What do you wish you could do more every day?
Best for:
Hiking Enthusiasts, nature lovers, burnt-out creatives, anyone whose brain needs a break, and individuals who find peace in putting one foot in front of the other.
I bet you can’t guess it?
Who am I kidding it’s obviously hiking. I am willing to bet that even if you’re new here you could have guessed that in under that three tries.
I’m not aiming to get the best social media reel. I really don’t care to visits the tourist traps in nature. I just wish I could hike every day. Most the time it is the only time my brain shuts the hell up.
The trail doesn’t care about your to-do list, what you wear, or the color of your hair. It cares where you put your foot next and what you take when you leave.
The Trail Works & The Noise Stops:
Once I get out there, the constant string of conversation inside my head stops. The loop of everything I forgot, what I did wrong, and everything I should have said in a different way…finally just, fades. For once it isn’t from just ignoring it. I can’t afford to. If you ask me, honestly, none of us can pay that price.
When you’re picking your way down a slick forrest trail in the rain, if snow is to your shins and a mile feels like ten, or while you are watching for roots under leaves, there’s no room for my racing thoughts. The only thing that matters is the next place my foot is pushed into the ground.
My brain treats every thought like an urgent bulletin, and the wild is the only place I don’t have to answer.
No Explaining Required:
The woods do not need my pronouns. Water doesn’t wonder about my medical history. Moss on sandstone doesn’t care if I’m too much. Out there, I’m not a transgender man I have nothing to prove to the trees.
I’m not a publisher, a healthcare worker, or a son who lost his mother too young. When I hit the trailhead I am but just a person with a dog. In the wild i spend my time moving through a world that existed long before me and will exist long after I leave it.
That kind of quiet? You can’t buy it. There is no chance you can meditate your way there, either. You have to earn it. By every step and every mile, until your shoulders drop from by your ears. The your breath evens out and you remember what it feels like to just be… you.
The woods don’t ask who you are. They do not care; they just let you remember.
Where the Words Come From:
About half of my poems arrive on the trail or reflecting on a trail. Not simply in front of a screen, and not only in the garage with smoke curling out of my lungs and toward the ceiling. Mid-climb., at a sun-kissed waterfall, in the middle of the autumn leaf change, standing still while Luna’s ears perk at something I can’t see, or whatever may be the cause.
The words come fully formed, like they’ve been waiting for me to get focused and quiet enough to hear them.
I don’t chase them. They just find me. They find me most often when I’m moving slow enough to listen.
Poetry does not come from staring at l blank paper in a notebook. It come from standing at the edge of something you know is bigger than you are.
Church Just Make It Sandstone:
I’m not religious, not even slightly. The trail is the closest I get to going to church. Not the kind with pews and sermons. I mean the kind with 350-million-year-old sandstone. The kind that has hemlock roots teasing you while trying to trip you up. Where winter warm ups inspire soundscapes of water moving slowly under ice.
Where you can feel the weight of everyone who stepped foot here before you. The Indigenous people who quarried flint from the ridges, settlers cutting timber into logs, and hikers who left heart rocks on benches.
It should be no surprise if you know me that I find my mom out here. She waits on every trail. Though, I carry her with me and yet she greats me at every trailhead and tree-line. The woods are where I can still converse with her. Still the only place I can still hear her laugh, sometimes. Where I still feel her proud of me for showing up, for pushing through, and for always finding the beauty in places overlooked.
The trail is where I find my mom. The woods seem to hold onto the parts of us the rest of the world can’t fathom to grasp.
The Trail Teaches Me
There is a lesson in every hike and beauty in every backyard. Try to show up prepared, whatever that looks like for you. Know what is worth the speak, what is pushing it, and when to turn back. Respect the conditions and the natural plants and animals that live in the environment. You are their visitors so be well behaved.
Practice leave no trace. ALWAYS pack out what you pack in. The weight you carry matters and so does the company you choose. Some trails are hard and worth it. Some are beautiful, but all are for you to enjoy if you’re respectful.
The trail doesn’t reward ego at all. The trail would rather see presence. It rewards you for paying attention. You can’t bully your way up a mountain, have some humanity. Try and fake your way through a gorge but, the trail knows. Nature will always show you exactly where you need to grow.
The trail doesn’t care how fast you finish. It only cares that you keep showing up.
The Best Version of Me:
I wish I could hike every day, it’s the only time I’m not performing. I am no longer the healthcare worker who has the answers, the publisher who is building something from nothing, the transgender man with something to prove, or even the son who lost his mother too young.
I am just a person in green and orange croc junipers, with a dog, walking into the tree-line, finding heart rocks, laughing when I slip or fall, or stopping to watch the sunlight change the face of a cliff . It is being present, quiet, and exactly who I am whenever people are watching or not.
The version of me that hikes is happiest. The version of me, I want to be all the time, by far.
The Days I Can’t:
I sadly can’t hike every day. Between work, adult life, and exhaustion. Though I do carry the trail with me when I can’t be on it. The rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other, the knowledge that the mountain doesn’t care how fast you climb, and the certainty that the wilderness will still be there when I can get back.
That’s what I wish I could do everyday. Perfect days on the trail. The calm peaceful quiet, and the rocks under my shoes. I want more of the version of me that exists when no one’s around to bother me. The peace I find in the spaces that don’t ask me to be anything but present is what I’m looking for.
I carry the wilderness with me; even when I can’t be with it .
Before You Go
If you’ve got a trail that calls to you, a place where your brain finally shuts up, a spot of woods that feels like coming home, and you don’t mind sharing drop it in the comments. I’m always looking for the next place to put my feet.
If you’ve never found that place yet? Keep looking. It’s out there. Waiting for you to show up.
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