My dog and I haven't done a hike in a long time, which is a real shame, considering all the advantages it has. What prompted me to take action this morning was the temperature: it was the first day of autumn chill. Hiking has always been more enjoyable to me in chilly weather.
And it worked again. We started in the cool shade and suddenly emerged into warm sun. What a delicious contrast that is!
Soon we came out of the ponderosas and onto a grassy ridgeline, where we had a view of the entire valley around Council, ID. Although I could have mountain biked this trail, it was actually more fun to walk it.
Getting too chilly for comfort is what I need to get out of the Drudgery Mode that seems to go along with hiking. Nobody forces you to be dreary -- but it seems to be an integral part of the image of hiking.
When somebody says the word "hiking" I first think of a donkey, with its back bent into a concave U by a heavy load, plodding along a dusty trail in the hot sun, while swooshing its tail to keep the insects away.
Or I think of a yankee-ish, puritanical, humorless man, like Henry David Thoreau.
Or the modern eco-Puritan, and all their blue county stereotypes.
These images (above) are the discouraging petroglyphs etched onto the inside of my skull cavity. Yes, I am to blame for them, ultimately. I want to imagine running -- not plodding -- through the forest, and yelling vicious war-whoops; attacking a tribe of enemies with our spears; vanquishing them, and then burning their village; and carrying off their young women as pleasure-slaves.
No, I have not lost my mind. But it is necessary to let the imagination run in any direction it wants, in order to get out of 'dreary donkey' mode.
My "soul" sits on many square inches of skin. It wants coolness and shade, and a breeze on a grassy ridgeline like we came out on today. My dog runs ahead of me, as a satellite soul, somehow communicating things to me, like the scent of game or the texture of the ground, connecting me to my boyhood, and to the Savage within.
Comments
My mother was raised in Grangeville and my grandfather died in the 40s on the old Whitebird Grade. You probably didn't drive the old highway, but my mother would tell about how her parents would let the kids out of the car at the top of the switchbacks. They would run straight down the hill, while my grandparents drove back and forth, beating them to the bottom.
You are hiking? You must be aging!
Maybe the 'dreary donkey' mode is a necessary step to better things. Anything which allows your mind to drift to the experience of your last magnificent paragraph is not to be diminished.
George