It was New Years Eve, back in 2010, my buddy Jeff and I were having dinner with our wives and the discussion of getting back into physical shape arose. Neither of us found the “gym” idea an appealing option. I mentioned we should consider doing some local hiking, as living here on the Central Coast of California affords us access to many hiking trails. I passed along the story that a few years prior, of my Sister and Brother-in-law hiking up to Half Dome in Yosemite National Park and climbing the cables to the summit of the Granite Monolith. During this conversation, Jeff asked, What’s “Half-Dome?”. I described to him the Yosemite Valley and its walled granite edifices located in California’s Sierra Nevada. Specifically, I drew a verbal picture of Half-Dome and how it stood majestically over the Valley. I grabbed my lap-top and promptly googled “Half-Dome” to show him pictures of it. After viewing some photos of the monolith and the cables, Jeff’s memorable response was, “I can’t believe they actually let people up there?” I proposed we should set Half-Dome and its famous cable climb as a future goal once in hiking shape. Jeff loved the idea and pumped up, we agreed to start hiking.

I’m going to leap forward from that News Year’s day to let you know I’m still hiking. Additionally, I have become an avid backpacker. I’ve learned much about myself, my physical abilities and my mental toughness. I’ve come to understand the importance of preparation, equipment and techniques involved in hiking and backpacking. I’ve come to appreciate our National Parks, wilderness areas and protected forests. I’ve marveled at the grandeur and beauty of the stop-in-your-track vistas, upsurging mountains, high alpine meadows, Coniferous forests, snow-melt rivers, and thought-provoking night sky’s. I’ve rambled in remote places, revelled in the aloneness and self-sufficiency it required to earn that moment. I’ve stood on ground where I may have been the first. I’ve been apprehensively lost. I’ve tripped, stumbled and staggered on the trail. I’ve face-planted, limped along on pulled muscles, scratched my legs and gashed my hand open on the trail. I’ve walked through clouds of mosquitos. I have warily watched bears, side-stepped snakes, quietly admired deer, scared-up wild pigs, watched carrion and raptors ride thermals, stared down a bobcat and a badger and studied bugs of every type. These are the rewards and challenges of being in the wilderness and I love it so.

The constant take away after a backpacking trip is I always want to go back. There is an underlying wanderlust in me, a curiosity to see, observe and experience places. I was born and lived on the American Canal Zone, back when it existed in the Republic of Panama. As kids, my friends and I spent my summers exploring and observing the jungles and rain forests of Panama. I was captivated by the diversity of life forms, both flora and fauna, and the unique adaptation to the conditions that have occurred over time. For whatever reason, I’m compelled to go and explore. I sense this is innate to my being, perhaps spurred on in some chromosomal fashion from my ancestors. I recall listening to my father’s stories of his California childhood, of time spent with his father and brothers in the Sierra. I treasure the old, grainy black and white photos, taken in the 1920’s of my dad holding a stringer of 15 inch trout at Convict Lake in the eastern Sierra. My dad earned his Boy Scout Eagle Scout award in and around the Sierra’s in the 1920’s when he was a teenager. He was an outdoorsman, an old soul at heart who loved nature and believed in the conservation efforts of our National Park treasures.

                       

While living in Panama, Dad would drive my friends and I down a jungle road that led to Fort San Lorenzo. With butterfly nets in hand we would scamper along the road edge, waiting for the elusive blue Morpho or swallowtail butterflies to make their appearance. “Royal blue!”, someone would yell!”, (that’s what we called blue morpho’s)! We would give chase, swiping our nets through the air at the darting butterfly, their iridescent, brilliant blue wings glinting and flashing in the sun, tempting us on with hopes to add to our insect collections.

As the searing tropical morning wore on, we kids would tire and Dad would load us up and drive us onto Fort San Lorenzo, an historic and time-worn redoubt positioned on a rocky promontory, with a panoramic view of the Chagres river confluence emptying its fresh water into the Atlantic ocean. Here, my dad would explain how the famous pirate, Captain Henry Morgan, attacked and captured Fort San Lorenzo, of how he then set off up the Chagras to eventually trek overland on the Las Cruses trail and sack Panama City on the Pacific Coast of the isthmus. From those experiences, my sense of curiosity and adventure were born. Sadly, my father and I never hiked together. Nor did we spend time in the wilderness camping together. I didn’t know at the time, that my dad was suffering from the on-coming effects of emphysema and a lung ailment called Valley Fever he unwittingly acquired as a child in the central valley of California. My dad was 47 years old when I was born. By the time I was 20 years old, he was in his sixty-eighth year and in bad health. A year later, he would be gone.

It’s a fact, witnessed by my personal experience, that trekking long miles on the trail affords one time to contemplate the fates of life. Without delving to deep into the psychology of it all, I’ve come to believe that in some way backpacking connects me to my father. There are seminal moments during an unyielding march when sore feet, achy knees and heavy shoulders are screaming that they doesn’t have another step in them. Yet, I find a way to make that next step, and the step thereafter and eventually arrive at my destination. It’s in these moments, when I have reached deep and physically rallied myself forward, that I feel my Dad’s presence as my hiking emissary, pushing me along to camp. Framed that way, I think my Dad would be proud of me.

Taking long hikes or backpacking into isolated wilderness areas is not a recreation most people are compelled to do. Walking miles on uneven trails of dirt, kicking up dust, side-stepping rocks, pushing through sandy scree, splashing into creeks and rivers, tripping over tree roots, plodding up steep climbs and granite steps is physically hard. When weighed against the relaxing option of watching a televised football game from the couch, it’s not a convincing trade-off for most. Carrying a forty pound backpack up steep switchbacks, in the heat of the day; to be drenched in sweat and to peer over a thousand foot mountain cliff, knowing a misstep means your doom, is not a winnable “lets-go hike” argument for most people. To envision setting up a tent, sleeping on an air-filled mattress inches from the ground, hearing the disquiet of a night-time campsite, when you could be snuggled in the comfort of your own bed, does not easily sway one to backpacking. I get it.

There is however, an intrinsic, soul-baring, strip-it-down-to basics, self-sufficient element to hiking and backpacking that allows one to delve deep into their being. Though it can be done safely, one chooses to accept a degree of risk and simultaneously hike into desolation the unknown. You leave a fairly predictable daily routine of life in civilization and for a few hours or perhaps days of physical and austere hardship. Like a base jumper who steps off the edge of a mountain, you choose to trek into the unforseen and a unknown outcome. You must prepare well, all the while, understanding a simple misstep, misdirection, equipment failure, injury, a change in weather or terrain could lead to potential disaster. For a few days you completely rely on your preparation, know-how, equipment, and planning to see you through to the finish. In this respect, one must have done their homework and contingency planning. To some, this risk is too much to bear. To some, the physical effort required, the sacrifice of the civilized creature comforts, aren’t outweighed by the soul-searching,  immensity of mountains, the natural beauty or the starry sky. Hiking and backpacking will Either it will grab you by the heart and your evolve or you walk away knowing it’s not your gig.  I respect that decision.