For most of my life, preparation was simply what competent bushwalkers did. You checked the weather. You carried the right gear. You knew the route. It was part of the baseline. Not something to reflect on. Just something you did if you wanted to hike safely and successfully.
I moved through years of hiking with this understanding. It was practical and straightforward. Preparation was about self-sufficiency, about being capable and ready. It was, in the way I thought about it then, a personal matter.
That shifted over time, though I didn’t notice it happening. It shifted in small ways first, through organising hikes for one of Australia’s largest hiking communities. You stand at a trailhead and watch people arrive and you start to see patterns. The walker who shows up with no map and no backup navigation assumes they’ll figure it out as they go. The group that sets out on a full-day hike with minimal water and no real plan for how long they’ll be on the trail. The solo hiker relying entirely on a smartphone, assuming the battery will last, that coverage will be there when needed.
You see these things and you think about what happens when those assumptions prove wrong. Not every poor decision ends in a dramatic emergency. More often, you see walks become harder, riskier or more frightening than they ever needed to be. The group that moves slower than expected and finds themselves finishing in fading light. The solo hiker who becomes genuinely lost and genuinely frightened because they have no tools and no one knows where they are. The assumptions that held until they didn’t.
I’ve been involved in search and rescue operations. I’ve seen the other side of a hike gone wrong: the waiting, the coordination, the volunteers and professionals moving through terrain in difficult conditions, looking for someone who didn’t come back. I’ve seen the families. I’ve seen the exhaustion and the precision and the very real risk involved in trying to find someone.
In November 2021, while assisting in a search and rescue as an SES volunteer, I lost my footing on difficult terrain and was seriously injured. I spent two days in hospital. The hikers we were searching for were located safely. I was fortunate. It could easily have been much worse. But the experience changed something in the way I thought about preparation.
I remember lying in hospital thinking about the people searching with me. I remember thinking about Julie at home, not knowing how serious my injury was. I remember thinking about the hikers we were looking for and what their families were experiencing. And I remember thinking, very clearly, that preparation was not a personal matter anymore.
It had become a matter of responsibility.
Responsibility to yourself, yes. That part I had always understood. But also responsibility to the people who care about you, the people who would be affected if something went wrong. Responsibility to the people you hike with, because the way you prepare can affect their safety too. Responsibility to the volunteers and professionals who might have to come looking for you if things go wrong.
That’s different from simply being competent. Competence is about what you can do. Responsibility is about recognising that your choices affect other people. That when you prepare poorly, when you make assumptions, when you head out without thinking things through, you’re not just risking yourself. You’re creating the possibility that other people will bear the cost of that choice.
It’s not guilt exactly. It’s clarity. It’s understanding that preparation is one of the few things you can actually control before you leave. The weather will do what it does. The terrain will be what it is. But whether you’ve thought things through, whether you’ve equipped yourself, whether the people who care about you know where you’re going, those are choices you make before the walk starts.
I prepare now differently than I did before. Not frantically. Not from fear. But with an awareness that preparation is a form of respect. Respect for the people around me. Respect for the people who might have to help me. Respect for the environment I’m entering, because the bush doesn’t make allowances for what I assumed would happen.
The bush has given me some of the best experiences of my life. I don’t want people to fear it. I want them to understand that getting home safely begins long before they reach the trailhead. It begins with thought, with honesty about capability, with the recognition that other people are connected to our choices.
The old understanding was incomplete. Preparation was never just about me.
This essay is part of my Personal Reflections series, a collection exploring what hiking reveals about who we are.
