Interim – Post-hiberation

Emerging – April 2024

Last April, at this time, I was wrapping up Unscripted and moving into that ambiguous space between travel and work. Not yet employed, but finished with that spell of riding. But work came quickly and it was less than four weeks off the road before I was signing a one-year contract.

And then I got COVID in May. I had to delay my job start date by 5 days. COVID got me very good in that round – I was down for about three weeks. Knowing that COVID could reignite my chronic fatigue syndrome and all that debilitating sickness meant that I stopped almost all physical activity for six weeks just to ensure I did not overdo things.

That was the start of the hibernation.

As I launched into the new job and moved 30 minutes out of town to look after a friend’s place, my physical activity remained low to non-existent. I started into 10 hour work days (minimum) to work full-time hours (35) over four days. I also began an Accounting course through NSW TAFE – because it was free and I thought it would be useful knowledge (it is, but confirms I rank Finance right up there with WHS and Procurement as things I really, really do not ever want to do).

So all of that meant I was away from home and somehow occupied in a sedentary fashion for about 14 hours every day. On weekends, it was all I could do to keep up with the lawn and garden maintenance. So physical activity was relegated to lawn mowing, weeding, pruning and occasional walks along the river. That commenced hibernation for sure – from July to December.

I moved back into Albury in December and got back to moving more. I started to awaken and feel more like me again.

BUT…. work really ramped up. Feb and March was just consumed with work. Lots of 14 and 15 hour days and heaps and heaps of travel to hold community workshops in the evenings all over our region which is around the size of Maine or Indiana (> 80,000 sq kms). I put almost 10,000 kays on the car between late Jan and the first week of April.

I finally made it through all of the really, really heavy workload the week after Easter. Boy, was I exhausted! Just totally DONE, but so, so grateful that I could pull all that off over two months. In the sick years, I could not have even contemplated that level of workload and activity, let alone executed it. I truly am grateful every single day to have come out the other side.

I still have quite a few things left to do in the work project, but they can all be done in the office doing a 7-hour day. I do have one more round of community workshops in the first week of May, but other than that, I can breathe again. And I can shift life back to having a good work-life balance. It was truly all work in Feb and March. The contract ends on 30 June, and I cannot wait for that!

I also found that this band below is coming to town the weekend after I get all the workshops finished. They look like they are high energy and something I can jump around and let off steam – not punk, but still fun. My parents are typical Midwesterners and celebrate everything with food. But I like to celebrate by doing stuff, so this will be my celebration:

I have some serious ‘time-in-lieu’ up my sleeve, though I won’t get the chance to use very much of it at all, given work culture and the fact I’m not really entitled to it in my contract (these days you just get to work lots of free overtime in just about any salaried job, as ‘overtime’ is not even mentioned in a contract, let alone how that will be compensated).

But I did take two days off as ‘time-in-lieu’ this week. I needed to be in Myrtleford for a funeral on Tuesday. The weather looked to be perfect all week long. Highs of 24C, sunny and light breezes. So I decided to go for a hike at Mt Buffalo on Monday so I could start practicing using my new hiking poles. The guys and I did the lower half of the Big Walk – because it’s the only bit of Mt Buffalo I’ve never before hiked.

The funeral on Tuesday was in a Catholic Church. I don’t go in church buildings very often. But it always strikes me how I do not feel anything spiritual there. I could be in a library or a hardware store or an auditorium … it feels much the same to me.

As I was sitting there, waiting for proceedings to begin, I saw a huge, I mean, really huge, Hunstman spider up in a stained glass window overlooking Christ and the cross behind the altar. And it made me think how hiking through the forest the previous day had made me feel so connected and alive, in touch with all of ‘God’s creation’. To me, being in the forest or on top of a mountain is where I connect with the infinite. I’ve never found it indoors.

So many, many thanks once again to my parents who took my brother and me to various state parks all over Indiana on Sundays when we were kids. Many of our friends and family in Bible Belt Indiana were sitting in church pews while we rambled about on the trails.

I have begun figuring out what 5-day hike I want to do in Colorado when I go over for a month in late July. I’m trying to match the trails in the La Garita wilderness to the geology maps. This will allow me to plot out a route to see a bunch of geological features from a series of volcanic eruptions around 30 million years ago (second largest eruption ever in Earth’s history and greatest volume of volcanic rock from an eruption series).

I started this week into my 12-week training program to get me ready for hiking with a backpack on poorly maintained wilderness trails in the high country. The first 6 weeks of the program I am also doing a fitness challenge through the gym. This includes daily hydration, protein, personal development reading and step targets, plus 3 days strength training and 1 day of HIIT each week.

I’ve been loving my evening walks as the sun sets and the world goes dark. It reminds me of my ‘night rides’ at uni which are probably my favourite memories in all of life. If I ever need to go to my ‘happy place’ in my head, it’s always jumping down stairs, racing down dirt trails and speeding through traffic under the light of the moon during my years at uni – alone or with the guys, it was a nightly ritual that I look back on with utmost fondness. It was rare to miss a night.

So now I go for a 2-hour walk each night, and it is again that feeling of being out on the streets, unseen but seeing – watching all those big screen TVS in living rooms, lights flicking on in bathrooms, and the clink and clank of dishes in kitchens as people prepare their dinner. It’s the smell of garlic bread, or Asian stirfries or… please invite me over, Indian dishes with the depth of smell from that complexity of spices. I so much prefer to be in the forest, all alone, with no humans around. But if I have to be around them, then this is how I prefer it – unseen, watching from afar and just observing, while I feel my heart beating and my lungs heaving with physical effort as I walk the steep, dark streets. Even on the nights I walk 12 km, I never want to go home. I just want to keep walking. I remember the bike used to be like that at uni, too. Only then I’d go home knowing I had to be at work at 6am. Now I have to be at the gym at 6 instead.

Ahhhhhhhhhh, it is so nice to emerge from hibernation, even if it has to be among humans… for now.