I’m going back to The Overland Track!
This is where all you nervous-types frown and dig for biblical adages — ‘pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall’ and maybe even ‘as a dog that returneth to his vomit, so a fool repeateth his folly’ which I may have misquoted slightly on purpose. Did I mention, I’m going back to the Overland Track? Recent followers of this most excellent blog may have missed my nail biting account of my solo adventure on the wittily-dubbed ‘Underwater Track’ in June 2016, which I link here (Day One) for your amusement. See, who’s the one-trick pony now! I write bad poetry AND walk alone in alpine wildernesses! The point I’m trying to make, though, is that I am going back! To the Overland Track! Again!!
To be fair, I did warn you. When you get to the post detailing my sodden hijinks on Day Five, you’ll read that I’d decided the trip would be ‘a wet-weather reconnaissance of the OLT ahead of a return trip in better conditions‘ unquote. So my planned return to the Apple Isle in June 2018 is just that — planned — and not some midlife rush of blood to the head. I have no need to climb Mt Ossa in a blizzard, strip naked, beat my chest and howl at the storm in the face of my fiftieth year on this planet. Although I might.
So I am now fully in the throes of preparing for the trip. I’ve always said prepping is often as much fun as the bushwalking itself. I can whet my appetite with recent YouTubery about the OLT, get to lay out all my bushwalking kit in various iterations, and make lots of lists. I love lists. And then came the inevitable, ‘Lucky you’ve already got everything you need and don’t have to buy any more camping gear at all, hey! No, not a single thing!’ my wife says brightly. Dear woman, one does not simply walk the Overland Track in old Goretex.
Truth be told, I probably don’t need anything new. I’d like to try dehydrating my own meals now that I’m a staunch vegan vegetarian, in which case the only thing I could justify buying is one of those machines that vacuum-seals the food bags — although I’m a little reluctant to get one because it makes me look like a drug-dealer. All those baggies of green vegetable matter in my backpack at Customs: ‘Kale canola? Sure it is.’ I can just imagine, though I doubt anyone will mistake me for a dealer once I’m on the track. An addict, perhaps, of wide-open spaces where you can see to the edge of the world, alternating with the quiet beneath the canopy of ancient trees where your heartbeat falls into sync with your footfalls and you can almost feel the grain of glacial rock through the carbide tip of your walking pole.
I’m going back to the Overland Track. But I won’t be walking it alone this time.
