the new improved version

on the second day of the edinburgh race, A asked why i'd joined wilderness. we were walking uphill, not treacherously, but possibly the most demanding part of our relatively simple route. i'd a politically correct answer at the ready. in a nutshell: grew up in a city, never had the chance to explore the outdoors, figured i should make the most of my time in the uk, started with the short country walk, realised it wasn't all that bad and took it incrementally from there. ok, so not quite "a nutshell". the real reason only just came to me after reading the latest modern love offering on the new york times.

i started going outdoors because of the manfriend, something i'm slow to acknowledge because it makes me feel weak, approval-craving and overly submissive.

those in the know appreciate that kai takes "action man" to a new level. in addition to his respectable day job, he's thrived in the army, graduating top of his officer corps and enjoying accelerated promotion to captain while still in his mid-20s. mind you, this is at least a decade ahead of schedule, and he hadn't even signed on as an army regular. throw him in the wild and he's survival personified. unfortunately, or not, his relaxed gungho to outdoor activities saw us going on holidays wayyy out of my comfort zone. everything that could be climbed (waterfalls in tioman, waterfalls in iceland, glaciers in iceland, volcanoes in santorini, the samaria gorge in crete, the machu picchu in peru...) he'd want to climb and i played the compliant companion with great reluctance.

my love-hate relationship (really fond of kai, hate the outdoors) escalated and i wanted so much to share his interests, but couldn't. then i started medsch and right there at freshers' fayre was the wildernessmedics booth, advertising medical teaching (yay!) and the chance to save lives (double yay!) outdoors (hmmm). interestingg... 

so off i went to the introductory walk, followed in quick succession by weekends away and sometime between the double rainbows over hexham and bathing out of a tiny teapot in swaledale, i was hooked. overcoming that mental barrier of the fear of physical exhaustion was hard, something i attribute to my abnormally active self-preservation instinct. once that was dealt with, however, i realised i really enjoyed walking uphill. this new-found enthusiasm snowballed into a generally affinity for the outdoors, much to kai's delight.

having assuaged my conscience that i'm doing the outdoors out of my own volition, and on my terms, takes away the edge of bitter resentment. guess i'm no longer entertaining the occasional thought of shoving kai off the mountain! so my cheesy take home message is: change must come from within. there you go, a bit of relationship101 on this sunny winter morning.

thanks for reading. non-mushy posting will resume shortly.