Nearing the End of Hiking Season

"There are things you should

notice anyway.  To live for some

future goal is shallow.  It's the sides of

the mountain that sustain life, not the top.

Here's where things grow.....but, of course,

without the top you can't have any sides. 

It's the top that defines the sides."

Robert Pirsig 

 

As I have aged, I find that I ride less in winter and hike more.  It is not that I can't ride in winter, or even that I don't ride in winter, but I ride in cold temperatures less frequently, tend to ride shorter distances, and I certainly don't enjoy it as I used to.  It is physically and mentally harder than it used to be.  The wind and cold have not changed, so I must have changed.  I suppose I am nearing the top and it will help define the stages and changes in my life.

 

 

I have often asked myself if it is the loss of the companions that I rode with throughout the winter in the past or creeping weakness and vulnerability.  The winds seem a bit more powerful.  My legs a bit weaker.  My willpower not so steeled.  Perhaps it is just because I know that I can do it, so proving it to myself and others is no longer an issue.  Regardless of the reason, it is what it is.  I no longer have a need to prove myself to anyone but me.  And perhaps it is best to have a multitude of hobbies to choose from.  Perhaps it brings a freshness to older hobbies.  Absence does, conceivably, make the heart a bit fonder, not only of people but of activities.  When spring arrives, I am longing for long, warm unhurried days on the bike and the companionship of those friends I rarely see other than in warm, bicycling weather.  By fall I am longing for the forest trails and the isolation.

 

 Instead, to keep active and not become a total winter blob, over the past few years I have started hiking more frequently in the cold months.   I enjoy the colder months in so many ways when hiking.  Less people are seen on the trail.  Ticks are fewer to non-existent.  Snakes are sleeping.  I quite enjoy plopping down on a log and opening my thermos for lunch, hot soup doing a slow creep, warming me down to my bones. I quite enjoy the starkness of the sepia landscape and how the few splotches of color here and there seem almost cartoon like and unreal.  

 

And the silence.  I enjoy the absence of sound other than crunching of leaves under my feet or the rapping of a woodpecker or the occasional rustle alongside the path by goodness knows what.  Birds will become raucous  and pervasive when spring hits, but for now there is largely a silence here.  Their song as they desperately seek mates will be one way I will know that spring is close along with the awakening of the peepers shrill clamor.  I will know that warmer weather and bicycling approaches.

 

I quite enjoy the way my lungs struggle trudging up a steep climb reminding me of my dependence upon air.  The way my calves ache during a steep climb, muscles straining to meet the demands being placed on them.  Often, particularly early in a hike, I will rush to meet the climb testing myself, knowing that my strength will normally ebb toward the summit or upon the return when the miles have left their mark on my legs.  

Of course, when Jon is with me, which is quite often, there is more sound....mostly my incessant chattering.  But it is just different somehow.  And he is quite tolerant. Usually, silence descends more surely as we get further into the hike.  And when Jon is with me, there are more demands put on these short legs.  Sometimes my shortness is a gift, when a tree has fallen and must be gone under or around, but often it is a hindrance, making me stretch to climb over it or to match my shorter strides to his longer ones, the foot or so difference in height becoming even more apparent.  Of course, we often tease each other about it.  We have been friends long enough that there are jokes between us that others would not understand.  Miles hiking or biking or perchance just time spent together gives birth to such closeness. 

 

Fortunately I live near five trailheads for the Knobstone Trail.  I don't know how long it was after I moved to this area that I became aware of the trail, but it was awhile.  It stretches for 58 miles with the loops I believe.  So many parks have trails that are only a few miles long. How glad I am to have found out about it even though there are times it kicks my butt. 

We decide to do the loop from Oxley Trail Head to Delaney Park with the idea that we can turn around or shorten the hike as needed by cutting out loops.  (This is the only part of the trail that loops). The original plan is to leave from Delaney, but Oxley is closer to my house and so the  hike starts there.  There are numerous cars in the parking lot which surprises me, but we do not run into them on the trail.  A mile or so in, Jon notices tents off to the right of the trail, and we suspect that those belong with the truck.  I don't notice, but Jon said the truck bed was filled with empty beer containers.  So we speculate that they are just camping and not hiking.  Indeed, we never see them on the trail, but their vehicles are gone from the parking lot upon our return.  

As we hike, we talk about the things that friends talk about.  The woods still seem rather dead with the occasional leaf beginning to bud out.  Jon spots and points out a few flowers, but they are not yet fully open.  And the miles pass.  We got a rather late start, so I begin to wonder about finishing before dark.  As so often happens, my imagination takes over and I picture us out there, no light, trying to find our way as not only darkness gathers around us, but the cold descends.  For it has been cold the past few days and night.  Unseasonably so.  But when we reach Delaney for the trek back, it appears all will be well barring injury or getting lost, something that could happen but is unlikely as the Knobstone is, on the whole, extremely well marked.  

 

17.7 miles later, we are back at his truck, preparing to go find nourishment.  Later I think that Mr. Persig is probably wrong in respect to a life metaphor.  Surely the sides, how we approach the top of our life, actuates the end of the long climb.  The top must be somewhat influenced by the path we take to get there and maybe even how long it takes to reach the summit.  But I suppose neither can exist without the other.  I suspect that each has a role in defining the other.  And how terrible it would be to reach the top and realize we had missed the journey, the sides, in  our quest.  Surely it is not shallow to consider the top. Regardless, it was a good day leaving me tired but sated, at least temporarily, and happy knowing that spring approaches along with long days on the bike.  Such blessings.