Before we get started I want you to take a look at this picture.  It’s me, on the day I (tried to) hike up Monte Cucco.

This trip to Italy found me fresh out of a two year desk job, programming e-learning software.  Not a physically demanding job, not one where I found myself working on my leg muscles or doing much hiking.  I was acutely aware that I was not in the best shape of my life.  So when I was asked to take a hiking day trip I had some clear concerns.  Let me start at the beginning of the story.

I was staying in a lovely Italian farmhouse outside of the town of Chiusi in Siena, Italy.  I set up this stay through workaway.info, a site that matches travellers willing to work with host families all over the world.  When I arrived I met the other three young people who were staying there and learned that my dreams of picking olives had been dashed by a bought of freezing rain.  So, our newly formed group of four ended up sanding shutters, for days.  Finally our first day off came around and as you can imagine we were all excited to get out and explore Italy!  Two went in one direction and the third, Martin, asked me if I wanted to go hiking with him.  This brings us back to where we started: I am not athletic.  Nervous about the hike I asked a ton of questions.  Most notably I asked the same questions over and over again: Is this hike ok for beginners?  Will I survive?  I am not athletic, are you absolutely SURE that this is an easy hike?  Martin is a nice guy, I truly believe that he meant me no harm when he repeatedly answered yes to all of these questions.  So off we set for Monte Cucco.

We began our adventure in an absolutely beautiful little grouping of houses, so small I don’t know if you could call it a town.  There were a couple of chickens running around, and one person, who we saw for just a few moments before he went into a building.

We found the beginning of the trail in the back of one of the small buildings and set off.  In the beginning I was hopeful.  Everything was beautiful and the trail wasn’t very difficult.

We spent an hour and a half on this nice trail.  At times I was uncomfortable when the trail would narrow to less than a foot wide right beside a steep drop into a stream way below; eventually I learned this was because we were actually hiking on a bike trail – who knew?  Regardless I was getting a bit tired, but I was enjoying myself for the most part.  Then we came around a corner and my life basically ended.  This is what I saw:

This was the moment that I realized that so far we had only actually been on the trail that my new friend Martin considered to be one used to get to the actual beginning of the hike.  This was actually my first view of Monte Cucco, the mountain we had come to hike.  I hadn’t even set foot on the mountain yet.  As I came to the realization that I was just now seeing Monte Cucco, I was also hit with another horrible revelation: not only were we heading up the mountain to that building, a monastery that we couldn’t even go inside of, but we were supposed to then go all the way to to top of the mountain.  Remember today’s motto: I am not athletic.  To make things more interesting, the road to the monastery was an actual road.  Yes, we could have driven this far.  However, we couldn’t have driven all the way to the monastery as there was a small gate blocking the road before it began to steepen.  Imagine how this made me feel, I could still have had energy!

I soldiered on.  Martin blazed ahead.  For the majority of the next couple of hours of my absolutely struggling up this mountain he was nowhere in sight.  I could have had a heart attack and died – he wouldn’t have noticed for at least twenty minutes.  That’s about how often he yelled down the mountain to check on me.  At this point I was about ready to curse Martin to endless suffering.  Again, Martin was a very nice guy, he was just way more athletic than me, and I was angry and in pain.  Eventually he stopped at a small waterfall and I caught up.  This is around the time that I learned that Martin was an avid hiker.  He hadn’t lied to me, this trail was one he considered to be super easy.  He really thought I could do it because he had no concept of what it was like to be out of shape and stuck on the side of a mountain.  You see, Martin was such an avid hiker that he had once completed a thirty-six hour long, non-stop hiking RACE.  Yes, that’s a real thing people do.  I didn’t even know those types of races existed.  I was finding this out at a highly inopportune time.  After this brief chat Matrin went back to mountain climbing and I went back to dragging my butt up the side of a heart attack waiting to happen.  By this point I had even found a stick, and was painfully using it in an effort to get my arms to help drag my feet up the road.  Then, finally, after what seemed like eons and was literally hours and hours, I rounded a bend in the road and a gate came into view.

You remember that building perched on the side of the mountain that you saw a couple pictures ago?  This is it, we had made it!  I was so relieved it wasn’t even funny.  This is Eremo di San Girolamo, a monastery and home to the solitary religious man who takes care of it.  We saw him briefly, from a distance, but he kept to himself and didn’t seem to mind us taking photos of each other on his door step.  Visitors aren’t permitted inside so that was the best we could do.  One thing is for sure, the views he has are absolutely spectacular.

After spending a few minutes at the monastery, soaking in the views, resting and having a snack, it was time to move on.  Martin was determined to make it to the top.  I decided to try to carry on.  He lead me to where the trail continued and it was once again like I was standing at the beginning of the actual hiking portion of the day.  My feelings of nearing death and exhaustion came rushing back.  This new trail left the road and went straight up the forest on the side of Monte Cucco.  I pressed on for about 10 minutes.  This was horribly slow going, I had to find places for my feet between all the rocks and roots, and I had to then haul myself up another step on leg muscles that were completely shot by this point.  I am a strong person, and I never give up.  I hate giving up.  Here, on this mountain, I gave up.  I realized a couple of things:

1. I didn’t care if I got to the top, I enjoyed the views from the monastery.
2. I couldn’t make it to the top, my body was simply not athletic enough.
3. If I tried to keep going much longer I wouldn’t make it back down the mountain, and I wanted nothing more than to make it back down the mountain.
4. If I stayed at the monastery for a while I could sit on the little stone retaining wall and rest.
5. I COULD REST!

I hollered up the mountain to Martin and told him I was done.  He didn’t want to stop, so we came to an agreement.  He had half an hour to reach the top and come back again (which would have taken me at least two more hours, had I been able to keep going) and I would sit at the monastery and wait for him.  After he left I ate an apple and discovered the best thing yet: I had cell service.  So I sent a text to my mom from the side of a mountain and took a selfie – I am a millennial after all.

In the end, I look back on my day of not making it to the top of Monte Cucco as a success.  I hadn’t ever thought that I would have made it as far as I did.  I am so glad that I pushed myself and got to stand at Eremo di San Girolamo and look out over the incredible Italian countryside.  As we finally made our way back to Martin’s car, I stopped and truly appreciated where I was and what I had managed to accomplish.  While on that day I wasn’t athletic enough, perhaps someday I will be able to go back and make that final climb to the top.