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

by Anna McNuff

‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’.

Instead, I resolved that I would hobble on, and see how far I could make it. If it was really that bad I could hobble back on myself the next day. That way, even if I wound up moving backwards, at least I had tried to move forwards first. That seemed about as good a philosophy as any for life, let alone ankle injuries. I tested out the newly supported ankle-like structure and found it to be pretty solid. Possibly a little too solid and I couldn’t be entirely sure that my toes were getting any blood at all. Still, that ankle was going nowhere, and what was a little loss in circulation if I could save any further damage? For the first time in two months I set off with an intention to walk for a few

From the rubble of a once happily-ever-after relationship you are forced to reconstruct what it means to be you. To rediscover what it is that you love so much about yourself that it doesn’t matter if someone else doesn’t love that bit too. Because you love you, and that is enough. That’s what adventure had allowed me to do in the past five years, and perhaps, just perhaps, I was ready to let someone in again.

‘Hi Anna, The kids and teachers have decided to name the right foot ‘Live’ and the left foot ‘Life’! Lynfa’ I couldn’t think of a better name for the final pair – the kids had nailed it.

‘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.’ I

I could go no further. Physically it was impossible, and to know that brought a huge wave of relief. For someone who was so hard on themselves, who moved through life wondering whether they could perhaps ‘be’ something a little more than they were – there was nothing more I could be in that moment. Nothing more I wished to be. No one else on the planet I would rather be. There was no striving. No belief that the grass was greener. No envy, jealousy, no discontent, no ungratefulness. It was like nothing else I had ever experienced before. It wasn’t elation. Nor joy. In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure what the emotion was. And then I recognised it. It was contentment. And with every inhalation it nourished me. All that mattered in the world, mattered now. For those 5 minutes staring out from the lighthouse at Cape Reinga, I was enough.

For six months I dreamt only of that finish line. Of what that would feel like. I’d well up even imagining the day I could finally stop running, but when I got there I found that I wasn’t overwhelmed with a sense of elation, or of achievement. Instead, I experienced that deep sense of contentment and I discovered that contentment is better than any form of ecstasy. Elation excites; contentment nourishes. It is the rarest feeling

The trail took me right to the jagged edges of what I believed I was capable of, and it will take me some time before I want to go to those edges again, but return I will, because I know that when the cobwebs cling to the dusty pages of this tale, all of the hardships will fall away. All I will know is that I have placed myself in a state most fragile, so that I might see the world at its most beautiful, and its people at their most kind. All I will know is that I have played an irreplaceable part in a great adventure, and that I have truly lived.