The winter mysticism of the Borjomi-Kharagauli forest

The routine of modern life

Feelings , expressing emotions in the right way , enjoying the current situation , giving the brain a way to cool down – all of this and much more becomes much more difficult than in childhood or adolescence . In this century, each of us has to work in a super - stressful situation , it's terrible : " Getting up at 7 every morning , writing projects to be completed , then getting dressed in a hat , going to work with a hat torn off , listening to a thousand nervous , embittered and a hundred kilos of negative energy people there , getting a headache at the end of every day , getting to the bus stop , getting on a crowded , noisy and terribly untidy bus , then the subway - this is not human transport either, but it has one big plus - it's fast , then a 10- minute walk from the subway to the house and music , which I turn on every day on my phone and say goodbye , I go to a parallel world , where everything is the opposite . How can a person cope with so much stress ? Where can I get rid of the dirt accumulated in the city and what can I do to restore positive energy? ? Everyone will look at these questions differently , we are very subjective and individual beings , right ?! Some cope with it by talking in a friend's " kitchen ", some go to a bar or club , some prefer to spend their free time quietly at home , or some don't think about it at all , I know for sure that I don't belong to the latter category of people , the rest of the options are possible . However, like every person , I have found my " solution ", and this is hiking ....

Hiking as a "solution"

When I say the word hiking and call it a way to escape from routine life, what do I mean? I mean that it is not just a physical activity, during which there are defined starting and ending points, between which there are many ascents and as many descents and promises many challenges, for me it is more a portation of the mind into a parallel world, weightlessness and complete relaxation.

Lately, the routine of life has been gripping me tightly and won't let me go anywhere. It's been a long time since I last managed to go hiking and do some kind of mental and physical "reboot," although I already clearly felt how much I needed all this, just so I wouldn't wake up tired every morning. However, as in all controversial situations, here too, the heart and mind, the desire to receive emotions and the ratio, the fear of leaving the comfort zone and the expectation of pleasure from overcoming this fear, are wrestling with each other. It's like lying in a warm bed in a freezing room, and you're tired from lying there so much, your sides are already aching, but as soon as you take your feet out of the blanket, the cold scares you and you put your feet back in the warm bed, and on top of that, you're afraid that you've been away for so long that your body has become sluggish, out of tone, less resilient, and you've forgotten the basic skills needed for hiking.

"Your comfort zone will kill you"

I was in this kind of battle between personal comfort and it after a friend wrote to me that we were going to Borjomi-Kharagauli Park for a two-day hike and said, "Come on." In the end, I spent the whole night thinking, struggling with conflicting thoughts, and decided to trust my heart and emotions.

At dawn, I quickly packed my bag: sleeping bag, blanket, sleeping mat (I couldn’t find my favorite inflatable sleeping mat anywhere and had to settle for the usual ones), a change of clothes, extra shoes, and utensils (a bowl, a glass, a spoon and a fork). It wasn’t even dawn yet when my friend dropped me off at home and we headed to Digomi to join the others there, there were five of us in total. Before we arrived in Borjomi , I was thinking the whole way about whether I would be able to overcome the difficulties of hiking after such a long break. I was thinking this when I discovered that we had already arrived, registered at the Borjomi-Kharagauli Park administration , paid for the cottage, and after that, we headed straight to the beginning of the trail.

Hiking music

Our plan was to climb the Lomis Mountain Trail from Likani and walk to the Chitakhevi Cottage on the snowshoe trail , where we would spend the night, and then return to Likani. Whether I got out of the car or not, the sound of my feet touching the snowy surface made such a crunching sound that I realized I had made the right decision. Anyone who has walked in the snow at least once will understand what sound I am talking about. It sounds like a symphony, it seems different with every step you take, this melody is a kind of connection between you and the world, which is very similar to a pulse, sometimes the tone goes up and sometimes down, so crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch, you go slowly and slowly the tones change, you quicken your steps and it seems to follow your racing heart.

The mysticism of the winter forest

In general, I think there are few things in the world more mystical than a snowy coniferous forest. You follow a snowy slope, and the higher you climb, the more you see the army of drooping spruces and pines surrounding you, their bodies swallowed by the absolute whiteness.

At the beginning, there wasn't much snow on the path, but it was well frozen, and it looked a little scary, shining like a mirror, and the surface, shimmering in the sunlight, reflected my confused face, but it wasn't that difficult to walk here, because the path was still straight. The deeper we went into the forest, the more snow there was on the path and around us, the large trees had snowdrifts on their shoulders, the medium-sized ones were like hats, and the small ones were completely invisible, and I was convinced of their existence by the fact that here and there their branches would part like a helping hand.

Trans-psychotherapy received during a winter hike

As difficult as hiking in winter is, it is also so pleasant, because the environment is so ideal, it makes you forget the pain you take with each step. The path slowly climbed higher and my breathing became more frequent, we were already walking on travertine, each step brought pain along with joy, my heart was beating faster from the increased breathing, it consumed triple the energy and created a trance-like situation, like holotropic breathing (transitioning into a different state through intense breathing. During which a person deepens the deep layers of their own consciousness, realizes the real causes of the complexes or traumas in them, frees themselves from negative emotions and finds resources for themselves to solve the current and urgent life tasks here and now) can have on a person, and the environment was also supportive. On the way, I thought about why I come to this path every year in winter, at least once? There could be many reasons: Borjomi is close to Tbilisi and it is easy to get here, I don't have to sleep in a tent in the winter, because there is a cottage on this path equipped with a stove, all this together and, moreover, I think that each person has their own idea of what their ideal world could be like and we want to live there, no matter how unimaginable it may be. At every step in the city, I am convinced that this is impossible, we will not have a life even close to ideal, we will simply dream about it all our lives and die with this dream.... Here, in this forest, everything is ideal for me: ideally dressed in a white robe, ideally tall, green, with an amazing scent, which stand here in order, with their shoulders straight for centuries, in this fairy-tale-like Narnia environment, their branches reaching the sky and merging with the blue infinity, and the white robe is sometimes covered with a golden glow from the sun penetrating from infinity. From the rays and as soon as the sun disappears from view, the huge, ideally white-golden bodies of the trees rushing towards the other half of the world suddenly change color and turn into warm pink tones, while I, a small fragment of this world, a tiny part of the essence, walk between them, in my own imperfect boots, bent at the waist with a whole ton of negative energy hanging on my back, hoping that after the hours of psychotherapy I have received from all this, I will leave behind a million tons of grief, pain, hatred, disgust, fear and return home a metamorphosed, slightly better and slightly free person.

Hiking as a way to reconnect with the world

I think I have found my own way to escape from the psychological illnesses caused by stress in the modern world. I understand this better after returning from a hike. I realize that as humans, we have lost touch. The more we progress, the faster we move away from worldly knowledge and connection with nature. We are strongly connected to it. However, often the daily routine, the high pace of life, and the attachment to our personal comfort zone prevent us from discovering the connections and calling within us that we always experience. When I started to listen to this calling and follow it, it became easier to fight difficulties.