The Last Climb

20 Jul 2026 10:01 AM

The Last Climb

There is one moment on Kokoda that I have never forgotten It wasn't the steepest climb.

It wasn't the biggest battle site. It wasn't even the finish line. It was a man who had quietly convinced himself that he wasn't going to make it. We had been walking for several days. The humidity was relentless. The track was muddy.

Every step seemed to require more effort than the one before. He sat down on the side of the Track and stared at the ground.

He didn't say much. Eventually he looked at me and quietly said,

"Aidan… I think everyone would be better off if they just kept going without me."

It wasn't really about the mountain. It was about what the mountain had stirred up inside him. I knew from a psych point it was years of self-doubt. The belief that he wasn't enough. The fear of letting people down.

The feeling that he had become a burden. I sat beside him for a few minutes. Not because I had the perfect words. But because sometimes people don't need a speech. They need someone willing to share the silence. After a while I asked him one simple question.

"How far do you think you have to walk?"

He looked up towards the mountain and said,

"A long way."

I smiled and pointed to a tree no more than twenty metres away.

"No," I said.

"You only have to walk to that tree." He looked at me as if I hadn't understood. "But the mountain..." "Forget the mountain," I replied. "Just walk to the tree." So he stood up.

Slowly. One step. Then another. Twenty metres later we stopped. I pointed to another tree.

"Now let's walk there." For the next hour we never talked about the summit. We talked about the next tree. The next bend. The next creek crossing. The next breath. Late that afternoon he reached the top. Not because the mountain became smaller. But because his focus did.

Years later, I still think about that moment whenever life feels overwhelming. Most of us don't stop because life is impossible. We stop because we're trying to carry tomorrow, next month and next year all at once. We stare at the mountain instead of the next step.

The mountain becomes too big. The mind becomes too noisy. Hope begins to disappear.

But life rarely asks us to conquer the entire mountain today. It usually asks us to take one more step. Make one more phone call. Have one more conversation. Walk one more hill.

Ask for help. Rest if you need to. Then continue. That man taught me something I'll never forget. When he reached the finish line, he didn't celebrate because he had walked the Kokoda Track. He celebrated because he no longer believed the lie that he couldn't.

Every one of us has a mountain. It might be grief. Anxiety. A relationship. A business. Parenting. A health challenge. Or simply trying to become the person we know we're capable of being. Whatever your mountain is today, don't spend all your energy looking at the summit. Find your next tree. Walk to it. Then find another. One step at a time.

Because mountains are never conquered in one giant leap. They are conquered the same way every meaningful life is built. One courageous step after another.

And one day, you'll turn around and realise you climbed a mountain you once believed was impossible.

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