It’s six pm on a rainy Saturday in January and I’m driving alone up Mount Seymour in the dark. My heater is on full blast but even so my windows keep fogging up. My windshield wipers fight furiously against the rain that turns to wet snow as I drive higher.
When I’d signed up for this event, I thought a full moon hike sounded like a lovely, romantic idea. It was my first outing with a hiking group I’d dared myself to join – an antidote to scrolling through dating apps or missing the ex who had recently broken my heart.
Immediately after signing up, panic washed over me. Willingly going out with a group of strangers is as far out of my comfort zone as, I don’t know, kissing an octopus.
But I knew I needed something different. My life as a single mom in the suburbs felt small, limited, and I was starting to feel small with it.
So I cobbled together a hiking outfit, packed a backpack with the things I thought I might need, and said yes.
In the weeks leading up to the hike my anxiety came in waves. I almost cancelled a dozen times. I worried about pretty much everything – would my raincoat look cute? Would the other hikers be boring? What if I was stuck for hours with annoying people? What if they thought I was boring? I scrolled through their tiny photos looking for clues of compatibility.
I hadn’t even thought to consider practical things like, for example, the weather.
So of course, the morning of the hike dawned rainy. With that Vancouver winter rain, ceaseless and daunting. It just kept coming down.
From my couch I alternated between refreshing the weather report and refreshing the event listing. As the day went on, the attendee list dropped from 12 to 8 to 6. I wondered if the hike would be cancelled, if I should pull out.
The more it seemed like it might not happen, the more I realized I really wanted it to.
“Fuck it,” I said, my backpack into the trunk.
As I pull into the parking lot, there might as well not be a parking lot – it’s just a wall of fog. Doubt crowds my mind. Am I the only one stupid enough to actually show up? Why did I think this was a good idea?
Finally, near the end of the lot I spot another vehicle. I pull up beside it and roll down my window. “I’m here for the full moon hike?” I say, cautiously, ridiculously, as wet snow pelts down.
Three women climb out of the car. One, a few years older than me approaches with a welcoming smile and an outstretched hand. Cute braids stick out from under her toque. I like her already.
“I’m Linda,” she says. “This is Joy, that’s Gina.” I recognized them from the photos, but here they were for real, organizing things in their backpacks, pulling on layers.
“You’ve got your ten essentials?” she asks.
I smile and nod like I know what that means.
I feel like such a fraud. Not knowing what to wear, I wore everything. A long sleeve shirt covered by a fleece covered by a down jacket with a raincoat over top.
I try to look like I know what I’m doing. I pull my Value Village rainpaints from the trunk and layer them over my sweatpants.
These women seem effortlessly technical – they have those backpacks with the water hoses to drink from, and Gortex jackets, and carabiners that rattle from their bags like Christmas ornaments. I guess it takes a certain kind of person to come out in these conditions.
I slide my feet into my old hiking boots, tighten the laces over two pairs of socks.
We throw our backpacks on, adjust our headlamps, and head out into the dark night. For awhile there’s nothing but the crunch of our feet on the snow and the wind whistling through the tall trees.
They’ve all met before, chat easily together, and I feel the familiar self-consciousness creep over me. Do I have anything to say?
A little way up the trail, we stop to put our microspikes on over our boots for traction. I pull mine out – cheap ones I bought on Amazon, with little grippy dots. Theirs have big metal teeth. Where they walk, I slide.
Have I mentioned that this is my first hike in months, if not years? That in all of my excitement to get out of my comfort zone and have an adventure, I forgot I’d be lugging my body along with me? You know that expression ‘your eyes were bigger than your stomach”, when you put more food on your plate than you can eat?
This was that, but adventure was the food and the limit was my neglected muscles.
Before long I am huffing and puffing, sweat pouring down inside my many layers.
When they ask about me, it dawns on me that I’m meeting people who didn’t know me before I came out. People who haven’t witnessed my transition from being partnered with a man to becoming comfortable as a queer woman.
I’ve gotten used to defining myself by what I felt I’d failed at – a marriage, keeping my family together.
But here, and now, I can be whoever I want.
The further we climb, the easier conversation flows. One of the women just got back from a trip to to Peru and tells us about her hikes there. I talk about the time I spent living in Chiang Mai in my twenties, and as I do memories come rushing back. Not just memories of tuktuks and pad thai, but of who I was then, independent, confident, curious.
A woman with a taste for adventure.
Near the top we stop in a sheltered valley to discuss our options. We’d planned to climb to Pump Peak to have our snack at the viewpoint. The snow is coming down hard now and visibility is next to nothing. Maybe we should turn back. “But we’re here,” I say, surprising even myself. “Let’s go for it.”
So the four of us, like trekkers on the ascent to Mount Everest, set off up the icy bank for the climb towards the peak. There’s no path, just a sheet of white and shadow under the beam of our headlamps. We are comical, occasionally losing our balance and knocking each other over as we slip backwards.
Finally we make it. The wind whips around us and we search in all directions for a glimpse of the elusive moon.
Instead, it’s almost as though the clouds thicken – we howl with laughter at this epic failure.
I pull out my granola bar, thinking that will suffice as a hiking snack. Not with these ladies. Joy whips out a stove and manages to light it in spite of the wind and rain. She finds her pot and starts cooking gnocchi, of all things. Linda makes hot chocolate and someone produces a bottle of whiskey. Gina lays a tarp on the snow for us to sit on.
I feel like a kid, giddy with the novelty, the make-your-own-fun of it.
This is so much better than a mediocre first date on Commerical drive.
I’ll be honest – originally I joined the group because thought I might meet a woman.
Instead, I met women. Strong, independent women who climb mountains in the dark for fun. Women who see terrible weather not as a reason to stay home, but as part of the adventure.
On the way back down, certain sections of the trail are perfect for sliding and so we do – our feet up in the air like kids. Our screams and laughter echo across the valley, up to the dark sky.
Driving home that night, I am soaked, exhausted, grinning and eager for more.
The moon never appeared that night.
But I felt something else come into view: a version of myself that was still growing, still exploring, still willing to say yes to things that scared me. That night, somewhere between the parking lot and the summit, something had shifted.
For the first time in a long time, my life felt bigger than the boundaries I’d been living inside.
A few months later we returned to Pump Peak for the Strawberry Moon – a larger group this time, the fairweather hikers – and we were treated to a spectacular moonrise over the mountains. This time I brought my newly purchased hiking stove, my backpack with a waterhose. This time I was the one greeting newcomers with a smile and an outstretched hand.
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