There are many things I should have done before leaving.
Setting up my tent was one of them.
It’s 9:30pm. I’m alone on a trailhead in the dark, headtorch on, wrestling with a tent that was made especially for me — which is wonderful — and rushed — which is less wonderful. Some of the cords are short. The loops are tied so tightly I can’t get the pegs through them. I’m making adjustments I have no framework for, with the confidence of someone who is absolutely winging it and has committed fully to that strategy.
I definitely made some lucky errors. The kind where you step back, tilt your head, and decide whatever just happened was completely intentional.
Lesson learned. Filed under: should have done this in the driveway.
Bear Schmare (She Says, Clutching The Bear Spray)
My food is far, far away. As instructed. Because: bears.
The taxi driver on the way out here was incredibly helpful. Super detailed. Really committed to sharing every bear story he had ever heard, seen, or imagined — right up until the moment he dropped me off at the trailhead. Alone. In the dark. To go set up a tent for the first time.
His final words? “There’s no way I’d be doing this”.
GREAT CHAT MATE.
I’ve done everything I was told to do. Food is in the canister, canister is under a tree somewhere out there. I’m glad it’s a canister situation and not a hang-your-food-from-a-tree situation — that particular knot exercise at 9:30pm in bear country doesn’t bear thinking about. (#sorrynotsorry, it was right there.)
The protocol, as I understand it: make lots of noise, look big and tough, they’ll run away. And if not — bear spray, immediately. I’ll be honest, I’ll probably have the bear spray in my hand regardless of proximity for the foreseeable future. A rustling leaf. A distant owl. My own breathing. SPRAY FIRST. IDENTIFY LATER.
“In every walk with nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” — John Muir
John Muir did not specify whether this applied to bears. I’m choosing to believe it does and that what I’m receiving is character.
Give it a couple of months and I’ll be bear schmare. Right now I am operating at full bear awareness, maximum bear alertness, and approximately zero bear experience.
The Tent You Can’t Actually See
Here’s the thing about the new tent. It’s camo. Custom made, beautiful, and I’ve been genuinely excited about it for ages — I’m trialing it, which makes me feel very official and only slightly like a walking advertisement for disappearing into the wilderness.
It is also, as I discovered walking back from hiding the food canister, completely invisible in the dark. Torch on. Looking directly at where I left it. Nothing. My shelter had simply ceased to exist visually — like the moment in Home Alone when Kevin realises the house is empty, except in reverse, and significantly colder.
I’ve left one of the doors open so I’ll at least see a torch if someone’s night hiking through. Otherwise they’ll walk straight into me, I’ll assume bear, deploy spray immediately, and we’ll both spend a week on a trailhead in the wilderness, crying, with burning eyes, deeply regretting our respective life choices.
The tent is also pitched directly across the trailhead. Which I feel completely fine about.
Wombat would have found this whole situation deeply undignified. He has standards. I, apparently, do not.
The Part Where It Gets A Bit Real
Now that the food is somewhere else and I’m safely inside my invisible tent — I’m hungry. So that’s a new dimension to navigate. I need to build what I can only describe as a completely new psychological relationship with food being somewhere other than next to me at all times. The food is away from you. The food is safe. You will find the food in the morning. The food is not thinking about you.
This is fine.
I’m excited to be back. Genuinely, deeply excited. This new era has been a long time coming and I am ready for it — the trail, the miles, all of it.
But I don’t want to go to sleep yet. Not because of the bears.
Because I know I’m going to get lonely, and tonight is the first night of knowing it, and that’s its own thing to sit with for a while.
That’s what you lot are for though. So stay close.
Lucy + Wombat 👩🌾🐶
If you want to follow along properly — bears, invisible tents, questionable life decisions and all — join Entangled. It’s my inner circle and it’s where the real story lives. Or you can just shout me a warm-up-coffee or a self-pity-hot-chocolate to keep me moving.
