I live in South Florida where concrete spills across the flat landscape and spreads and hardens
like melted butter. The hiking trails that have managed to survive at the bottom of the peninsula
are few and far between, and the trees aren’t tall or many. Palm trees cut off from the forest
don’t count, though they do bless neighborhoods overrun in concrete. I love to hike. I am
always on the hunt for a dirt path shaded by trees. Wonder of wonders, I have managed to find a
handful of inter-connecting paths adjacent to my neighborhood that, all-tolled and with some
retreading, can make for an eight+ mile hike. (Ironically, most of these paths were designed and
meant for horses. Yes, I live in a part of South Florida that is amenable to horses but not
necessarily to hikers. It doesn’t get much more oxymoronic that that.)
I say hike because as an experienced fellow hiker reportedly claimed: “Anything over four
miles is a hike.” That was nice to hear. Up until then, in my own mind, I had been reduced to
the status of ‘walker’. Like the woman who walks her dog after dinner. Or the couple that
birdwatch together on weekends. Or the mother and father with three children in tow pulling
their kids away from their iPads and videogames to acquaint them with a world of trees and
other natural things. An un-virtual world if you will. Like that.
I guess I’m a snob. I don’t want to be reduced to the status of walker.
The hiker is in a different class altogether. She wears carefully selected hiking boots—low?
mid-calf? High? It depends on the terrain. Always waterproofed, just in case. Will I be able to
make it to the top? She hears the wind sing and observes how the trees sway to the wind’s tune.
Or else, how they rest in utter stillness as if in meditation. She relishes the challenge of the
climb despite her nagging doubts. Will I make it to the top? Along the way, she is attuned to her
natural surroundings, and to the twists and turns of the trail that take her to unexpected and
startling sights: a lively brook alongside the Welch-Dickey loop trail in central New Hampshire,
or a waterfall that suddenly appears like an apparition; Champlain Valley Wonders in autumn,
glimpsed through slants of light that cut across the treetops from a perch on Mount Abraham in
Vermont; a 100-foot felled tree, 14 feet across, its belly gutted, its gnarled trunk lying
majestically in its own grave, with fresh ferns sprouting at its base, in Olympic National Park.
Where am I going with this? Dunno exactly. I find myself at a time in my life when I realize that
the days of seven-hour climbs up Mount Tongariro are over. And 11-day-treks on the
Chamonix Trail are in my rearview mirror. I find myself in a place that falls well short of the
one imagined by my younger self. Left most months to South Florida trails, I guess I’ll just see
where the trails lead me and try not to be a snob about it.