Of the many adventures we had - ghost towns, mailboxes galore, crystal blue rivers and limestone caves - the most brilliant was finding a random walking track in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. National Parks signs always lie - this is a fact that I have always been aware of and will forget without fail before embarking on a walk - a walk that is signposted as just over a kilometre will always be a shitload more. I think they are working in conjunction with personal trainers. Just a little bit further is in fact twice as far as you've already come. We walked and walked. I whinged and whinged. We ran to make the distance fall away quicker and still we weren't at anything that looked remotely like a lookout. But what do you do? They have you over a barrel. If you give up and turn around because the sign lied about the distance you miss out on the reward at the end. So you keep going. And going.
Then you come across something truly amazing. A view that puts your life in perspective. A view that has been formed over millions and millions of years and my existence is not even a breath of wind compared to it's lifespan. Yet I can stand on the edge of this amazing formation and be completely overwhelmed by the experience. As beings, we are driven by emotion and each of our individual experiences are completely unique. I am the only person who can ever experience my own emotions, as much as the person next to me can only ever experience their own emotions.
I have been driven by a need to share my own experiences with others and I have come to realise how pointless that actually is. While it is awesome to have travelling companions and shared adventures the only emotional experiences I really need to nurture are my own.
4 comments:
Wow! Giant feet, formed over millions of years by natural erosion!
The rest of the view doesn't suck, either.
Awesome, Vic.
And hey, the teensy little bit of vicarious secondary emotion we get from posts like this is still wonderful. It's like a healthy version of secondary smoking.
I agree, vicarious secondary emotion is good for the soul. I guess the point I was trying to explore in this post was that I haven't been going on much of these adventures lately because I haven't been able to con anyone else into going with me. Since my emotional experience is completely different to the next person, do I really need to be accompanied by others on an adventure?
A waterfall or a sunset is just as beautiful with one person to watch it as it is with two people talking crap about it.
"What do you feel on the edge?"
I felt free! All the bad things in life turned into insignificances.
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