In the more than three thousand kilometers I walked in 2024, I discovered a myriad of things about myself. I learned to know myself better in many aspects, and all challenges taught me something. But one above all came up over and over: fording rivers. I felt like a student who needed to review a concept in different ways before being able to say he’d understood it. Honestly, I never had the impression of being up to this challenge. In the almost five hundred kilometers through the Sierra Nevada, it wasn’t rare to face three or four a day. And even with several fairly updated sources of information on these dangerous obstacles, I don’t think there was a single encounter where I could say with absolute confidence, “it went exactly as I expected.”

I consider myself quite prepared when it comes to walking in mountain terrain, but my repeated encounters with the rushing waters of the Sierra confronted me with the concrete fear of risking my life—maybe not exactly dying on the spot, but at least getting seriously injured. I think I’ve already written this: if it hadn’t been for Fabio’s company, some days I don’t know how or where I would have found the courage to face those rivers.

One episode still comes to my mind quite vividly. On June 17th, around noon, we arrived on the bank of the South Fork of the Kings River. We had it on the day’s to-do list, and several online comments had reassured us: despite having rather fast waters, it wasn’t large—so we figured it wouldn’t take long to find a good crossing point. It didn’t go like that. Not at all.

We spent a good twenty minutes scouting up and down the bank, not far from where the trail plunged into the river. Every spot that seemed adequate at first, turned out too deep: the water slowed down, or at least that was the impression, but we could no longer see the riverbed. After more than half an hour, we finally found an ideal spot: narrow enough, water moving at an acceptable speed, and a huge fallen tree trunk spanning the river would give us several points to hold onto. We would definitely soak our shorts, but the depth was manageable: the backpacks wouldn’t get wet.

It was one of the times I crossed first. I unbuckled my hip belt, secured my trekking poles to my wrists, and stepped in. The rubber of my shoes (soaking wet, of course) gripped the granite firmly, so I moved forward with confidence. When I was about five meters from a branch I intended to grab, I took another step and my foot sank: probably a dip in the riverbed that we could never have seen from the bank. Up to that point the water had reached just above my knee; suddenly I found myself submerged to my belly button. The current suddenly felt much stronger: with more surface area to push against, as soon as I lifted one foot, the other began to slip. I tried to use my poles, but the water bent them—they became more a handicap than an aid. I think in that moment I experienced something like primal fear. I feared for my safety, but I still managed those two steps that let me grab the branch and drag myself out. The deepest stretch couldn’t have been three meters long, but that branch seemed at least ten away.

This episode has come to mind several times in recent weeks. Rereading a chapter of Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals, I immediately understood why: the experience of those months of hiking had returned once again to teach me something. Burkeman writes:

What is worry, at its core, but the activity of a mind attempting to picture every single bridge that might possibly have to be crossed in the future, then trying to figure out how to cross it?

Worrying about the outcome of a future event isn’t useless in itself—it has a perfectly valid explanation in evolutionary terms. But in today’s world, we should train ourselves to distinguish the worries that are genuinely useful from the harmful ones: those that occupy our minds and make us behave anxiously, without actually changing anything. We will only know how things turn out once they’ve happened.

Faced with certain life choices—the fundamental ones, I’d say—we always find ourselves trying to understand how things might really go. Or, more frequently, we consult anyone willing to tell us what we should do and why. As if a choice that has fallen to us could make sense from someone else’s perspective. Asking trusted people for advice isn’t useless, but it will rarely resolve the doubt. Hard choices are essentially those for which nobody can know whether they will take us where we want to go. We can only decide, and observe what consequences follow.

I know Burkeman’s is an analogy, but I’m convinced that life is much more similar to having to cross the many rivers of the Sierra Nevada in early season. You don’t know exactly when; a map might tell you roughly where; but you know you’ll find yourself on one of the two banks. However invaluable, the comments of those who crossed before you won’t solve the difficulties you’ll face. And it’s quite obvious that you will have to enter that river—you might follow the path of a trusted friend, or cross together by clinging to their backpack. But it will be you alone who has to face the river’s force that wants to drag you away—because over the rivers of the Sierra, there are no bridges.