Moving into the second half of September, it may feel as though it’s you against the music. Venus enters Virgo on September 19, and there’s a solar eclipse in Virgo on September 21. There is some aspect of your creative process that can’t come on the ark you’re building to survive the coming floods, and if it’s not that, perhaps you’re being called to create a new template that feels more current and fresh—more true to the tastes and genres that currently feel exciting to you. And if the canvas is your life, well, where is the tension between your personal enjoyment and your social obligations coming from at the moment? It might be hard to have a five-star experience during the second half of the month, even if you’re at a festival you’ve been looking forward to for months or vacationing in an epic location. Still, becoming more intimate with what you don’t enjoy is a great way to become more intimate with what you do. Take it as a sign of where you can afford to make some changes.

Gemini Rising

Lightning rarely strikes twice in the same spot, and neither does opportunity. But how prepared are you to pivot on your heel when opportunity comes knocking? Because by the time you read this, you may already be swept up in the winds of change (or on a redeye flight to your next speaking gig). The first week of September flips the script on you as Uranus stations retrograde in Gemini for the first time on September 5, followed by an eclipse in your tenth house of career and ambitions on September 7. Additionally, your ruling planet, Mercury, squares Uranus on September 3 while Jupiter forms a trine to the North Node, urging you to break with certain aspects of your personal status quo in order to claim the abundance that’s trying to reach you.

Are you being offered a more lucrative opportunity right now, or possibly breaking up with the “safer” option in order to take a risk on something that might be more rewarding down the line? Either way, continued predictability seems unlikely, and some amount of flexibility and spontaneity is called for. Also, Saturn is now back in your tenth house as of September 1, resurfacing some of the success struggles and slow progress toward mastery and recognition that have defined the past couple years. Let’s be real, it hasn’t been easy getting to where you want to be. You may have even dealt with some blows to your reputation, or a less than supportive boss who didn’t believe that much in your potential. Now, as you enter the final boss round of “making it in the world,” you might be playing with higher stakes, but at least it’s not entirely the same old thing all over again.

As if all that weren’t enough, there are potential changes afoot in your private life as well—perhaps some form of leaving behind your current living situation, or “end of an era” vibes when it comes to home and family. Though these negotiations may be happening in earnest from the second week of September onward, the September 21 eclipse in Virgo sees to it that you don’t remain clinging to a past that is clearly expired. Questions of legacy may also be hugely important here as you potentially make moves with the wellbeing of future generations in mind. Preserve the history you’d wish was available for you to peruse in your grandmother’s attic. Maybe in the future, someone will relish your souvenir collection and travel diaries just as much as you did.

Cancer Rising

Where will the world pull you next, especially now that it’s looking more and more like your personal oyster? The call of the open road gets loud again this month, and this time, you may just answer it all the way. On September 1, Saturn returns to Pisces, your ninth house of big trips, big concepts, and big learning, just in time for that same part of your chart to be eclipsed on September 7. As if that weren’t enough, Mars squares Jupiter from your fourth house of home on September 4, making it not unlikely that you’re actually in the middle of a move right now, or severing your connection to home base in a different way.

Whether you’ve been on an educational path, a spiritual pilgrimage, or an endurance journey with many passport stamps involved, the past two years have led you to this moment. Saying “yes” to the adventure is as much a leap of faith at this point as it is a deeply considered choice knowing the difficulty it may entail. And also, things look pretty different than before with Jupiter now in Cancer. Any figurative plane that struggled to get off the tarmac before may now be primed for takeoff, so if this is an opportunity to go where you weren’t able to go before, you probably already had your mind made up months ago. All that remains is to walk through the door.

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‘This is probably the wildest place in the whole of the Vallée des Belleville,” says Roland, our guide, sweeping one arm across a bank of saw-toothed peaks as though conducting a great, brawny orchestra. My husband, two sons and I are midway through a four-day stretch of the Grand Tour de Tarentaise hiking trail in the French Alps, and we’ve stopped near the top of Varlossière, a roadless side valley among a great arc of mountains that runs to the west of the ski resorts of Val Thorens, Les Menuires and Saint-Martin-de-Belleville. Hiking up here from Gittamelon, a rustic, summer-only mountain refuge in the neighbouring Vallée des Encombres, we’ve paused to exhale breath, and to inhale the primeval views.

High peaks loom either side of us, their shocking green flanks underscored by an elegantly designed bothy and its shepherd-dwelling twin, and we can hear the rush of water far below. It’s midmorning but the moon is low and large in a cloudless sky, adding to the otherworldly scene. Climbing higher, an eagle flies past almost at eye level, no more than six metres away. Though we meet three other hikers on the other side of the Col du Bonnet du Prêtre, the 2,461-metre (8,074ft) pass that leads from Varlossière to the Nant Brun valley – and detect from sheep bells that at least two shepherds must be somewhere among the great folds of these hills – it feels as though the landscape is ours alone.

That may not be the case for long. Soaring temperatures across Europe this summer have fuelled a rush to the mountains, social media funnelling many visitors to the same honeypots and creating infrastructure pressure points; in Italy some farmers in the Dolomites have resorted to installing turnstiles and charging tourists €5 to pass, incensed at having their meadows trampled.

Navigating these challenges is no easy task for Europe’s mountain resorts, which are increasingly encouraging summer tourism as the climate crisis signals a limited lifespan for ski tourism. One of the biggest issues is that many of these new summer visitors are first-timers, unfamiliar with the mores of mountain adventuring: treading gently on the environment, respecting local countryside codes, wearing suitable kit, knowing how to read a map rather than an app (we had no wifi or phone signal for two days of our hike), and packing enough food and water. In France, call-outs to mountain rescue services by inexperienced hikers have risen so sharply that workers now trawl social media looking for potential disaster hotspots in advance.

In an attempt to tackle these issues, the Vallée des Belleville tourist office has introduced a range of summer initiatives to support new hikers, from kids’ mountain skills activity days to free wildlife talks and events. Lower-level footpaths and bike trails for children, pushchair-users and visitors with reduced mobility makes it safer for those groups to access the mountains, and easier for local communities to manage the larger numbers that tend to make use of them. And while challenging marked trails through more remote corners of the mountains are fairly easy to follow, visitors are encouraged to hire a guide (something we are glad of at Col du Bonnet du Prêtre, when Roland tracks down the shepherd owner of an aggressive dog and persuades him to move away from the trail).

It is at our accommodation each night, in mountain refuges, that we really see support for new hikers in action, though. Several have been designed specifically with families and first-timers in mind, including Refuge Plan Lombardie, where we end our 12-mile (19km) hike from Gittamelon.

We are not first-timers, but staying here is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of the rules of refuge culture, and for the boys to hang out with other children. Though we hike in, it’s possible to park about 20 minutes’ away and walk from there, something several guests with preschoolers have done, grateful for the treasure hunt-style sculpture trail the refuge has installed along the route to entice younger visitors uphill.

Though we have seen less than a handful of hikers during the day, we find Refuge Plan Lombardie as packed as a marmot’s burrow. Approaching it in the soft glow of the afternoon, earlier arrivals have already nabbed the terrace’s deckchairs with a view. Instead, we collect beers and lemonades and find a free bench to enjoy them before swapping our boots for the refuge’s borrowed Crocs, and finding our allocated bunk beds.

Refuges like this are more than just places to sleep. Full of city folk temporarily escaping to higher ground, they’re the human equivalent of a centuries-old rhythm of transhumance, where families bring sheep and cows up to the high pastures for the summer months. At dinner, we share a table with a mother from Chambéry who has brought her four-year-old son for his first visit to a refuge. “My friend gave me a list of the most family-friendly ones and I’ve decided to start a new tradition of visiting one every year with my son. I want him to love them as much as I do,” she told us between bites of a Savoyard blueberry version of Eton mess.

The previous evening, in cosy Gittamelon refuge, we’d shared similar tales, and a dorm, with three generations of a Belgian family who were following the same trail as us but in the opposite direction. And the evening before that, we’d followed suit with other families, playing cards at Refuge du Lac du Lou, a modern, child-friendly refuge just 90 minutes’ hike above the resort of Les Menuires.

Between Lac du Lou and Gittamelon we’d hiked with Estelle Roy-Berthaud from Les Menuires tourist office, following the trail through harebells, cotton grass, neon-coloured lichens and, much to the boys’ delight, thickets of wild blueberries. Stopping for lunch with Mont Blanc spearing the horizon in the distance, I ask her how the valley is managing increasing summer numbers.

“Summer tourism is a relatively new concept here, so we are not seeing the overtourism issues experienced by more well-known summer destinations in the Alps,” she says. “We’re also protected by not having too many places to stay. In winter, we have around 27,000 beds, but in summer this reduces to just 8,000, so this naturally restricts the number of people in the valley.”

Further along the trail, at Plan Lombardie, I wake in the night and slip out of one of those beds. Outside, the sky is luminous with stars, while the peaks and folds of the land are now entirely black beyond the winking of a distant light – a shepherd’s stove, perhaps, or the torch of a camper. The Belleville valley still feels wonderfully wild tonight.

Transport from London to Chambéry was provided by Flixbus; return fares from £89pp. Half-board accommodation at Refuge du Lac du Lou from €39 children/€69 adults, Refuge Gittamelon €46pp, and at Refuge Plan Lombardie from €32 children and €52 adults. Hiking guides from €25 for a half-day (guides-belleville.com). More information at lesmenuires.com