Illustration by Dola Sun
I might want to be a hiker. So far, I have the hiking boots and a water bottle. The boots I bought for my trip to Iceland four years ago. The water bottle I bought in Iceland. If I lived in Iceland, I would definitely be a hiker.
But I live here in a city of cars, where hiking might never even register as a thing. Walking is an everyday part of life. You just open your door and go. Technically, running is the same, though it does require being half-crazy. (I’ve been a runner for 30-plus years, so I’m allowed to say that.)
Biking is taking over the city, with all the connected trails and signs announcing the connected trails at every park on the east side. I think you can get from here to Canada just following the Little Miami River.
What I’m saying is being a hiker of trails is, as my 15 year old says, niche. Like rock climbing or snowboarding, but without all the breaking of bones.
So, as I drive by the REI store on I-71, what’s with the wistful look in my eye? The one that says Maybe? It’s all about timing. I turn 52 this month, which I believe is the official threshold for retirement being closer than youth. Hence, I’m considering several candidates for my retirement project.
So far, hiking is in the lead. Buying a lake house was the front-runner until I remembered my husband and I don’t have an extra million dollars; we do have two college-age kids. I already garden, read, and embroider—the old-lady triumvirate. Starting a book club would require being too social, so no thank you.
But hiking has everything I like in an exercise: It’s physically challenging, and you can do it alone.
I had a love/hate relationship with hiking for much of my childhood. When I was 5, my parents bought a used pop-up camper, and our family of seven set about exploring the Bluegrass State. Technically, there were nine of us, but my two oldest brothers were in their late teens and 20s and had the important job of keeping watch over the house and their weed stash. The rest of us went, and it was the best thing in the world.
Not all parts were equal, though. The best parts were the playground, the pool, the questionably clean lake, and the camp store, where my saved quarters could buy postcards and candy. Only one thing stood in the way of all that low-budget fun: hiking trails.
It’s like my parents thought it was required to spend the morning in the woods working up a sweat and walking for absolutely no good reason. No one kept track of steps yet, but I swear those two were determined to make sure we got in our 10,000. Sometimes they’d bring their small green tree guidebook and explain which trees we were seeing. God help me.
Every so often there would be a half-broken bridge to creep across with my sisters or the chance to leap from rock to rock along a creek with my brother. Usually, though, the trails were far too long for my taste.
When I was maybe 7 or 8, I had the clever idea to “forget” my gym shoes and bring only my sandals on a camping trip to some state park in Kentucky. Laura, 10 years older than me, got blamed, since I was the youngest and she was generally in charge of me (or at least I let her think she was in charge of me when it was convenient). I seem to recall the solution was that I had to hike in my sandals.
All the Ketteler girls had matching sandals. We called them “ADSs,” which stood for—get ready for it—Almost Dr. Scholl’s. My Almost Dr. Scholl’s were Almost a Coup. But the hiking would not be stopped.
As an adult, I came to appreciate a nice hike, though usually as a means to an end. If I wanted to see more of Mt. Rainier, the mountain wasn’t going to see itself. If we wanted to make it to the creek we promised the kids they could play in (“Which better be the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, Mom, because I hate this!”) we needed to follow the trail through the woods. Hiking was either about making the most of a destination or something to force upon my children, the exact same way it had been forced upon me. Because paybacks. (I’m not mad about becoming my mother; she’s basically a 90-year-old badass.)
One weekday last October, I was having a rough afternoon. I don’t remember exactly what happened. Maybe I had just screamed “I’ve never known anyone more in their own way than you!” to my teenage son. Maybe my agent and I had received another rejection on my manuscript. I don’t have to remember the details to remember the feeling of being stuck, like there was literally nowhere to go.
I fantasized about leaving my cell phone at home and just disappearing! But who was I kidding? Like I would ever want to break my New York Times game streak.
I put on my gym shoes and slumped into the car, no specific destination in mind. I was aimlessly driving on Montgomery Road when French Park suddenly popped into my head. Why? No idea. I hadn’t been in 20 years. But it was close by, so I went.
I drove up the big hill at the entrance and parked my car near an expanse of green. I began walking, with no notion of where I was going, other than toward the woods. Every step had the tenor of a teenage diary entry. Parks were stupid. People were stupid. Life was stupid.
Soon I was on the Creek Trail walking alongside a creek, a forest of burgundy and gold begging me to look up, and it wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t stupid at all. The air was just at the edge of chilly. Crisp like an apple, making my lungs remember the joy of being lungs. I stepped over roots, hopped on rocks, and tried to find the prettiest, most perfect leaf.
I was every age I’d ever been, and no age at all. Because the woods didn’t give a shit about me or need anything from me. The creek was creeking, the trees were treeing, the sky was skying, and I was the most unimportant thing in the entire ecosystem.
I wasn’t here because I’d been told to be here as a means to an end. I wasn’t here to create a memory with my children. I wasn’t even here to feast my eyes on some sight I read about in a guidebook. I was just here to be here. That’s pretty underrated in everyday life.
I went back the next day and the next week and nearly every week, until the trees were bare and it was too cold to feel my hands. Next year, I will really learn about hiking, I told myself. This will be my thing!
Beware the fanciful ideas of winter.
I’ve yet to hike more than about four miles, but I have checked out multiple trails in Cincinnati. Mariemont Lower Gardens is strange, and the Johnson Nature Preserve is tiny but bursting. And I still keep coming back to French Park. As I hike its trails, I imagine what it would be like to backpack overnight. To hike for days.
Mental training matters, too. Sometimes I imagine I’m on the Appalachian Trail somewhere in Virginia. Shenandoah, maybe, where we once camped when I was a kid. I walk right by my childhood self, see her frown when she realizes it’s at least another hour until she can do handstands in the campground pool.
Or maybe I’m out west on the Pacific Crest Trail, like Cheryl Strayed in Wild. She was trying to find herself after the tumultuous years of her early 20s, and I’m trying to figure out what the hell my 50s should be about. She was trying to walk back to herself, and I’m trying to walk into myself.
I can be a crazy old hiker lady with two long, gray braids, a khaki-colored bucket hat, and a sturdy wooden walking stick. I could hike rim-to-rim at the Grand Canyon. Can you do that? Descend down into the canyon and climb your way back out? It would be murder on my glutes. The French Park hillsides already have them zinging.
But I wonder if I need to do something big and bold to be a real hiker. Something worthy of a memoir and a movie adaptation staring Reese Witherspoon. If a thing is good, is more of that thing even better? If 3.5 miles in Amberley Village brings me contentment, will 1,000 miles chasing mountain ranges be 300 times better? Does enjoyment scale?
I don’t know yet if I want a big adventure or an hour of quiet by a creek a few times a week.
So, yes, I might be a hiker. Or I might just remain a person who hikes. Either way, the woods don’t care—and that’s the most beautiful thing of all.
