Mt.Sebastopol

Its probably about time that I (Nick) wrote something on this blog after telling Bianca repeatedly that I would 'someday'. Well today is someday...so no time like the present.

I really wanted to show some pics from when I scaled Mt.Sebastopol at the Mount Cook National Park in December. Bianca was kind enough to let me go and adventure on my own one afternoon and so I leaped at the chance to climb the 'red tarns track which basically went straight up.

Anyway so the track is kinda like one I went on during my mission. This area that you see to your right was once part of my district believe it or not and I visited here three times in total during my mission. It was nice to be back however and this time I decided to do this track. I got a little of the way up when I saw this scrawl on a seat that was obviously designed for people who 'were going to take their time'. Eloquently put I feel. When I saw it I was like 'oh man....I can do this easy'. But it was about step 400 I reckon when I began to feel the pinch in not only my legs, but my burning lungs. Talk about unfit. Whats worse is yesterday I did 4 laps of a 50 meter pool here and almost died. MAN...UNFIT...


So anyway to carry on and not be carried on with my usual riff raff of writing, I got to about 3/4 of the way up and took some photos. Not overly a good day (you can't even see Mt.Cook unfortunately) but still, the view was amazing. And the feeling was invigorating. To be honest, I'm not one of those people who get totally caught up with the way we've constructed nature (oh man, I'm totally too into my degree). But for some reason, the mountain air, the solitude and the 'risks' associated with the climb were giving me a sense of internal satisfaction.

Anyway so, however many steps later, I finally reached the top. And rather than be a total nerd who takes photos then takes off again, I decided to do a little exploration. (did you know that the average time at a landscape site of attraction for a tourist is like 6 minutes or something?).

The view from the top was extraordinary as you can see. But I can't really describe the feeling. Loneliness, excitement, solitude, beauty, clean, clear and above all, something spiritual. Again, I'm totally not one to believe the hype about 'Mountains being spiritual', but in this case there was just something. Man I sound like one of my participants from my honours year. So anyway once I got there I found this majestic little pool of water. It reflected the sky above and they good people at conservation New Zealand had placed a chair there to sit and watch. For what reason I couldn't say other than perhaps to do some meditation. So I tried, not being the overly meditative type, and it was pretty clearing. Anyway, I spent like half an hour up there, walking, thinking and even considering doing some more climbing (but then I realised I didn't want to die). I then realised that I told Bink I would be back by like 4.30pm. If I was late, she might just call the authorities to search for my body...haha. And so that was my lovely little experience. An adventure even if you want to call it that. I guess I do. This guy Georg Simmel once said that an adventure is when you forcibly pull the world into yourself and you break completely from the normal flows of everyday life. I can say that I believe this because of the experience I had on this Mountain. Yeah....first post, and its a serious one. Next time I promise to post a picture of Scarlett diving onto my chest or something like that!!