Bike + Hike to La Maison de Valier

It was a beautiful Sunday yesterday so M and I decided to make a bike + hike trip to the Pyrenees. Last summer, we went on a hiking trip around Mont Valier and this time, instead of driving to the trail head, we decided to bike instead.

It was about a 40km ride to La Maison de Valier (trailhead) with around 700m ascent and we thought that would make a perfect day trip. I packed everything in my 7L trail backpack and off we went on our bikes.

It took us around 2h to get to the trailhead where we locked our bikes in front of the restaurant, refilled our water bottles, and started hiking. The last 7km to la Maison de Valier was painful (a long steep uphill) and my legs felt weird and heavy.

We sat down for a picnic in the shade and ate our freshly baked bread with cheese we grabbed from a town we passed by on our way. After that, my body felt as good as new. I almost felt like I could walk all the way up to the summit of Mont Valier although we left too late in the morning for that to be an option. We also didn’t bring enough water.

We hiked for a few hours, sat and cooled down in front of a big waterfall, and watched the birds and the insects enjoy the sun.

It was almost a perfect trip. The roads weren’t crowded at all and we had an amazing view. The bread was perfect, the trail was pretty that looked like something out of a photo book and the weather was just amazing. Having grown up in the suburbs of Tokyo, I didn’t know that a Sunday like this could exist - a casual bike trip to the mountains without the hassle of cars and trains. Maybe I could imagine myself adapting to the country life. Maybe I could quit the city.

Then I had an accident. I tripped. On our way down, as I made my 400m/7km descent from la Maison de Mont Valier, I got distracted by my beautiful surroundings. I sped up, looked away to my side, and the next thing I knew, I was laying on the ground.

There was blood. I was overwhelmed, a bit dizzy, and glad that I was wearing a helmet. The fall wasn’t anything serious but my entire right side hurt and I worried about potential injury, especially to my knee. I have a phobia of injuries, mainly for how they impact my mental health. I saw my swollen pinky and my bloody leg and worried about how that was going to affect my mood, my focus, and the type of person I was going to be for the next few days, or weeks, or months.

We cycled for another 20km and reached an emergency room at a hospital (it was a Sunday) where I waited in the waiting room. There was a woman who had been bitten by a dog with blood running down her leg and a man with a deep cut on his hand.

The doctors and nurses there didn’t really speak English and I struggled with my French. They cleaned up my wound, patched me up, took an x-ray of my hand, and gave me a tetanus shot just in case.

As I sat on the bed, I was disappointed in myself for how I reacted when I fell, how I interacted with M after the incident (I was in a terrible mood), and how I always seem to overreact and become over-anxious to incidents like these, how I’m not careful enough. How my French hasn’t improved at all in the past few years. How I suddenly lost the confidence in living in a more rural area than what I grew up in.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been spending time at M’s place, not too far from Saint-Girons. The closest house is more than 100m away and the closest pharmacy is more than 10km away. We didn’t have a car which meant that we had to bike everywhere, which is fine when we’re healthy and the weather is kind. But when you’re sitting on the bed in an ER feeling helpless because I’m still unable to communicate in a language I’ve supposedly have studied for more than 6 years … I was back to my insecure self again.

These days, I feel a little lost again. I feel a bit lost at work, at my whereabouts, at my thoughts, at what I can do or what I would be good at in being useful so I can be kinder and gentler to the world around me. I feel a bit out of control of my emotions and many days I wake up wondering if I’m somehow really broken and if so, how on earth to fix that. I can be a really difficult person to be with. How can anyone stand being around me? I’m scared of going back into the office. What if my colleagues can’t stand me? What if I lose my job? I’m so un-hirable. I would have to leave the EU and start over. Then what? What would my family think of me? Then M tells me that it’s all me and that it’s ok.

We had the option of calling UBER to take us back to M’s house or to cycle back another 12km. I felt better so we hit the road.

I was in pain but the sunset and the skies in a palette of warm colors made everything ok. We chased the contrails of the planes and the birds and the hills purple and dark against the cream-colored clouds with magenta shades. It was so quiet - we only heard our wheels cutting through the air. I felt the early summer on my skin and felt grateful for that moment. And I know I should hold onto moments like these rather than the million what-ifs. I’ll try.