Day 8 Kinlochleven to Fort William last day…seeing through the eyes of a child.

Wow 8 days sped by. We commented that it felt more like 4-5 days. And I think yesterday was super tough on me. After 7 days of fairly rough terrain we were looking forward to the walk on our last day. We even thought we would have it easy because we sent our packs ahead. The weather had other ideas.

Weather report: we started out climbing 2.5kms/1.5 miles up. When we reached the top we had climbed approximately 265 meters/875 feet. And it was raining. (I feel like i sound like my parents when they said they walked to school in 2 feet of snow uphill both ways 😂) I do believe the rain was worse today. We had 3 hours of relentless cold rain and heavy wind. We were going between two mountains so the wind was fierce.

We were thoroughly soaked to the bone. Noël commented that he didn’t want to hear anyone say they enjoyed today’s walk. I commented that different people enjoy different things. He wasn’t buying it. It was very cold and we were soaked through two layers of clothing. Every step we took was in water. And then I started to laugh. Not a crazy laugh but a joyful, “oh well here we are we can be miserable or make the most of it” laugh.

In my coaching practice I use a program called Positive Intelligence* created by Shirzad Chamine. One of the pieces of this program is learning to be kind to yourself. Not letting the judge beat you up. During the program you find a childhood picture of yourself. How would you talk to this child? And through practice you learn to talk to yourself the way you would that child with compassion and love. Another piece of the program is curiosity. Before passing judgement on anything get curious: ask questions, try to understand.

So back to my laughter. I got curious about how my 5 year old self would view our experience. What would 5 year old Debbie be thinking and feeling??!! And with that I started smiling and laughing. I was less concerned about the cold and wet. I splashed through the streams with a bit more enthusiasm. And hit every puddle.

I shared with Noël my new perspective and asked “what would 5 year old or 8 year old Noël think?” He responded “he would want to go home out of the wind and cold and get warm!” I laughed. And said, “no that’s what 58 year old Noël wants to do. I have heard about your childhood adventures and exploits, you would be loving this!”

And with that our attitudes changed and we chatted and laughed. He even responded to my comment about “oh no not another hill,” with “oh come on it will be fun!!”

The first half of the day with the rain and wind prevented us taking any photos. But we tried to make up for it the second half of the day. It was a long walk. It wasn’t easy. It was challenging. And it was good. Being a bit more playful and shifting our attitudes really did change things up.

We got to town, checked in, ate dinner and hoped to meet up with everyone we had walked with but different dinner schedules made that impossible. I was so pooped I was in bed by 8:30 and sound asleep by 9 just like my 5 year old self. 😂😂😂 but there was a beautiful moon.