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There’s a simple remedy for pain. Get out into the bush and go as far as you can. You can bring water and a pack. Don't overcomplicate it. The important thing is that you don't give up. You’ll be be scraped and sore and thwacked in the face by a branch but you must keep going. Let nature tear you all to bits. And this works because if you live with pain for long enough, you eventually embody it. If you fall and lose some skin you lose a part of yourself physically, but you also lose a little spiritual pain, too. Keep going until something depletes and if it's you that runs out first then you die, my condolences, but if it's the pain that runs out first—which it usually is—then you will shortly find yourself at a road or trailhead, battered greatly but a little happier and it's getting dark so you go home. That's it. That's the method.

Some people turn this thing into a competition or a lifestyle. They get good at it. Don't do that. The readier you are, the further you will have to go. You are not overcoming nature, either, so don't fool yourself. There's always more bush, steeper crag, harsher conditions you could have chosen. You must resist the urge to externalise or define anything. The moment you frame it as you versus nature, or you versus some arbitrary distance over arbitrary time, you're back to hanging onto you as you are now, with all your pain and desperation. Let go. This is about you versus you, or you versus pain, because they're the same thing to you, aren't they? That’s why you’re here. Nature has nothing at all to do with it beyond being a kind of sandpaper for the soul, and it’s out there waiting all the time. Just get out there and go.