and the tiny houses along the beach receding behind me.
With the steep undulations of the Atlantic, I didn’t have to swim too far out. When I eventually stopped and simply tread water, floating alone, curious about the depth of the sea floor below my feet, my body would simply lift and lower. Apart from the steady churn of waves, and the little splashes from my arms, the sunrise was silent. The threshold between beach and sea—where the waves lashed, fierce and unforgiving—was much closer to shore. I could see the entire city ablaze in oranges and reds until the backside of a large wave would completely snatch the land from view.
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