My dad has been a hiker since he was a kid and his dad took him on hiking trips in the era of canvas rucksacks and heavy leather boots. He kept it up into adulthood, partly through hiking with his older brother and partly through annual trips with the local city council. As soon as my brother and I were old enough to carry our own rucksacks, we were joining him on the wilderness trails of Washington State each summer.
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| Dad's external frame pack and boots from his and Mom's trip hitchhiking around Europe and North Africa in the 1970s. Their grand adventure always left me feeling that I had a lot to live up to. |
1989-1998
I find it hard to unpick specific hikes in my mind when I think back to my childhood. I remember campsites beside frigid alpine lakes, endless switchbacks up pine covered slopes, the deadened sound of footsteps on fallen needles through a mossy temperate rain forest and shuffling slowly along as Dad put more and more of my gear into his backpack. I remember getting a black eye from excitedly running down the trail toward our campsite, tripping and landing face first on a rock. I remember sitting down on a log, so tired I felt I couldn't go on, and my dad gently reminding me to drink some water and take it slowly, then getting up and walking twice as far as I had come by that point. I remember cautiously crossing my first snow field and asking my dad how to pee in the woods. I remember a night spent above the clouds in a fire tower that was so cold that I lay awake shivering in my sleeping bag and my brother needed to wear his spare socks on his hands. I remember the unlikely figure of a slight old man with a white beard, clad in black cotton clothing, with sandals on his feet and clutching a notebook in his hands. He looked overwhelmed to see a party of twelve in bright Gortex jackets charging up the trail toward him as he descended from his pilgrimage to the place where Jack Kerouac had spent a summer as a fire lookout.
Most of all I remember a sense of happiness. Dad would have us collect water and he would boil it on the heavy little stove before refilling our canteens. We would eat stodgy meals that had been sealed in metallic envelopes, sleep in our family's old green A-frame tent and wake up with the sunrise. By the time we returned home, every stitch of clothing would be damp with sweat or rain or dew, but we knew the earth a little better. That was what camping meant to me - a long hike away from anywhere, a deep silence, and a deep contentment.
When I got older, we stopped going for one reason or another. My last trip was in my first year of high school when we went with the city council. I went away to University and forgot all about hiking. Nature walks, sure, but camping was something you did with your family. Your dad planned the trip and you just packed your bag and followed along behind him. That was how it had always been. And so I went to sleep, and it took over ten years for me to wake up again.
2011
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| My first hike as an adult, up Pen y Fan in Wales. I was shocked and ashamed at how difficult I found it. |
"What are we going to do while we're there?" my partner asked when I suggested the trip to Wales.
"I've planned it all out. I found a place that does falconry experience days, and we're staying near this amazing little town that's full of bookshops so obviously we're going there. Also we're right next to the Brecon Beacons so we can go walking on one of the days."
I was planning a trip to Brecon, Wales for our wedding anniversary and I hadn't been hiking in a long time, but I thought that it wouldn't be too hard. I had a pretty physical job, after all, running around the biggest library in Cambridge fetching books for readers.
We decided to do a loop hike that took in two of the peaks, then looped back around and had a third climb before heading back to the bus stop. A third of the way up the first climb and I was practically hyperventilating I was so unfit. I flashed back to my younger self sitting by the side of the trail, complaining to my dad that I didn't think I could keep going. It was too hard. I wished I could just be done already. And this was just a day hike. I had barely any weight in my backpack. Ten years of studiously avoiding exercise and compulsively eating to dull my depression had done a number on me.
Later that year, my partner got an opportunity to go to New Zealand for work for two months, and I had the chance to go and visit briefly. While they were there, they went on some day hikes with co-workers and we went out together for a few walks. At the same time I was making the decision to turn my life around. I had been admiring roller derby players for a few years, thinking how cool they looked, then thinking, "But I could never do that." Then a childhood friend, who had never been active, took it up and quickly became amazing at it. Cracks began to appear in my self-perception. "If she can do that... maybe I can too?" I started working out. I joined roller derby. I started to watch what I was eating a bit more. Slowly, slowly, my life started to change...
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| Some things have been the same since that first day hike. We almost always take a bear with us. |
2014-2016
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| Tackling a pretty challenging day hike in the Peak District just before the Spartan Race in 2016. |
As I discovered I actually quite liked exercise and the outdoors, and gradually got fitter, we started taking a few more day hikes, usually as one small part of a holiday: Dartmoor, the Cotswolds, the Peak District and back to the Brecon Beacons for a longer loop than our first hike in 2011. My partner had still never camped before (apart from an ill-fated night at a music festival), so I thought it was high time we remedied that. I bought them a cheap two person tent for Christmas, but it waited unused for a long time. As 2016 rolled around I was working with a personal trainer and had set myself the goal of doing a Spartan Race (a 5k obstacle course race). I got into the best shape of my life, but the cost was a lot of wear-and-tear on my body and a not entirely healthy relationship with food. Still, I proudly trained for and completed the Spartan Race, raising over £800 for Alzheimers UK in the process. The week after that found my partner and me heading back to Washington to see my parents, and then on to Portland for a short holiday, with a few hikes I was looking forward to doing on the calendar.
Little did I know that one of those hikes would fundamentally change the course of my life.
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