Why We Hike

It's pretty obvious that I love to hike, as do thousands of other people worldwide.  But why?  What is it about walking for miles and miles that makes our hearts race with excitement, that makes us long for our next hiking adventure, and that makes us want to push ourselves harder and farther than we ever have before?  To find out, let's start at the beginning.

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Throughout human history, people have travelled extreme distances for religious reasons, to find food, or to go to war or rule an empire, but no one seems to know when taking long walks became less about survival  (or obligation) and more about enjoyment.  Hiking is often associated with mountaineering, so perhaps we should look at climbers for an answer.  Darby Field was the first European to climb Mount Washington, a few centuries later Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest, and in 1985 Dick Bass became the first person to climb the Seven Summits.  This is a selective history, of course, but what I think is interesting about these events is that they were all firsts in one way or another, which leads me to one of my personal conclusions on why we hike: to explore the unknown.  In Darby Field's case, it is probable that Native Americans reached the summit of Mount Washington long before he did and that there were plenty of other unrecorded ascents, but he still achieved something special by going down in the record books as the first European who did it.  Norgay, Hillary, and Bass's cases are much more extreme, since only with the advent of modern technology in the forms of advanced gear and transportation could these men have achieved what they did.  Before Norgay and Hillary, no one had ever set foot on the summit of Everest.  Norgay and Hillary were some of my heroes as a child, and I'm sure I wasn't the only child to hold them in high esteem.  Being the first to "go where no man has gone before" holds a huge amount of prestige.  We all know the name of Neil Armstrong, or, as a more recent example, that of Felix Baumgartner.  Humans idolize those who explore new places, and I think we all feel a little of this when we hike, even if it's somewhere that we know has been explored.  Hiking encourages us to go new places, at least new to ourselves, and we can catch a little of the glory of exploration in this way.  After all, you only need to look in the YouTube comments to know that everyone wants to be "first."

www.theoutdoorsguy.com

But there's more than this, of course.  We know very well we aren't the first people to hike a trail, otherwise there wouldn't be a trail to begin with.  So why else do we hike?  I mentioned earlier that people have historically taken long journeys on foot for religious reasons.  While these pilgrims of old had the destination in mind - perhaps a shrine, Canterbury, or Mecca - the journey itself could also be seen as a road to enlightenment.

www.sacredsites.com

Centuries ago, many people didn't have to journey too far to find wilderness.  It was all around them.  Even city-dwellers could leave the confines of their homes and find a world untainted by pollution, noise, and waste.  I'm not trying to romanticize a time gone by (well, not too much), but I would argue that the wonder of the natural world is largely lost to us in the age in which we live.  Perhaps this is why, for some people, the road to enlightenment is one that winds up mountains, past waterfalls, and through forests.  Perhaps we hike to find the remnants of the world that we are killing.  The indigenous peoples of every country I can think of worshipped nature in some form or other.  Perhaps in taking the slowest means of travel available through the most remote natural regions we can access we hikers are searching for whatever is left of our ancestors' gods.

www.nybg.org

My last theory on why we hike is, perhaps, more modern.  Only in affluent societies do people have the desire to "work out" to be physically fit (everyone else is working too hard to have any problems in this area). A very practical reason some people may choose to hike is that it burns a hell of a lot of calories!  In an age of "extreme sports," hiking, while perhaps less adrenaline-inducing than skydiving or mountain biking, is still pretty intense.  Long-term backpacking through rough terrain in particular is plenty extreme!  While only the luckiest of people live in an area where they can hike daily, many people still choose hiking as an exercise.

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Of course, someone looking to slim down or tone up doesn't automatically turn to hiking.  This is why I think that the reason we hike is a combination of all of these things.  Hiking sets us on an adventure.  Even a short walk into familiar woods can provide us with a glimpse of something we may not ordinarily experience.  The song of a bird, the flight of a butterfly, the sighting of a chipmunk - these things bring us out of our insular worlds and into something much larger than ourselves.  Of course, how much longer it will be larger than ourselves we cannot be sure.  Hopefully, as more people discover the joy of hiking - whether for adventure, spirituality, fitness, or a combination of these - they will take a stand for a form of recreation that is so much more.

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Whatever your reason, don't stop wandering.