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ELEMENTAL


PINING FOR ADVENTURE. PHOTO: KAYDI PYETTE


No Pain, No Gain BY KAYDI PYETTE


There was one moment in each of my fa- vorite trips where I stopped and thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing here?” It’s happened on a portage that climbed and climbed, during a week of rain that re- sulted in trench foot, when barely making headway in 120-kilometer-an-hour winds, or, quite literally, just being a stranger in a strange land. It’s that undeniable, holy- shit-I’m-in-over-my-head moment of total discomfort. Not to be confused with the sickening lurch of a backcountry, “Uh oh.” On every trip that’s meant something


to me—really meant something—there’s always a moment where I stepped so far outside my comfort zone that a panicky, almost painful


sensation entered my


chest. Hours of pushing an 80-pound bike weighed down with camping gear up a steep Cape Breton road, only to crest it, enjoy a short-lived, white-knuckle 70-kilometer-an-hour descent and do it all again. A 30-kilometer day in a week-


80 SPRING 2013


long hike through Torres del Paine, where, only two-thirds of the way there by late afternoon, I threw off my pack, fell onto my back and raised swollen feet to the sky in absolution. Standing in the Wabakimi landscape I’d been tracing on a map in my living room for months, watching the floatplane disappear over the horizon. These adventures—river tripping in the


Yukon, cycling the Cabot trail or traveling solo in Patagonia—all share something in common. A healthy dose of discomfort. Challenge. Struggle. I’m addicted to that struggle. I love it.


Afterwards, of course. I blame it on Outward Bound. At 14 I


paddled off on a 21-day wilderness ex- pedition. My eagerness to be fearless and to earn a senior high school credit quickly turned to uncertainty, then re- gret, at the realization that most of my 13 fellow travelers were not there by choice, but had been pushed by anxious


parents hoping to set them straight. I’d never been backcountry camping


before. The serenity of isolation was often ruined by the shrill giggles of my compan- ions and the cacophony of a million mos- quitoes. The solo adventure—24 hours alone—was bliss. Idling away daylight hours on my small island left me with a renewed sense of peace and much-needed resolve. Less comfortable was the night spent alone when every creaking branch was the Blair Witch. On the bright arrival of dawn, all wor-


ries were long forgotten and a sense of ac- complishment filled me instead. It’s this feeling, more than any other, that has per- meated my love of adventure ever since. If it were easy, there’d be no need to get out of my armchair. It’s the daunting feeling pre- experience and the sense of achievement af- terwards that keeps my feet itching, want- ing more, time and time again.


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