It is a rare pleasure for me to hike with somebody else, besides the little dog. Recently two RV friends in the area came over for a short hike, right from my trailer door in the national forest. I don't know why it is so satisfying to go on an outing right from the door, but it is. I decided not to take the little dog along, partly for practical reasons; but more importantly, I wanted to honor the occasion of having human companionship for a change.
Since the trail was unmarked we started off with low expectations, intending to improvise as best we could. The dirt road up the steep ridge turned into an ATV trail, which finally turned into a single track. The forest had been kept semi-open by selective logging or firewood cutting back in the days when they actually did such things in Colorado national forests, so we had nice views of the valley most of the way up.
After two hours of rigorous uphill grinding, we rested and turned around, as was our initial agreement. The descent is the part of hiking I dislike. After some slipping and sliding we were back at the trailer a bit after noon.
I had an afterglow the rest of the day. We had not overdone it, or been sucked into the peak bagging mindset. And yet, it had been excellent exercise. Our experiment had succeeded, our expectations had been exceeded.
The last time I did any real hiking in Colorado was 35 years ago, when the "fourteener" mindset was irresistible to my boyish brain. Isn't it nice to know that it only took 35 years of seasoning to become an adult--to hike with the emphasis on the fineness of the experience, not the length?
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