Month: August 2022

Some of my backcountry lessons include taking a trail name (like thru-hikers do), making sure to check the stars if you get up in the middle of the night, and taking every opportunity to put your bare feet in a cold stream on a hot day.

Like many parents, I’m horrified by the devices and the screens and how addictive staring at a screen can be – and worry that kid’s brains are being rewired by the dopamine hits of the endless scroll and the abyss of consumerism. I worry that kids won’t know what to do if they’re dropped into the backcountry, but I’m here to report dear reader – it’s not true. In the absence of the iPad and the Switch and all other external stimulation devices kids – will find a way – they’ll revert to their feral selves and bask in the bugs and sunshine and streams and huckleberries.

We spent the past few days in the backcountry around Mt Hood. I deliberately kept the mileage low and the exploring and down time high. It was a good combination of backpacking time, day hikes and no schedule. And lots of snacks.

There’s a phrase in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Sierra book that I’m reading in which he describes an early member of the Sierra Club who “pursued life intensely”. I really like that… Onward.

I remember backpacking in the Carter Range in New Hampshire – it’s one valley over from the Presidentials in the White Mountains, and there were trails there that were so rocky, and the footing so unstable, it was such difficult hiking – I was tired, my pack felt heavy, the light was fading – and I got so angry at the trail. Why would anyone make a trail here? This trail is just boulders, why does this trail exist?

It was years later I realized I had some expectation of what a trail should be like – that it should be easier, smoother, it should have better footing. There shouldn’t be so many boulders and river rocks. It’s good to question our assumptions and expectations of how we think “it should be”. The trail just existed, someone chose to walk that way and set the trail. It’s a waste of energy to be angry when things don’t match your expectation. Maybe a better way is to ask why your assumption is thus and why you think your expectation of something is correct. Our expectations are a manifestation of our preconceived biases. Question your biases.