The Wisdom of Hiking

A marriage of grit, humility, and hubris: Part 1

---

I’m going to phase this essay into two parts. The first part will focus on the title of this piece: the wisdom of hiking! The second part may as well be considered a blooper reel because I’m going to take you on a ride of all the absolutely soul crushing disasters that have occurred in these places. I’d be doing y’all a disservice by pretending it’s all sunshine and rainbows when it’s better served as a smorgasbord of bizarre experiences.

---

Part 1

---

Shinrin-yoku, the Japanese art known as ‘Forest Bathing’, is both a great friend of mine and a theory I have put to the test more times than I’d like to admit.

My hometown was famously built on top of a swamp. It takes a lavish five-minute walk from my house for me to end up deep in the woods.

Middlesex Fells Reservation

Naturally, it was the ideal spot for underage drinking. It later evolved into the spot where we’d smoke way too much weed in the parking lot and then go for long hikes because it’d ‘bring us closer to nature’. Whether or not that’s true, I’m not sure, but I once hugged a tree on the most popular path in the place and passed out for two hours. I’ve always imagined a guide taking people through the woods, spotting me and saying something akin to ‘on your left is the resident tree hugging stoner. Legend has it that he’s slept for millennia and has yet to show any signs of waking.’

As I matured a bit, my new favorite activity was to hike about an hour into the woods towards my favorite boulder overlooking the reservoir. Once there, I’d take a seat and whip out my notebook to write poetry and observations of how I felt in the solitude and shelter the woods provided me. I was falling in love. An anxious, depressed, and lost boy found what he was looking for in those woods.

In the twinkling of an eye, I’d learned every trail and had become a more animalistic version of myself. When I’m in the woods or the mountains, it’s the main time I feel completely ‘human as animal’. There’s an instant sense of connection the moment I enter, a sense of belonging, a sense of peace. The bombardment of noise pollution from every car driving by disappears and is replaced by a babbling brook that transcends me to another plane of spirituality. Howling at the top of my lungs in there never once felt strange to me. In fact, it’s one of my favorite releases to this day. I’ve made love in there, I’ve sobbed out my absolute being in there, and I’ve had some of the most profound insights in my life in there. Maybe there’s a reason I look like a woodsman 🤔

Eventually, like a man driven by primordial instinct, I found progressively more challenging hiking trails. Ultimately, this led to me a famous New Hampshire mountain climb: Mt. Washington, the highest peak in the Northeastern US at 6,228 ft. The hike was around four hours up and four hours back down.

I was MOSTLY fit at this period, so the strenuous physicality wasn’t necessary the issue. The mental side is, however, a radically different tale.

The moment I arrived, I remember looking up, straining my neck to get the full view, and realizing the daunting task I’ve just undertaken. It began as any basic forest hike does. The incline was considerably steeper, but there was still a familiarity to it.

I’ll never forget the feeling of when I finally climbed out of the woods and looked out. Standing above the forest I had just spent hours clambering out of, I knew in my gut that I was close to the top. As I turned around, filled with absolute glee and cocksureness that I was on the cusp of conquering my goal, I fell to my knees in an absurd fit of laughter. It felt akin to trekking up an endless staircase, thinking I was nearing the top, and then falling to my knees with the crushing realization that I was still very much at the base.

As I continued to slog up the mountain, being passed at lightning speed by these spritely French-Canadian children, it hit me that climbing this beast of a mountain was a perfect model for achieving anything in life. There are endless metaphors for self-development wrapped around the idea of climbing mountains, and it became abundantly clear why, but more about this later.

One of the things I’ll never forget is how I kept thinking to myself, ‘what is this feeling?’ It wasn’t entirely new to me, but it was exceedingly rare. The combination of endorphins from climbing, a sense of being such a small being in the face of this mountain, and the consistent aesthetical bombardment of natural beauty, all led to an incredible sense of awe.

My senses were overwhelmed in the best way possible. On my right, a gorgeous waterfall. On my left, an enchanting ravine. My ears were blessed by an incredible euphony:

• The surging waterfall: a thunderous curtain of nature’s tears.

• The sound of the wind whispering secrets through the trees’ dancing leaves.

As I neared the top, my legs were absolute mush, expired jelly on a hot summer day. Returning to the model of self-development goals, one thing became clear to me in that moment: if you just keep going and don’t stop, you’ll get there eventually. There was the nice boost of getting through the forest and feeling great about that accomplishment, which reminded me of the rapid progress I can make when I start pursuing a new goal. The realization that I wasn’t even close to the peak was representative of the feeling when the rapid progress slows down and it became painfully clear how much more work is necessary to reach the top. I refer to this phase as the ‘muck’. The muck is unrewarding. The muck is boring. The muck is necessary. By putting in consistent effort (continuing up the mountain), resting when necessary, changing paths when discovering one that felt more suitable for me, I eventually reached the top. Having the ability to visualize and feel the reward at the end helped immensely. I couldn’t stop thinking about how incredible I’d feel when I reached the top. No matter what happens in my life, I could say I climbed Mt. Washington. Visualizing how amazing the steak and beer I was going to crush once I got back down certainly didn’t hurt, either.

Nature has so much to teach us when we’re ready to receive the lessons. It’s significantly easier to attain insights when facing something quite literally greater than you. Being reminded how small we really are, a single grain on an endless beach, helps put things into perspective in a very sublime way.

Stay tuned for Part 2, aka the blooper reel of my endless struggles and failures on several different trails.

Paid Subscribers: I’m starting a series that will be around 2-3 newsletters a month for paid subscribers only. Don’t miss out! Bear and I appreciate the hell out of your support! Also, stay tuned for the first episode of Casually Copacetic coming in the next couple of weeks!

---

Are you much of a nature person? Let me know about your experiences in the comments below!

---