
Hikefulness – Everything is connected
“Spending several days hiking with only a pack on our backs teaches us to be human, to love, to give, to thrive, to survive and to connect. In return, nature takes care of us.” – Didier
Hikefulness is not a word; it is a flow and experience for the senses and soul.
Every hiker knows the feeling of waking up to the kookaburra at sunrise. Stepping outside your tent, the brisk cold air showers you. As the sun rises through the leaves, which glow like gold, the smell of rain, how perfect it feels on your skin.
It’s that feeling when you have reached the campsite: exhausted and all-powerful at the same time. Everything you eat on the trail tastes amazing: the warm campfire, the crackling hardwood in the bright orange flames. The almost immediate connection you feel with someone you don’t know but who is coming directly towards you on their journey.
There is no time to chase or days to remember; you are there, present, in that moment. When someone feels anxious, it is often due to something that has not happened yet or might not even exist. Focusing only on the destination and future causes strain because we have little or no control over its outcome. There really is only the here and now.
I have often been asked which part of my Bibbulmun Track was my favourite. My response is, “Wherever I was at that time.” – Didier.
The Bibb will always take care of you and never give you more than you can handle.
I was 70% of the way to completing my 1000 km hike of the Bibbulmun Track when I reached a section where a bushfire had utterly burned through this once green, alive forest, which was now an even colour of grey and black from the tops of the trees, the ground and the track I depended on. The Waugal markers were gone. I was walking on another planet. I knew that I would need to walk for the next hour through this unmarked section.
I had very little to follow; the map was almost pointless, and no GPS app. I kept following a map on my phone to make sure I wasn’t walking around in circles; it was exhausting and a little stressful. Suddenly, something came over me to trust; I was connected to everything around me. I switched off my phone, put it in my pocket and just walked with no expectations. I suddenly knew I was on the Bibb. I could see and feel it, and I had no doubt. Sometime later, in the distance, there was a Waugal marker; I began to tear up.
It is no longer a secret that spending time in nature has the power to change your body, how you think, and emotionally. It has been scientifically proven that even spending a few days in the remote wilderness away from daily stress begins to produce a transformation.
A tree releases its oils into the air to calm and heal any potential predator, including us. – Dr. Qing Li.
Sitting still and not moving in nature can be very rewarding and healing. I, in fact, ask my teen hike participants to sit apart for 30 minutes occasionally in a forest or overlook a beautiful scene—a moment of mindfulness. It is often a struggle at the beginning; they play with their jacket zip and a pebble on the ground until suddenly they let go and become present. Some have described it as feeling totally connected to the rock they are sitting on, the wind whistling past their ears and over the trees below, the Wedgetail Eagle hovering above them.
By the end of a 5-day hike, teens told me that they had connected with animals, trees and other people like never before in their lives. One girl, in particular, told me for the first time in as long as she can remember her social anxiety was gone; she no longer feared speaking to her peers, and the enormous expectation of making friends, she spoke to total strangers.
But there is something about the art of walking in nature, a movement that creates a flow both physically and mentally. It gives us direction and teaches us to be present at the same time without any effort on our part. It simply happens naturally. Dr David Strayer gave a TED Talk on how it’s been scientifically proven that spending a few days in nature increases your problem-solving ability by 50%.
When you add up multiple days of walking with a backpack, you gain incredible resilience. Everything slows down so we can take it all in. We have more time to breathe and communicate clearly with others. You can’t underestimate how powerful this is. I watch it happen again and again. A study conducted on children with ADHD showed a marked improvement in concentration after just 20 minutes in a natural environment.
I began to see this transformation in myself during my end-to-end journey and witnessed it in others on the track. The first transformation I noticed occurred during the first week of my 68-day journey when I didn’t see another person for five days.
Stop struggling; you can’t prevent something that is meant to happen. – Didier.
I was two-thirds of the way through the Bibbulmun Track when an idea popped into my head to take people hiking, specifically those living with mental illness. The first glimpse of Didier Walks was born.
My idea was accepted by Business Foundations Fremantle in 2017. They are a service provider for the NEIS, the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme, a federal government small business start-up program.
Through natural progression and by allowing it to happen, Didier Walks reformed to become LifeTrail. The LifeTrail Story