How adrenaline junkies relax

As I sit down on the rock I notice something that astonishes me. Something is moving; it is a sparrow hopping around in my peripheral vision. I turn to him and he hops a bit closer, looking at me, curious. I return the gaze. I am fascinated by him. Silently, so as not to scare him, my two brothers creep closer to us. It is four days since any of us saw a creature that was not ourselves. No humans, no birds, no insects. We cannot take our eyes off him, and he is equally captivated by us.
We are not here in the high Colombian Andes by accident. We are not hungry or lost; we are not survivors of a plane crash desperately trying to return to civilisation. We are doing just the opposite. Over the past few days we have braved torrential thunderstorms, scaled passes higher than Europe’s highest mountains, struggled through snow up to our waists and for about five kilometres jumped from tussock to tussock over blackish water through what we were later to nickname the dead marshes, just to be here.
To escape civilisation and test ourselves, to test the primeval raw spirit with which we were designed against the worst Mother Nature can throw at us; that is our motive. We have fought some battles in the vicious wilderness over the last few days; we have come through them all and today we feel vindicated. We are sitting on a rocky outcrop high above a lake which stretches to the horizon, flanked by snow-capped peaks, basking in the hot, high-altitude sun who we have not seen since the start of the trek, and Mother Nature’s representative, a solitary sparrow, has come to join us. We feel we belong here. The wilderness no longer seems so harsh. The battles are done and we are resting, tranquil, in our new home.
Deep down we know we are reliant on the food canned in a grim steel factory and the Gore-Tex clothing we have brought with us, but it does not feel like it. We allow our minds to wonder. We feel like hunters of old, surviving by instinct, living glorious romantic lives in the mountains and in the valleys. We roam where we want. We are strong enough to pass any test Mother Nature sets us and she therefore accepts us. We must exert ourselves every day, but we are sure to be rewarded. I am where I want to be. Despite all the trials and tribulations, I've been grinning from ear to ear the entire time. I want to go back to civilisation some day, but for now I am perfectly content to lay on the rock with my new friend. He hops closer.