Gemini vs Gemini

It’s been 10 years since my friendship-cementing trip to Patagonia with two of my bestest friends. Here’s some fond recollections of the beginnings of that trip, inspired by the writing style of ‘Three Men in a Boat’

Essay A

It was spring of 2016. Our business school graduation day was four months away. We had jobs to last the next two years, friendships to last the next lifetime, and money to last us until our first paychecks in a few months. 

Only this degree of certainty in our future could have emboldened us to embark on our zany trip to Argentina. The plan was to spend 3 days and 2 nights hiking in the mountains of Patagonia. The fact that between the three of us, we had 0 hiking boots, 1 night of overnight hiking experience, and 2 day hikes under our belts did not deter us in the slightest. How infallible we seem to ourselves in our 20s! (We get quite cured of such notions in our 30s.)

Our first clue should have been Anthony’s eyebrows.

3 months before we set foot on the plane, S excitedly told our friend Anthony all about the impending adventure we were embarking on, stellar vistas that awaited us, and the trusty guide who would help us along, all being planned out by the indomitable T (i.e., me). Upon Anthony’s next encounter with me, he mentioned S’s infectious excitement and admiration for all my planning, to which I responded, ‘what guide?’. The arch of concern in his eyebrows is still a vivid memory for me a decade later.

Our second clue should have been our first bit of joint exercise.

S, D and I were at this point great friends, but not trip-friends. One thing normal-friends don’t know as well as trip-friends is the notion that there are activities we can enjoy together immensely, and there are other activities that can escalate rather rapidly from amused eyerolls to frustrated deep breaths to raised hackles. It took only one over-enthusiastic attempt to train for our adventure together for us to figure this out.

It all started when D insisted 2 months before the trip that we should train together. S and I enthusiastically agreed. Nothing quite inspires the idea of getting fit as the idea that we could be using those muscles to expertly scale a world-famous mountain range. So we set a date and time, and a vague notion that we would run from our house to the park nearby, around it, and back. 

At this point I should mention that D is the ‘run for joy and meditation’ type, and ran often during her school and college years. S and I, on the other hand, I would describe as the ‘run for a bus, maybe’ variety. But, though runners we were not, we believed in the power of enthusiasm to conquer all bodily complaints, and that ignorance (of the length of the route) would indeed be bliss. 

We were proven wrong a short 2 blocks later. I felt the burn in my lungs and quads rather acutely, and felt my willpower to stand up to these sensations crumble like a dry cookie. I first slowed, and then stopped, pretending to lean down to fix my perfectly tied laces. 

S was made of sterner stuff, and would have possibly kept going a few more blocks, but the sight of me getting a break was too much for her will power, and she promptly stopped, and called out to D to wait for me as well.

Well bugger. I was hoping my lace fiddling would allow them to pull ahead, and then for me to straggle behind sedately at my own pace. I got up and forced myself to rejoin them. 

By the third such interruption before we even got to the park, we were all emitting some form of liquid from our bodies – D had steam coming out of her ears, S had sweat pouring down her face and I had geriatric levels of wheezing from the depths of my chest. D took a look at both of us and suggested we head back home. We silently nodded. 

Thereafter, we worked out separately, in our own homes and gyms.

Essay B

The late twenties are a dangerous chronological window. You are old enough to have a credit card with a terrifying limit, but young enough to believe that “cardio” is something that happens to other, less interesting people. We were twenty-eight, fresh off the adrenaline high of an MBA, and possessed by a specific brand of catastrophic optimism. We had conquered case studies and leveraged buyouts; surely, the Andes were just another slide deck waiting to be presented. Our ambition was Patagonia—not the “sip Malbec in a heated lodge” Patagonia, but the “carry thirty pounds of gear until your knees turn into dust” Patagonia. We were three consultants-to-be who treated our bodies like old MacBooks: constantly overheating, rarely updated, and held together by caffeine and sheer entitlement.

The warning signs were not so much “signs” as they were screaming neon billboards, yet our preparation was a masterclass in denial. We decided that “training” consisted of wearing our brand-new, stiff-as-plywood hiking boots to brunch. We sat in a trendy cafe, looking like elite paratroopers from the ankles down and hungover graduate students from the waist up. “It’s mostly mental,” Mark said, dipping a croissant into hollandaise. Mark was the group’s self-appointed Sherpa because he owned a North Face vest and had once watched a documentary about K2. He insisted that if we could handle a twenty-hour modeling session in Excel, we could handle a mountain, ignoring the fact that Excel rarely involves altitude sickness or the risk of being eaten by a puma.

We were operating on a deficit of reality, fueled by the invincible arrogance that comes with a degree that costs more than a starter home. The first “bonding” hike occurred two weeks before departure, where we met at a local trailhead with the grim determination of men going to war. Within twenty minutes, the “trip-friends” dynamic shifted. In normal life, we were a cohesive unit, but on a 10% grade, we became a collection of gasping, resentful solo artists. I realized then that my lung capacity was roughly that of a birthday balloon. I wasn’t an athlete; I was a person who occasionally walked quickly to a gate at Heathrow. I watched Mark’s back—vibrant and dry—while I trailed behind, vibrating with a silent, concentrated loathing. Every time he stopped to “take in the view,” which we all knew was a tactical pause to let his heart rate drop below 180, I considered the legal ramifications of shoving him into a fern.

Because we couldn’t buy physical fitness, we tried to buy its expensive technological equivalent. We spent thousands on “ultralight” gear, failing to realize that shaving three ounces off a titanium spork is irrelevant when you are carrying fifteen pounds of “just-in-case” artisanal jerky. We looked like an advertisement for a lifestyle we didn’t lead—all the gear, no idea. My backpack had enough straps to secure a small aircraft, and I understood the function of exactly two of them; the rest just dangled, hitting me in the face like a constant, rhythmic reminder of my own inadequacy.

Looking back now, from the safe, cushioned vantage point of my mid-thirties—where my main physical goal is not throwing my back out while sneezing—I view that version of us with a mix of pity and awe. We were so certain that the world would bend to our resumes. We truly believed that if we just bought the right Gore-Tex shell, the elements would recognize our status and provide us with a pleasant, breezy ascent. We didn’t know that nature doesn’t care about your GPA, and that a mountain is the only thing in the world that cannot be “disrupted” by a clever pivot. We were heading toward a majestic, icy disaster, armed with nothing but expensive socks and a total lack of humility. It was glorious. It was idiotic. And I wouldn’t trade that deluded version of myself for all the sensible walking shoes in the world.