Walk, or Look: You Can’t Do Both

When I started hiking, I thought I’d immediately fall in with a group and hike most of the trail together.

Instead, most days I hike completely alone, see some familiar faces at lunch stops, and occasionally get the happy surprise of seeing people I shared a shelter, hotel room, or town day with weeks ago at an overlook or brewery.

And honestly? For now, it suits me just fine. I’m enjoying weaving in and out of tramilies (trail families,) leapfrogging and falling back, reuniting and then saying goodbyes.

Mostly, I’m at peace with the way of things because I’m truly happy to stick to my own pace (as awesome as it is to sometimes have a friend to chat with or inspire you to climb that 500ft near-vertical rock scramble without pause.)

I’m not here to crush miles.

I am here for the gradual changes and steady understandings and newfound-ness of it all.

And yes, watching the numbers climb in my daily journal is sometimes part of that. A 16-mile day is what injured my double-zero-spawning knee as I limped into Neel’s.

Now, a 16-mile day is a steady, easy distance I use to walk into town just in time for dinner… and I’m grateful for how quickly my body has adapted to accommodate this new way of living.

I enjoy pushing myself, but I’m not particularly eager for this hike to end.

What would be the point of it all if I never slowed down, stopped, breathed, and stretched the beautiful moments paper-thin?

I definitely admire and respect the badass hikers who are putting away multiple 20+ mile days in a row, and on occasion I will crunch out a few myself… but my surroundings are always reminding me to: “Slow down. Would you look at that?”

And I feel, as a deeply agnostic and not-spiritual-at-all person, that the Trail has been teaching me a lesson in slow living and intentional hiking at every opportunity it gets. Almost every time I’ve tried to walk and crane my head to look for an owl, at a view, etc., I’ve managed to trip over a root and send myself into a scramble of askew trekking poles and string of choice words.

In those moments, the Trail says, loud and clear: “Walk or look; you can’t do both.”