The older I become, the more ambivalent I get about celebrating my birthday.
No, it's not necessarily the increasing number - though that's an obvious part of it. It's also confronting all the lofty, unarticulated and half-subconscious expectations about the achievements I thought I would have trailing sunnily in my wake by now. You know - the enviable success in a globe-trotting career making meaningful contributions to the world around me, the regular holiday retreats to amazing parts of the world, the holiday home in the country with the pool and stables and vineyard... Yes, I exaggerate, but I'm sure you know what I mean.
Birthdays have become a day for me to confront unmet ideas, ideals and expectations between what is, what has been, what could have been and what should have been... Ambitions which got snuffed or dialled down dramatically, the disquiet of the mismatch between the age you feel on the inside and how life is being etched onto your face... There's not enough celebrating of achievements or of enjoying the journey so far, and definitely not enough looking forward to all the good things still to come.
To force a counterpoint, for my most recent birthday, we did a sunrise bushwalk up a mountain that's part of a 24-million-year old caldera.
Let me say that again because I'm still trying to get it to sink in.
A 24-million year old caldera.
Now if this wasn't going to provide me with a bit of perspective about age, nothing would!
As if 24 million years wasn't enough of a mind-bending number to come to terms with, the caldera is also part of the Gondwana Rainforests - which means it's still home to species which would have existed during the time of the ancient Gondwana supercontinent (some 500 million years ago).
I can't even begin to grasp the vastness of this passing of time. It's even more amazing to try and comprehend that I was able to walk through a world with roots and experiences so ancient, they disappear into mists and dreams beyond beginnings.
Birthdays? Bah birthdays and bah unhelpful expectations. Bring them out and watch them evaporate into the mists, breaths and dreams that are part of everything and part of all of us.
The whole caldera is quite amazing, so for those of you who want to google, here are the broad geographical details.
The region is called the Scenic Rim, in south-east Queensland. It's about 1.5 hours south of the main Queensland city of Brisbane, and it was less than an hour from where we live. We walked the track up to the Mt Cordeaux peak, known as Niamboyoo by the local Aboriginal Peoples.
Mt Cordeaux is 1,135 metres high, and it's part of the Main Range mountain range, a collection of wondrously-shaped peaks, cliffs and escarpments. The mountains gather in a smiling curve (the remnants of a volcano, perhaps?) and their varied peaks reminded me warmly of the unique outlines of Mauritius' mountains (also a volcanic island - so perhaps it's not that surprising that I would want to draw broad parallels in memory and experience).
The Main Range is also part of the broader Great Dividing Range which pretty much runs the full length of the east coast of Australia, and of which the Blue Mountains (where we used to live) are also a part.
The walk was surprisingly... not as difficult as I anticipated.
It was a 6.8 kilometre, 3-hour return walk. The track was mostly level, with a few steps in places, some gentle gradients, and a few muddy sections where we had to tread carefully (especially me because I tackled the walk in my everyday sneakers). In any case, I didn't ache the next day, which surprised me very much, seeing as my fitness workouts consist of walking my Indi-Girl dog along flat streets for about 30 minutes a day. But maybe I was subconsciously expecting a Blue Mountains-type walk, where walks can include multiple 60-degree inclines, with 30 - mostly (horribly) uneven - steps at a time! So yes, it felt relatively easy.
There are 3 or 4 other walks and circuits around and up to the Mt Cordeaux peak that have been carved out, some with higher levels of difficulty. The different paths intersect at particular points and while these are usually signposted, me and my rotten sense of direction would say they're not signposted well enough.
We started up just as light was starting to run into the world. We still needed a torch for the first maybe kilometre or so, but we got to the first lookout just in time to see the sun blinking as it peered sleepily through the orange and lemon-hued mists around it.
Maybe it took us longer than three hours, but that was because it was important to stop, to look around, to look up, up, up to the tallest trees touching the sky, to see complex canopies, to drink in vast trunks textured with moss, to breathe in mixes of fresh air and loamy soil, to hear a thousand invisible birds and other creatures rustling out of sight, and to realise afresh the wondrousness of the world we were so lucky to have the opportunity to experience.
We took a flask, milk powder and honey so we could have a cup of tea - which we did - and which tasted amazing after our 3am start.
And then Hubs surprised me with birthday cake too! Chocolate cake - that he had made himself 💖
Chocolate cake eaten on top of the world tastes pretty damned good!
I took lots of photos. Ready? 😁
Dawn skies
Canopies
Amazing, amazing views
Close-ups of random details
So if you're about to hit an age bracket that feels impossible - like my mid-40s ("how did I get to be this age? I still feel like I'm in my early 30s!" and so on) - there's nothing like strolling through a 24-million year old caldera to provide some beautiful perspective!
PS. if you're like me and didn't know the difference between a volcanic caldera and a crater, this might help.
Du fond du coeur x
Comments
Post a Comment