I Have Complicated Feelings About Hiking

I have complicated feelings about hiking.

My husband and I just took a trip to Maine, and we did a lot of hikes. Truthfully, I hated doing it at times, but I loved to have done it. Does that make sense?

This was a different type of trip for us. No kids. No animals. No checking emails all the time. No itinerary other than to make our way up the coast from Maryland to Maine and mosey around the towns once we got there. It was also an extremely active trip because one of the biggest attractions is Acadia National Park and there are so many trails to explore.

I am not a sedentary person, but not usually the type to be more active on vacation than I am in my regular routine. My ideal vacation involves a beach, books and sunshine. I like some good exercise, but I prefer not to feel like I am dying. I like to park myself for the day and relax in my beach chair with a novel. As you can tell from Amy’s posts, she is the opposite. Everyone is different in how they unwind. I realized a lot about myself during this trip and especially during the hiking parts.

First of all, I fully admit that my idea of hiking is a lot more exciting than actually going hiking. I want to love it. I really do. I want to be someone that sees a map of a trail marked “strenuous” and gets excited at the challenge. I tried to be that person and I lasted about 2 days. By day 3, I was so over it. I was sweating through the brim of my Patagonia trucker hat (my one and only outdoorsy accessory) and all I wanted was there to be a giant iced latte at the top of the mountain! My knees were killing me. I was sore. No wonder people use those ski pole things. They must help so you don’t trip over every stick like I did. I kept joking with my husband that each photo we took was going to be the “Dateline” photo. You know the one the show will use to show the “happy couple” just before the sweet little wife took a tumble over the mountain…

Now that I have time to reflect, I feel proud of myself for doing hikes that were out of my comfort zone and not as leisurely as I would have hoped. As much as I hated climbing uphill over rocks, I did it. I had sweat beads pouring down my face and it was not pretty, but I did it. A few days of hiking is not quite The Amazing Race, but I will pat myself on the back because it was no walk in the park! It was worth taking amazing photos at the top of the mountain with my husband. It was worth it to look out at the big wide world and see something beyond myself. It was even worth having to cover myself in Benadryl from all the bites. And it was absolutely worth it just to get out of my safe space and do something hard just to do it. And for the record, the post-hike ice cream is better than anything I could have imagined. I ate every bite of it. Sometimes food is the best reward.

I did a bit of thinking on a couple of the hikes. I spend so much of my life in a routine, and I am comfortable with that for the most part. I try to fight it, but I am a creature of habit. Some people might call me rigid, which kind of makes me cringe, but it’s true. I recognize that in order to grow as a person and really enjoy this thing called Life, I have to be willing to do things that make me uncomfortable (ie: be less rigid). Some of the discomfort of hiking was physical. (The following thoughts for example: It’s hot. I’m sweaty. I am riddled with mosquito bites). A lot of discomfort was also psychological.

I haven’t always done well with trying new things and it’s taken me a long time to realize that about myself and to make changes so that I can experience more. That is why I think traveling to unknown places sometimes stresses me out, but also why I think it helps keep me mentally strong. It’s not that I don’t want to go, but I worry about my routine. I worry about the most trivial of things: food, exercise, and internet access. Just admitting that makes me feel so silly. Such first world problems! I remember several years ago I went to Paris, one of the most magnificent cities in the world, and I was on a diet! Seriously?! I went to the land of croissants, cheese and champagne and I was on a DIET. I look back on that now and I laugh at myself jogging through downtown Paris instead of enjoying the sights and eating bread. I was such a bad traveler back then. Even more rigid! I was fighting my routine and I missed out on a lot of once-in-a-lifetime experiences because of my fears. I regret it now and I am grateful that I grew from that experience and if I ever make it back to Paris again, I am going to indulge. We only get one life!

I am not an expert traveler (I definitely “go” more places than I “travel”), but I do believe that the older I get, the more I appreciate the larger world around me.

I want to share those experiences as a family and especially with my son. I want to keep traveling to places I haven’t been and challenging myself to try new things that scare me, even when they sound as daunting as our last hike was.

It’s definitely a work in progress, but I know that in order to keep growing as a person, I need to keep trying new things and letting myself push past discomfort so that I can feel the joy that is Life.

Enjoying the scenery in Maine