What I learnt from the lake in the mountains

It’s a crisp, Saturday morning in late February. The mist is delicately sitting over the silent Welsh fields that surround our quaint cabin. My husband and I are wrapping up in our layers and prepping the dogs for a walk in Snowdonia. We’ve packed our rucksack with hot steamy coffee, homemade banana loaf and a few other walking essentials. Hopping into the dusty Land Rover, affectionately named Betty 6, we are on our way. If you haven’t been, the Snowdonia National Park can only be described as something from a Toilkien novel with moss covered stone walls, imposing snow capped mountains, trees that have discarded their leaves in anticipation for Spring and winding roads that make you breathe in to pass an oncoming vehicle. Ahead of time, we’ve selected the Cwm-Idwal walk offering some of the most dramatic mountainous scenery at the oldest National Nature Reserve in Wales. Cwm Idwal is a beautiful, ice-sculpted bowl-shaped hollow filled with the crystal clear waters of Llyn Idwal, world famous for its rock formations and fragile plant life.

I arrive confident, prepared and excited. Am I a mountaineer? Absolutely not, but I have been on plenty hikes through the lakes, up mountains, through the countryside, around the coast, from Cornwall to Cumbria, from Derbyshire to Ulswater and back again. I know I am capable, I know I am strong, I know I can do this, I know I am fit, I know I carry the experience to do it and do it well. The ascent begins and I’m feeling confident, I can feel that delicate balance of crisp cool winter air on my face mixed with the heat omitting from the thermal layers I have on. The path is made of large laid stones creating an almost patchwork carpet of cold tiles grouted with the mornings ice. A few are slippery and I loose my balance but I regain my footing easily and carry on unshaken. I got this.

People pass by, overtaking me and my miniature pinscher Pippin. We both have little legs so this doesn’t phase me or come as much of a surprise. But as I get higher I start to slip more, more people pass by, my anxiety builds, I panic and I’m so concerned with my footing I’m missing the gorgeous scenery that surrounds me. A gentleman in a bright orange Rab jacket passed us on the way up, he stopped to say hello to the dogs and seemed pleasant. I now see him coming back the other way. Not only has he overtaken me, he has now lapped me. I’m in front of my husband and come to a gap in the path where one of the many waterfalls is rushing into the lake. There are 2 large boulders either side and I have to bridge the divide with a large step in order to keep going. As I mentioned, I have short legs so this isn’t always easy for me – add in the fact that I have on a long coat down to my knees and I have to keep an eye on Pippins safety. I offload the dog lead to my husband so it’s one less thing to think about. I take my time, breathe and step across cautiously only to discover that the rock my foot lands on is extremely slippery. I panic and fall to my knees with a foot on each rock, clutching at a boulder for balance then an audible “NO. NO. NO. NO!” comes out my mouth and I freeze. The frustration builds and all of a sudden I blurt out to my husband “This walk is a metaphor for my life! I’m struggling and everyone is overtaking, even lapping me in their progress”.

My husband, Liam, is my anchor, the calm and steady energy I turn to when I spiral. We compare our relationship to a boat, he is the rudder and I am the sail and this metaphor has never been more clear in this moment. He talks me calmly through what to do, where to place my feet and how to get back up. Once we, and both our canine companions are all safely across, with the ultimate level of composure Liam says…

“You’re being too hard on yourself. What I see is you trying your very best. You are in a situation where you feel challenged, you’ve slipped and fallen but you’ve composed yourself and gotten back up to carry on. The people who have passed you are going at their own pace, you’re going at yours. Comparing yourself to the people around you will take away your experience of this walk. Stop. Take a minute. Look around at what you’ve achieved. Look how far we have walked already. Take in the scenery. Only when you’re ready, will we start again”

This makes me think 2 things:

“My husband is so wise. How lucky am I to have him be my person?”

“He is so right”

Life is your own walk. Nobody else’s. We all have different abilities, timescales, experiences and ways of overcoming challenges. If we concentrate too much on what others are achieving around us, we sacrifice our own enjoyment of the moment we are in. We don’t take a moment to stop, look at how far we’ve come, breathe and take in the scenery. Somebody may have lapped or overtaken me but maybe they do that walk everyday, maybe they didn’t stop to look at the sun peaking through the gap in the mountains or how the sky reflected in the water making it seem a bright cyan blue. Perhaps they missed the water running under the ice. Did they see the frog spawn in a rock pool by the lake? I don’t know. But I do know that I saw them. I know I took time to look around and take in everything around me. I didn’t rush through the walk. My anxiety matched with being humbled by my surrounds allowed me to see the small things and appreciate them. I looked back just in time to see another walker power over the gap which brought me to my knees only to have his legs taken out from underneath him. “See”, my husband said, “Some people seem confident on the outside and power on but it trips them up. If you hadn’t of taken it at your own pace and tried to match his, you would have fallen. But you didn’t”.

I am a self admitted people pleaser, I have battled with my natural yearning to have people like me for as long as I could remember, although I didn’t alway have the language to know what it was. As I was straddled across those boulders and being lapped by other walkers, part of my thought process was “Dear god, all of these people are going to think I am useless and pathetic”. But as the walk went on I realised they don’t know me. They can’t hear the anxiety soundtrack playing in my head in the moment. They have no idea I’ve just quit my job because I was desperately unhappy. They don’t know that I wake up at 5:30am with anxious dreams and fear of uncomfortable conversations. They don’t know that I have had knee and wrist injuries in the past that frankly I don’t want to re-live. “All of these other people are going to think I’m fat and unfit” They can think I am unfit but they don’t know my Peloton bike stats or my ability to deadlift 120kg. They don’t know I can walk in the Derby Dales for hours on end. They’ve never seen me landscaping my garden by hand, carrying stone up and down 100 steps. They can think I’m fat but they don’t know I’ve just lost a stone. They have no idea that I’m on Slimming World to increase my chances of getting pregnant. And why should they? They are strangers to me, fleeting glances in the mountains who I will never see again. Brene Brown says: “Tell your story to those who have learnt the right to hear it”. We do not need to justify ourselves to everyone or please others because they have not yet earned that right.

So the next time you stumble, you struggle to cross the divide, slip, loose you’re footing, are worried what others think – steady yourself, breathe and remember the lessons you were taught from the lake in the mountains.