'The Hike' - Chapter Nine - Getting Back on the Top

Day 9:

I woke up early, fresh as a daisy. I made myself a quick coffee and my morning powder line, and I was ready to go. As I was packing my stuff and moving the barricade of benches back to their places, I realized that I had survived another night in the middle of nowhere. I felt happy and optimistic—right until I looked at how much I needed to climb back to be where I was before the storm.

I started walking in that direction, and the path split in two. One would take me back to where I came from—back, but up there. The other was an imaginative shortcut through the mountain that I thought would save me some hours on the long way to the top. The real one had signs and everything I needed not to get lost and die. Mine, on the other hand, was mainly formed by positive thinking and laziness.

I took the one I created and went with it, puffing another cigarette that almost suffocated me. What is up with cigarettes and fresh air? They seem even tastier up in the mountains. While struggling to get back on track, I was constantly looking over to see if I was close to the marked road I had left behind—just to keep track of my safety in case something happened. I saw it and continued straight in the other direction, not realizing the irony of that back then.

I approached a small forest on one of the hills and went in, looking around with some caution. While walking on that dry hill with small trees, I heard something. I looked around and saw some horse shit here and there, and I realized that the noise couldn't be a horse. It sounded more like growling—aggressive and protective—coming from the short bushes. My mind immediately went to the bear. This bear has nothing better to do than follow me around the Balkans, right?

Desperately trying to relax, my muscles got magnetized. I felt a drop, signaling how serious the situation was becoming, and my humor flew away quickly, leaving me frozen in place, waiting to be attacked. I took a step back, then another, then another. Little by little, I found myself back in the small dry forest behind me. The feeling of pre-diarrhea was just signaling that I had to move as fast as I could, so I found my strength and went straight up until I escaped the haunting, frightening trees.

The view in front of me gave me something to think about. First, I saw that I was on top of a hill, and from here, in every direction, I had to go down before climbing up again. Second, I saw that the path I took was full of similar hills I had never imagined—now standing before me and my goal. Third, going back to the safety of the road was too extreme, and even if I wanted to, I would have to go back through the place where that noise scared the shit out of me.

I chose the hard way.

Hill after hill, hour after hour, I finally reached the top of the mountain. Even when I saw the signs from afar, I was celebrating my escape from the early demise I had almost put myself into. The whole time I had been climbing up and up, and when the fear finally released its grip, my eyes opened wildly, and I saw the mesmerizing mountains and forests stretching in every direction. It was majestic.

With my new vision, I was able to look deep inside myself and see some patterns in my life—ones I had been playing on repeat. We are so blind to the repetitive cycles we run into until we step outside of them, and then, after a while, we jump right back in like we never learned the lesson before.

Since my early years, when my parents separated—when neither of them had the courage, knowledge, or will to talk to me about my signals of being different, of being gay—I started taking the shortcut. No one took me aside and told me, There are no shortcuts in life, young one. So whenever I could skip a stair, I jumped. Whenever I thought I could cut some distance, I took the shorter path. And who wouldn't? Sometimes, even though we don’t see the big picture and how it will affect us on the way up in life, we get this quick satisfaction—like we’re the smart ones for skipping another step to avoid the hard work. Little do we know, we are just setting ourselves up for an even harder climb.

I really wish I had someone who showed me this.

My parents didn’t take shortcuts in anything. They are smart and hardworking people, but they were almost nonexistent in my life. I wish I had someone who showed me those lessons, and I wish I had followed the road, because the shortcut made my experience vivid, yeah—but too dangerous to let me breathe and enjoy it.

Repeating my mistake again and again to the point of what the fuck is my specialty. You have to research the path ahead. You have to make decisions based on information. You have to call ahead of your arrival to check if there’s a place, food, or even a person in the hut. You have to take the road with signs. And if you get lost, return to the last time you saw those signs and look for another way.

Those are lessons of the mountain that make your journey safer, easier, and uplifting.

As soon as I gathered myself from those realizations and the majestic view stretching across the horizon, I continued with my journey. Momina Polyana was close, but to reach the hut, I was supposed to go down on the other side of the mountain. It was much closer than the next stop, but the idea of going down and having to climb up again the next day just pushed me to my limit. So I decided to skip this safe place and try to reach the next one.

Back then, the tattered Kom-Emine guidebook I had received from an ex-colleague, Radi, was falling apart from overuse. I had flipped through its pages so many times that they were barely holding together. But on this day, whether it was the rush or my stupidity—or both—I didn’t research properly. I failed to realize that the next hut was much lower than Momina Polyana. I never learn.

Iliya Badev

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