Fresh Air & Misery
written by David Baker
I went on a hike recently. As an urban twentysomething, hiking, camping, going to REI to prepare one’s self for hiking or camping are things that should occur frequently in your life. No big deal. Nothing requiring celebrity-death-coverage-on-24-hour-news attention. After all, connecting with nature in a transcendentalist-hipster way is something my overeducated, underemployed age group takes great pleasure in.
Not me.
Even a half-mile hike is like being trapped in an episode of Man vs. Wild. It’s not that I don’t have the physical ability and survival knowledge — I read Hatchet and half of Brian’s Winter — I’d just prefer to still be sleeping off my hangover on a Sunday afternoon, not battling nature to the death.
Well, I don’t know about the physical ability part. I always feel old. Could be the hair loss. Could be the hard candy. Could be the overwhelming urge to whittle. The fact is I’m 23. I feel like I’m at least 50.
But after a weekend full of beer, nachos and pizza, my friends talked me into strapping on my Nike ACG shoes — purchased not for mountaineering, but because I was temporarily hypnotized by an attractive sales girl — and taking a hike into the mountains outside of Salt Lake City.
It was a blue-sky Sunday, and afternoon was melting into evening. Our car wound through a tree-lined canyon until we spotted a trail we found online — the trail a Utah hiking Web site gave an “easy” rating.
The trailhead parking lot was easy. Walking over the bridge above the bubbling creek was easy. After that, not so much.
We had only trudged up the rocky path a few hundred yards before I was panting. My calves already burned as we reached the creek crossing. I wasn’t sure whether to cloak the wagons and float it, or ford the icy cold water. Instead, I chose the narrow log shimmering with lubricating moisture. I knew I was going to fall in, get hyperthermia and drown, splashing maniacally in the six inches of water that ran down the rocky creek bed. I knew my friends would record it on their camera phones, post it on YouTube, and I would be shamed in death, as in life.
I gingerly inched out onto the log. About halfway across I started to wobble. With my watery tomb trickling below me, I made the split-second decision to take a leap of faith. Channeling Carl Lewis, I flew the two feet through the air — very majestically, or at least that’s how I saw it in my head — and landed with a thud on the other bank. The water lapped at my heels, but I had made it, dry and safe. Although the day’s beer intake was shaken up and threatening to escape, I figured that was a win for me against nature.
1-0, me.
Nature wouldn’t let me enjoy my victory for long. The trail grew steeper. We were starting to climb the mountain. No ladder. Just a dirt trail — albeit a perfectly maintained one — headed straight up the mountain for as long as I could see. This was no gentle slope. This was not easy. I made a mental note about trusting the Internet.
I was in favor of stopping there. I proposed heading back to the car. No takers. Then I thought I made a good case for establishing a base camp, finding a Sherpa and trying again the next day. My friends wouldn’t hear it.
I made it about 50 steps before I had to feel if my calves still existed. They were there, but weren’t providing the normal function they once did. Another 100 steps, and I had to take a break because my high-pitched wheezing was scaring off birds along the trail.
1-1.
The next 20 minutes are a blur of dripping sweat, panting, pain-verging-on-agony, and a lot of swearing masking the fact I was fighting back tears. There were a couple of times I think I may have blacked out from the unquenchable flame that had engulfed my legs.
2-1. Nature pulls ahead.
Maybe I passed out and my friends dragged me up the rest of the way. Or a few kindly eagles swooped down and carried my fat ass. I don’t know. Somehow I found myself at the top, looking almost straight down on the hellish beast I’d just conquered. I wanted to jump up and down. My legs didn’t work well enough for that. I wanted to scream a victory taunt. My lungs burned too much. But I had to pee, so I got a few yards off the trail and let loose. Victory was mine.
2-2. (So I guess it was actually a tie. I can deal with a tie but, I’d rather we call it a moral victory.)
It started getting late, so we headed back through the quarter mile of trees and meadows we’d passed since we’d reached the top. As we approached the unholy descent toward the parking lot, I heard the giggling of a child. I figured I was hallucinating, out of pain and exhaustion. Children couldn’t survive in these adverse conditions.
But there he was. No more than 8 or 10. Wearing shorts and light-up sandals. Giggling and tugging on his dad’s cargo shorts. Not sweating, panting, swearing, but bubbling with energy and excitement after making the climb that had almost taken my life.
“Don’t you even say a goddamn word,” I said to my friends, as we got a few steps down the mountain and away from Ace Wunderkid.
3-2. Nature wins, with an assist from a pair of light-up sandals.
David Baker is a writer from Utah.
Visit his blog at www.themandiary.com.