How to climb a mountain, by Sam Sweeney

There is no warm-up, no practice, no time to adjust because immediately, the path steepens and after a right turn the carpark is gone and it is just you, the trees and the searing ache through the backs of your legs.

Abandon everything you thought you might think about on your way up. Be shocked by the silence every time you pause to catch a breath. The path is bordered high by a wall of rock on one side, unfamiliar scrub on the other: grasses and ferns and trees recognisable only in category.

Think of the wild pigs your father warned you about, squint into the bushes for a snout or a hoof, find nothing, obviously. Hear birds, somewhere, unbothered by thoughts of wild pigs or sore legs, engrossed only in chasing flies and casting melodies. Keep walking.

Pause for another breath, but this time, turn around to find a gap in the scrub, through which you see wide green pastures, see the peninsula leaning forward into an eternity. This is your first reward for the monotony; the mountain says, just you wait. Look vaguely in the direction of the local hospital, where your grandmother sleeps through her final weeks. Think of the worry on her face when you told her you were going to climb the mountain. You told her you'll be back tomorrow, and you will, and you'll take her photos of the summit.

Stop at a bench, eat a handful of almonds. Feel the sun. Remove a layer. Re-tie your shoelaces.

Walk and walk and walk. Continue in this way for several hours.

Notice the fantail in the trees beside you, in the trees that are not the same trees you saw a few hours ago, but taller, slimmer. Watch it twist in mid-air, swerve nimbly through branches. Your aunt told you they use their tails like a rudder, which allows them to pivot quickly mid-flight to catch insects. Imagine the fantail as a boat through the air. Notice the fantail follow you, sometimes skipping ahead, sometimes darting behind, so close to your head you meet its tiny gaze and time, it seems, hitches. Though you know the bird flies this way out of curiosity, allow yourself to believe it is guiding you. Notice how this belief dissolves imagined boundaries.

Feel the sun more insistent now. Realise it is because you have become taller than the trees; you walk among the top layer of canopy and there is nothing between you and that final blue. See the mountain range rise and fall like breath. You are tired, the climbing becomes harder. Stop more frequently and stare in awe at the snow-flecked peaks each time.

Follow a bend. Startle and be startled: in the scrub, a hawk. See only the back of a white feathered head as it launches through leaf and stick in haste to escape. Guilt drops like a stone in knowing you have disturbed another's home.

The old hut lies ahead in the flat. Though it is all wood and rusting iron, it resembles an animal placid in slumber. Think of yesterday afternoon standing at the window of the kitchen your grandmother will never pour another cup of coffee in. Think of looking toward this very flat you now stand in. Think of the crosswords she will never finish, the gardening shoes she no longer has need for.

Look in the direction of her house, but you cannot see the house among the trees she planted around all those decades ago. See instead the creek curve around the back garden, the low gully where freshwater meets ocean, the grey pebbled shoreline. Think of the salt bleached branches like great skeletons across that shoreline, gulls yearnful crying. That freezing sea, the bluest eye you've seen.

Pinking horizon: you have work to do. Take out your gloves to warm your stiffening hands. Cut dead logs into short pieces with the blunt saw buried beneath the wood pile. Collect sticks and clumps of brown pine needles for kindling. Avoid ones sitting near the echoes of snow. Start a fire in the hut's wood burner. Throw enough kindling and hope it keeps alight while you stand outside and watch the mountains turn orange then blue then grey. Come inside only when your cheeks are numb and your toes ache.

At some point in the darkness, fireside in your sleeping bag, notice the depth of silence. Feel a cavernous loneliness, unexpected, and in its unexpectedness, totalising.

Recall your father's advice to look at the stars. Go back into the cold, into a darkness your eyes cannot adjust to, but there is no need, because the sky above you is alive with distant light. There is something comforting in it.

Return to the hut and, as you pass through the door, notice the brown spider in the doorframe. Watch each other for a moment and reach a tacit understanding you are both here for the other.

Think of the last time you visited your grandmother. You had wondered if she was lonely in that house by herself. Understand, now: she was never alone with the sea and the mountain so close. Wonder, now: will they be lonely without her? The rustling you hear outside is the animal of grief.

Return to your sleeping bag on the old wooden cot. Pull it up to your chin and pick up your book from its place, face down and opened where you left it. Eventually, you will sleep; your fatigued body demands it.

Tomorrow, you will climb to the summit. You will stand in the snow and take a photo from the top, and you will take this photo to the hospital that same afternoon, and find your grandmother smiling, waiting for you to return.