Take a hike

Sometime when you’re really bored, make a list of under appreciated activities. Now, it’s relatively easy to conjure up the ones we like; after all, noticing is the gateway to gratitude, and it’s normal to be grateful for things like eating chocolate, hugging, and dozing by a fire. But once in a while it’s interesting – and instructive – to ponder what you take for granted. And surely towards the top of that list is walking.

Our distant ancestors didn’t take walking for granted. They evolved from the crouched locomotion we associate with gorillas and chimpanzees about seven million years ago, or so scientists theorize. This change enabled them to move more quickly, see predators and prey better, and use their hands while moving. Walking, then, was quite an achievement.

Since then, parents have been the most common champions of walking. We watch with excitement and no small amount of trepidation as our babies change into toddlers. We lean down to offer our gigantic adult hands to clasp their tiny ones, stabilizing and reassuring the hesitant learner. Soon enough we’re chasing eager, fierce little runners, fleeing parental control in gleeful (or furious) assertions of growing independence. And then we spend the rest our our lives watching them walk – into kindergarten classrooms, down beaches on vacations, across stages, into dormitories, down flower-festooned aisles, across rooms while chasing their own toddlers – the list is endless, it seems.

But parents are by no means the only advocates of walking. Think of all the physical therapists and their patients; these folks work tirelessly to enable people to walk, to walk again, or to walk better. Health professionals and fitness gurus urge us to walk every day (10,000 steps, anyone?) And there are so many more walkers – entwined lovers strolling, trainer-shod tourists gawking and taking the same pictures others of their species took before them, solemn mourners shuffling slowly by a flower- draped casket.

But I want to focus on hiking, a special type of walking. Mark and I go on gentle hikes when we’re in New Hampshire; it’s glorious to be outside and moving on a pretty day. In the Spring and Summer, watching the dappled sunlight peek through green leaves and listening to water flowing down stony stream beds. And in the Fall, you walk when the light is paler but the dry leaves add their unique rustling to the outside’s chorus. Granted, we avoid the hardest hikes and steepest climbs, although we did make it to the top of a short mountain, Black Cap. Besides being good exercise, hiking makes me feel strong and capable. A hike, for me, is an accomplishment.

That’s one reason I’m so distressed at the evisceration of the National Park system and proposals to sell off public lands. Typically, a park is available to all comers or charges only a small admission fee. And once you’re there, it’s perfectly okay to have no agenda, and advertising and marketing are kept to a minimum. You just walk, across a sandy beach or on a small trail. Sticks are for balancing, not hitting, and phones are for checking maps or taking pictures, not constant scrolling or conversation. You can be alone with your thoughts, even if they’re only about when to stop to drink water or where the next bathroom is. In a world where waiting rooms sport constant TV chatter and screens on gas pumps try to sell you candy bars, hiking is a welcome oasis of calm.

If we lose our parks, we lose our wild places to walk. We must advocate for these beautiful treasures with all of our might. So take a hike, friends, and I mean that in the best possible way. And take a hike, politicians who would rob us of our joyful places and steal our descendants’ inheritance, and I mean one-way, out of governmental circles. Leave the rest of us to walk in peace.