The Pants of Perspective: One Woman's 3,000 Kilometre Running Adventure through the Wilds of New Zealand

by Anna McNuff

The problem at its most basic level was that I wanted to do this thing so very badly, but I was afraid. Afraid to fail. Afraid that if I worked hard for it, I wouldn’t necessarily get what I wanted.

I was afraid I wouldn’t finish, and that made me too afraid to start.

I’d inspected my pee as I performed the ladylike ‘danger squat’ in the forest that morning, and observed that it was the colour of Calpol, and Calpol is never a good shade for one’s pee to be.

The reality of the situation is a mild (and likely temporary) inconvenience. The mental picture you paint in the 3 minutes which follows is, in contrast, a full life disaster.

The last thought that passed through my mind was a vow: tomorrow would not get to me like today had. Tomorrow I would be stronger than I had been today.

I decided that this wasn’t a productive train of thought, and so shifted my focus solely to where my next handhold would be. I was absolutely petrified, but I needed to keep a lid on it. Letting fear control you is the sure-fire way to enter into disaster.

For some reason, actually admitting to myself when something felt crap always seemed to help.

To give the whole of yourself, to choose to show someone every possible part of yourself, only to have them say, after five years together, ‘thanks, but no thanks,’ is the deepest cut of all.

Cities, I had realised, offer us permission to live in our own shells. Millions of people, cocooned inside their own mind, their car, their office, moving from one place to another, not looking, not observing, not breathing in, not stopping. In reality, there were a lot of similarities between the trail and a huge city, such as London or Auckland. You can be very lonely in a city, surrounded by people, so perhaps it is better to be lonely in the bush: in the bush, at least, the loneliness makes sense.

I felt I could live anywhere, so long as I was surrounded by love and filled with a sense of purpose.

‘Doing a one eighty is when you turn yourself a full one hundred and eighty degrees and take another look at the situation. You realise there must be another way to see things. Normally, a better way. As soon as you “do the one eighty” life becomes a lot more fun.’