Walking through Mud at Plitvice Lakes and the Cold Path of Writing

It is snowing in Minnesota as I write this, and unreasonably cold for November, but a mere six weeks ago, I was in the lovely Adriatic country of Croatia.

My husband and I chose Croatia for our annual vacation because we’d never been there. We picked September because the Lonely Planet guide said to. The summer crowds would be gone, it said. The summer heat and humidity, too. It would be balmy and bright.

It was right, right, and wrong.

Croatia, it turns out, has been having a spell of weird weather. “Typical July, it might rain 3 days,” said the guide we hired at Plitvice Lakes National Park. “This July, it rained 23.” It had rained through the months of May and June as well, in a season that is usually dry. And it was raining in September—the time we’d chosen to go to avoid the rain.

And yet, for a time, the gods seemed to be smiling on us. It was sunny and warm when we arrived. It poured in Dubrovnik for 3 whole days, but those 3 days we were up the coast in Split. We kept hearing about storms in places we hadn’t gotten to yet, but the clouds always parted the moment we arrived.

Except for once. The day we visited Plitvice Lakes.

If you haven’t been to Croatia, I’m going to guess you haven’t heard of Plitvice Lakes National Park. I hadn’t until I started planning our trip. We almost didn’t go to the park. We didn’t have a lot of time in Croatia, and it would take most of a day to get there and most of a day to get back, so it seemed like a lot of investment. But the guidebook said to go. It fact it said, you have to go, that if you’re going to Croatia, you simply cannot not go to Plitvice Lakes. So I added it to our itinerary, and off we went.

In the rain. 

Let me explain something about Plitvice Lakes: You can’t see them without walking. A lot. Like, for four hours. So, for four hours, wrapped in our warmest gear, which was none too warm, and me carrying my feeble little pink umbrella like a fussbudget, we slogged through ankle-deep ice water, mud, and slush. The rain soaked through our clothes to our skin. Our wet shoes rubbed us raw. The wind came up, cold and biting. There was no place to get out of the squall. No shelter from the rain. No going back.

All right, stop that snorting, you people who go snow camping and ice fishing and backpacking into the desert. I know it wasn’t all that bad. I am, however, not a person who goes walking in mud. In my universe, pretty much nothing is worth slopping through ice water. All I could think as we walked and walked and walked was, At the end of this hike, we’d better see the face of God. Anything less, and it’s just not going to be worth it.  

And in the end? It was totally worth it. Imagine all the waterfalls you’ve ever seen spilling over green, green cliffs into turquoise lakes. Imagine a waterfall that goes on for a quarter mile as you walk along next to it. Yep, the face of God, or at least of one of the gods.

And so it is with writing: Much of the time you are trudging through mud. You are tired. You are frustrated. You wonder why you ever started. You can’t imagine you’ll ever get to the end. You wish you could go back. You’re sure no one is as miserable as you. You have blisters on your brain. You’re cold, so cold.

And then you’re finished. The waterfalls are spilling. The lakes shimmer. The cliffs are green. You realize that all that slogging and plodding, the long evenings, the weariness, the self-doubt, they were all worth it.

Walking through mud at Plitvice Lakes or writing at your desk as the months pass, they both have the same reward. You keep going. You make it through. And in the end, you have beauty.