Re-entry | Pinnacle Newsletter #64
#64 Re-entry
It’s been a long time since my last newsletter, but I have an excellent excuse: I’ve been on the trail, hiking 832km from Atlantic to Mediterranean across the crest of the Pyrenees. Over 33 days of hiking (plus four rest days) I completed the Haute Route, which is the toughest of the three long-distance trails spanning the Pyrenees.
But this week’s newsletter isn’t about the HRP. It’s about re-entry. I’m probably about to murder this particular metaphor, so buckle up.
The longer I spend on the trail, and the less I participate in the online side of my life while I’m out there, the more jarring is my eventual return, and the more gently I must take it to avoid a crash landing. I have steered well clear of social media during both of my big long-distance trails this year. I haven’t looked at email either (mostly because I think having email access on a smartphone qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment). I’ve actively avoided the news. While I haven’t cut myself off from friends and family, I have done everything I can reasonably do to encourage immersion in what I’m doing – walking the big walk – instead of living that ghostly half-present life we all seem to live nowadays, lifted out of space and time by our many screens.
Adjusting back to slow time, the rich and peaceful disconnection I so love out on the trail, takes about two weeks for me – but it’s a gentle acclimatisation process, like slowly lowering yourself into a warm bath. Coming out of it again is a lot more brutal. Which brings me to the re-entry metaphor.
For weeks I’ve been happily drifting along in outer space with little to do but put one foot in front of the other, manage food and water supplies, write my journal, and admire the stars. Under such conditions my mind can breathe again, freed from the relentless bombardment of junk stimuli it usually has to deal with, and I can actually think properly. But re-entry means crowded streets with advertising everywhere, the dystopian catwalk of terrifying nonsense that is the 24-hour news cycle, and an inbox overflowing with rubbish. It’s the realisation that I now have to choose which clothes to wear every morning rather than the same trail-grimed clothes I’ve been wearing for weeks (a small hardship I know, but it’s one more thing to decide in a day crammed with tiny decisions). It’s logging back in to Twitter, wishing I hadn’t, posting something against my better judgement, then checking back 17 times that day for notifications. It’s the looming realisation that a return to work is almost here, and then all this will be amped up to 100 and I’ll lose the zen of the trail all the more quickly.
Friends, the heat shield is glowing red outside the cockpit, and I resemble a flaming meteor as I speed back into the online world of fast time where everything happens so much. But there’s a lot more to re-entry than overwhelm and decision fatigue, of course. This can be a wonderful time too.
It’s about waking up beside my wife for the first time in a long while. It’s making coffee the way I like it and drinking it out of a real mug; it’s a line of books arranged on a shelf in an order that makes sense only to me. Re-entry is the realisation that I can walk five minutes to a shop and buy pretty much any food I like (heck, it’s eating fresh, hot food every day). It’s loading a fresh roll of film into my Pentax MX and looking forward to autumn colours just around the corner. At its best, re-entry involves slowly picking up the threads of all the good things in my life and seeing with fresh eyes just how good they are.
As I’ve learned, if I take care not to hurry in my return to earth, this time can be sweet and full of lessons. It’s also a good time to consider things learned on the trail and make changes in order to hold on to a bit of that simplicity for a while longer.
The HRP may have changed me more than I can see right now, but the real changes will take place in the weeks ahead as I reconsider old problems with fresh insight. Re-entry can be disorienting, but it’s as much a part of the experience for me as the hike itself. I wouldn’t miss it.
In other news…
Sky Dance by John D. Burns, which I edited, is now available to order in a signed hardback special edition from Vertebrate Publishing. My copy of this very special book arrived last week. Vertebrate have done a stunning job. The book launch is next Thursday in Fort William, and I’m delighted that John asked me to speak at the launch – looking forward to it.
Also in new book news, The Big Rounds by fellow outdoor writer David Lintern is now available from Cicerone Press. There’s a review copy waiting for my attention. It looks good!
Recently published
What I’ve been reading this week – this week’s quality online reads on the outdoors, hiking, writing, editing, and mental health.
The Haute Route Pyrenees – a very brief account – don’t call it a trip report, but here is my first piece of public writing on my HRP experience, plus a few photos.
Until next time,
Alex
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