Since I got my new mountainbike, I’ve been wanting to do a bike & hike trip. Rödsjövålen was a good candidate for that, there’s a double-track road from Backvallsvägen to Östvallen, where you continue on foot to get to the top of Rödsjövålen. 17 km by bike, 8 km by foot (return trip). No problems, I took off right after work yesterday because it was finally a sunny and warm day.
While I was pedalling on Backvallsvägen, I saw and heard something move in the forest. It happened too quickly to see what it was, but it was something big. Probably a reindeer. Or moose, or a roe deer. Or bear. There’s been some bear sightings in the area recently. My take on the subject has always been that bears are more afraid of us, than we of them. So I never let the thought of bears stop me from going anywhere, it would just be stupid. But somehow this very brief unknown encounter sowed the seeds of uncertainty in my mind, and it didn’t feel better as I turned to the overgrown double track road to reach Östvallen. I’ve tried to cut down my swearing, but the f-words started coming out as I fought uphill over roots and rocks and puddles, and got off my bike to take it around fallen trees, and it felt like it never ended.
But of course I got to Östvallen in the end, no problems really. I left the bike there and took the path leading to the Rödsjöarna lakes. Initially it was a good path and I made good time, but oh how I hated that forest. Dense spruce forest, I really really really don’t like walking through dense spruce forest uphill on my way to a mountain. And what was that I suddenly felt in my chest? A muscle contraction? A problem with my heart? I’m absolutely sure it was just a muscle, but then it happened again, and again, and my mind which was already on high gear after the previous unknown encounter just went into free spin. Welcome to the life of a high reactive person. Where no danger exists, my brain makes up a few.
When I got out of the spruce forest into the mountain birch forest, the path got very faint and it disappeared completely at times. Going up was no problem, I just needed to aim at the mountain, but coming down would be an issue. I needed to get back to my bike in Östvallen! But I had a map on my phone, as long as the phone worked then no problems. And then I got worried that something might happen to my phone, and I regretted not taking a GPS as backup.
The mosquitoes only became more numerous the higher I got. They didn’t leave me alone even on the tundra, because there was hardly any wind. The f-words were coming out in a steady stream by now.
When I finally stood on top of the mountain, I felt nothing. No relief, no joy, just absolutely nothing. Peak 36 of out 60, good riddance.
You can imagine that I was in no mood to take pictures, so I just snapped a few quick ones, and then tried to get back to the bike as soon as possible. The phone kept working (of course!) and lead me right, even when I started thinking that the damn path would never end.
My sports watch told me that I had exceeded my daily requirement of physical exercise by 804%. The mental exercise can’t be measured, but it feels like it was much higher. Being an HSP with high reactivity is not really the fun it’s cracked out to be.
Every trip is a battle against my own instincts. Sometimes I can wrestle down the beast, but other days it just takes over and beats me down. But as stressful as it was yesterday, I persevered. The beast didn’t win!
