About Courage

Do you need to be brave to embark on a four thousand two hundred kilometre hike? Perhaps. I believe it's mostly recklessness as one just cannot picture mentally this distance.

On the trail, courage is often forced upon you. When you find yourself in the middle of a raging river, legs trembling with the feeling that if you lift a foot, you'll be swept away, and moonwalking back to safety is your only option. When you're on a snowy slope, where one wrong step means slipping, injury, and you've already walked thirty kilometres, and the snow is soft, treacherous, with gusts of wind playing with your nerves. These moments are brief. You're stuck because often walking backwards is just as difficult (if not impossible, as turning around would be too risky). Also it might have been a good idea to listen to your friend’s advice, to have waited for them or just to have read helpful comments from previous hiker on Farout®.

So yes, you need to find a way to ignore the danger, lift your foot and take a small step forward. This courage is forced upon you, but it's real.

For me, you'll know the extent of your bravery every time you have to leave your sleeping bag in the middle of the night as temperatures are still negative, to put on wet socks and cross a frozen river while the sun hasn't risen yet. Every time you hitchhike to leave a world of comfort and abundance. When you set out on the road again after a dislocated shoulder or limping like a penguin for over a thousand kilometres (this one’s for you, Sugar Daddy).

For all the other toughest moments, my technique was to recite this little poem by Dorothy Parker:

 There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine;
This living, this living, this living
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle-
Would you kindly direct me to hell?

Coda, Dorothy Parker