Deliberations by the Fairy Pools
NC500 Solo 2021 Phase 2.1: My wetsuit is in a precarious position...
Why do people so often return from travels feeling like a different person?
The answer is not nearly quite as simple as having “a few days off the grind.” Of course a reset from cumulative stressors helps, but what is it about being in a different environment that specifically facilitates this?
Travelling often works not just because a tropical beach changes our lives (though I know some that would do a pretty good job), but because it allows us to explore and express ourselves free from the routines we’ve become habituated to. This separation from the norm allows us to re-evaluate the relationships we hold with both ourselves, others, and to the world around us.
It reinforces the parts of us that still feel real, while offering us an opportunity to shed the outgrown parts of ourselves that no longer feel like us anymore.
We can let go of the old, and welcome in the new.
NC500 Solo 2021 Phase 2.1, August 2021: The Fairy Pools
I pulled into the car park for the Fairy Pools in the South-West of Skye, ready for some zesty relaxation. Arriving just as most visitors were leaving for the day, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to see the pools in relative peace for the sunset and sunrise.
The bathrooms had just closed for the evening, leaving me in a predicament equal parts ridiculous and precarious. In an extremely haphazard makeshift changing area next to my car, I was busy wrangling myself into my (already too tight, if I’m honest) wetsuit—a wetsuit in summer, you cry? I’m in Scotland remember, readers, with little-to-no Wim Hof stoicism for the cold waters at that point.
This wetsuit was a ticking time-bomb with a foreboding tear, teetering on the edge of expanding to a catastrophic rip in magnitudes of terminal prognosis. In struggling to get (the damned) wetsuit on, there was the trifecta of stress, suction problems, and the promise of a ruthless fabric apocalypse if my legs were to get any bigger. There was a very real threat of gracing the car park with an unintentional performance if it were to give way for real. I’m all for normalising normal nude bodies, but there were still people around in the car-park, and having my trip stopped short due to unintentional flashing would have been a vibe killer, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.
Just as I’d got the wetsuit issue under relative control and was setting off towards the pools to see the sunset, a group of hikers around my age scrambled out of their van nearby; Unlike the punters already finished with their day getting ready to leave, they were also gearing up to hike.
I found myself in a crossroads moment.
It would have been so easy to stick to my original solo plan, safe within the predictability of being in my own company. I knew me; I liked me. Why throw my neat and secure plan out for the switch-up of joining strangers? My anxious ruminations continued.
Seasoned veterans in the nomadic travel community may not have found the problem with joining these people, but habituation made it so easy and comfortable to stay in my own bubble. But after the reflections that morning of loneliness and connection, I knew I’d regret not trying.
So I jogged after them and asked if they’d like to walk together.
They said yes.
Instagram Vs Reality
The Fairy Pools were nowhere near the over-saturated vivid aqua blue depicted in the heavily edited images that google will have you believe. Maybe in some lights. Yet somehow, the more realistic pools were so much more beautiful. And a lovely hike too.
The wetsuit tear held on to fight another day (just).
As the hazy day drifted into twilight, we continued the night onwards to pitch our tents together on the beach. It was an evening of communal cooking, beers, and strolling the shore in the moonlight.
A near-perfect night.
Why the Resistance?
Sticking to my idea of a ‘safe plan’ helped me feel momentarily secure and in control; it also meant I didn’t have to deal with anything unpredictable—but these are only pseudo-securities at best. And what you find on the other side can be pretty cool.
But people rarely talk about the necessary side-effect of making positive constructive choices that are different from the norm.
This side-effect is hard to accept.
When we make empowering decisions for ourselves and change patterns that no longer work for us and feel the positive results, it means we realise how much we’ve missed out on, and consequently, it means grieving that loss. Making a move out of our comfort zone requires us to face the past we wished we’d had: the things we deserved but didn’t pursue, or the things that could have happened if only we’d been braver.
It means being confronted quite unmistakably with regret.
Because when I spent that evening with the group camping, chatting nonsense around the fire, I absolutely cursed myself for not doing similar things before. And I had to tolerate and process that rude, uncomfortable realisation.
There’s no way around processing this sadness when our life begins to change, and it’s a very hard thing to do.
It’s also the only way to truly move forward with clarity and intention.