Like most of life, I'm afraid you guys are jumping in part-way through the story. Part-way through a marriage, part-way through infertility treatment, part-way through sign language lessons and even part-way through the planning stages of my first big hike.
Right now, I'm two and a half weeks away from my first big hike. I'm walking the Pennine Way in nineteen days, trying to find something out there to remind me of me. But I'm jumping in part-way through again :)
After two and a half years of heartbreak, last summer my husband and I thought we'd had a miracle. I got pregnant and the closer I got to the end of the first trimester, the more we hoped that this time we'd be just that lucky. Sadly it didn't work out, and I went from struggling to not giving up, to struggling to not meltdown. After months of this, I read a book called Wild. As a child and a teenager, when life got too much I would take to the woods and wild spaces wherever we were living and it was like a little reminder of who I was. So I went walking. Then I walked some more. Every time I went out, I found a little bit more of myself. So I started thinking: 'What would happen if I spent a few weeks walking, just me, my boots and the wilderness?' So I talked to my hubby while we were on our hols and he was remarkably supportive of the idea.
And so the Pennine hike was born.
At the moment I'm training with that pack of mine, and just trying to prepare myself for the three weeks I'll be walking and finishing in perfect time for my twenty-sixth birthday. I still feels a little like a dream, and a little like a good kind of scary, but hey I'll get there. And besides, it's hilarious watching people's expressions when I tell them I'm a deaf, female solo hiker :)
It's gonna be hard, and cold, and wet, and fun and so very very fulfilling.
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