Are you hiking straight to the top or just hanging in there? (A very personal story)

Some years ago I was invited to go to a hiking trip to Mount Kenya in Africa. I could not refuse an invitation like that while I kept thinking how anyone like me could make it to the top. I had 7 months to prepare and get in shape for the big trip. Then, September 11 happened and the world as we knew it collapsed as fear grew big time among travelers. Still, we took a leap of faith and decided to go telling just a couple of close relatives and not even our parents.

Any professional hiker – which I can assure you I am not! – can tell you how important it is that you pack the right stuff. Not too much, not junk, dehydrated foods that you can cook easily on a camping stove, healthy energizing snacks, proper clothes and the best shoes you can find not to kill your feet.

So then, we went for adventure ready to take anything with our hearts and cameras. I felt ready but still had serious doubts I could get to the top. I trained at my best with a personal trainer, lifted weights twice a week, ran 5-6 miles a day, used the treadmill, ate healthy and had the best legs I’ve ever had. Ready or not, there I went!

Once we got to the entrance of Mount Kenya National Park I realized how scared I was. It truly looked like Jurassic Park and it was raining so badly that we had to stay with our backpacks sitting under the little guard house at the Entrance Gates waiting for the rain to clear a little in order to set our very basic camp. No luxuries allowed as we had a tight budget.

While sitting there pretending relaxation and excitement I just felt the urge to go back home, I thought of all the failure stories, the tourists killed by buffalos, snakes and all the horrifying images that Discovery Channel had had the brilliance to share with its audience. Still, I smiled and tried to picture the unique feeling of getting to the top of a high mountain.

Before I knew it, it was the day after and we began our hiking deciding not to wait for our guide as the path seemed very clear and easy to follow. It was truly a magnificent Rainy Forrest, a path surrounded by the biggest trees I’d seen in my life with the animal sounds you can only imagine in a well made documentary.

We walked for a couple of hours until my worse nightmare crossed in front of us: Buffalos!!!! I stopped paralyzed with fear remembering that they supposedly do not attack you unless they are alone. My husband did what every macho man would have done which was trying to scare them away with some well calculated screams, but before he did, he warned me to run fast and try to climb a tree if buffalos decided to attack us. The buffalos did not seem to respond well as they got ready to attack, and before I knew it, I was running fast and furious to the closest tree I could find even before my husband gave me the sign. He offered to climb the tree first, so he could help me out once in the closest branch but I quickly rejected asking him to back off for me to go first. The truth? I fell like a sack of potatoes and I cried for the ending of my life. However, once I turned my head I did not see the buffalos anywhere around as they had indeed decided we were not that scary anyway and disappear into the rainy forrest. Lesson learned: We waited for our experienced guide.

Once we all met, we reinitiated our hiking with hopes we wouldn’t be featured in the discovery channel or a Hollywood movie. We made it to second camp and decided to use the basic collective cabins instead of our tents being warned not to leave the door open under the risk of getting our food stolen by monkeys.

On our second day, we were welcomed by a much harder trail as it actually disappeared in the middle of the mud and the water flowing downhill under the stormy rain. Three hours into it and my legs felt like broken into pieces, my arms were weak as I tried to make my way by pulling branches and whatever could help me to drag myself further towards the very wanted top. At that moment, my husband asked me in his sweetest voice: ‘honey, would you like us to go back or keep going? It’s your call’. At that moment, I was faced with all my fears, my hard moments of hard training and a choice that would lead me to the top of a wanted dream or to a warm bath at the Naro Moru River Lodge. What did I do? I kept going for quite some good extra hours until we made it!!!! Yes, I actually was able to make it to the Teleki Lodge at 14200 feet!!!! Hurrah! I couldn’t believe it! I was actually that woman wearing dirty hiking clothes in the middle of nowhere having a lifetime adventure.

I was exhausted and freezing cold. My husband couldn’t wait to get to the real top: Point Lenana. So, I was faced with the same question again: 'Do you want to go for Point Lenana tomorrow at 3 am or hang around Teleki?'.

That was a difficult choice that took me just few minutes to reply: I will hang in here! So, I stayed and I did not reach the real top.

So, does it matter? It’s been +8 years since we made that trip and I consider it one of the peak moments of my life. The probe that when you want something, you prepare, you set your mind and your heart to it and then, you go, go, go and keep going until you make it. I may not have reached the snowy Point Lenana but I made it much higher to where I’d ever dreamed of. I made it to that forgotten corner in my heart that treasured the childhood dreams and converted them in adulthood adventures. I made it to the image of the person I can be whenever I want it to be. I created the amazing possibility of repeating the story for the rest of my life stretching my own self-imposed boundaries out of any comfort zone to the adventures that lie in front of me to be explored and the tops to be reached while I may hang in there for a little while between them.

Go for your dreams.

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream”.

C.S. Lewis.

P.S. Oh! The picture above is the Teleki Lodge. A day there feels like touching the clouds with your feet still on Planet Earth.