It was still dark when we pulled into NewFoundland Gap that morning. A sign in the middle of the parking lot announced where North Carolina met Tennessee. We wanted to get on the trail with enough time to see the sun rise over the Great Smoky Mountains. According to both our paper map and the AllTrails app, it would be a 16 mile out-and-back to Clingmans Dome, a longer hike in this winter off-season when the only road to the observation deck was closed. We were chilly but excited. My partner’s father had heard from a friend that this particular hike “kicked her butt.” I was tempering expectations having read in hike reviews that, despite being a Must-do Hike to the highest peak on the Appalachian Trail, the “views weren’t that great” along the way. After the first hour trekking across gorgeous pine ridges with vast open views of the gaps below, I thought there must have been something wrong with those reviewers. Not only were the views spectacular, but there were peaks and rock scrambles not detailed in any of the descriptions in my guidebook. After two hours and five more miles, after ignoring everything in either of our guts and all the literal signs, we finally admitted that we were going in the wrong direction and needed to make the decision to either turn around, double back and complete the original hike or keep going with a new itinerary.
In 2020, the COVID lockdown really took a mental and physical toll on my partner Beth and me. Working from home meant staying in comfy pants for way longer than should be acceptable, then self-soothing with the food and drink we had the privilege of having magically arrive on our doorstep. When days just turned into weeks and then into months, Beth said she really needed a way for her work week to feel physically different from the weekend and suggested that we spend our Saturdays doing local hikes. What started as a way of getting ourselves out of a pandemic funk evolved into a practice that constantly challenges and surprises me.
As the facilitator of our congregation’s Creation Care Committee, I was always on the lookout for more opportunities to get folks out to care for our natural world. As a general marketing technique, outdoor and environmental organizations offered “challenges” to get out and document personal activities. I tend to be a sucker for a challenge where you can earn a patch. (Yes, I was a Scout). Say what you will about social media, but I do find comfort in the strangers that offer semblances of connection on Instagram and Facebook. I don’t remember how I stumbled upon the Triangle Land Conservancy’s challenge, but I jumped on the chance to visit all their properties in the NC Piedmont. They made it easy and accessible to read about the unique ecosystems they were protecting and to plan our visits. They encouraged challengers to tag them in photos online, and when we completed all our visits, they sent us a completion patch. Something about having a checklist makes a goal seem much more attainable. And something about posting about the checklist on social media lends itself to higher accountability from the sponsor group and the friends following along.
We fixated next on the 52 Hike Challenge, a global internet community that encourages one hike a week for a year. We coupled that with doing 40 Hikes on North Carolina’s Mountains-to-Sea Trail which gave us specific hikes between Clingman’s Dome in the west to Jockey’s Ridge on the eastern NC coast. We started off slowly, with simply the expectation that no matter what happened during the week, we would hike on Saturday. If something came up on a Saturday, no problem, but the default would always be hiking. We had a Friday evening routine of choosing our hike and preparing our packs and snacks. This way we could have our standard breakfast of toast, peanut butter and fruit and be out the door and on the trail by 8. We liked being early to beat crowds, catch nature, and take our time. In the piedmont, a typical hike speed is about 2.75 miles an hour, but with the number of stops we make for wondering and wandering, we ‘re closer to 2 mph. God help us if we’re on a trail with interpretive signage.
The true gift is being able to spend this time with Beth. She has been hiking since she was a child and has had the same Vasque hiking boots since her “feet stopped growing.” We spend a good bit of time on the trail discussing our individual work challenges, family issues, global instability nonsense, but also experiencing the very immediate things right in front of us. Every funky burl on a giant tree or fascinating pattern in a rock is reason to reflect on something bigger than us or the connection we have to people who walked on the land before us.
Many times we’re on a trail with tumbling waterfalls, expansive vistas, or craggy homestead ruins, but many times the trail may be what some might consider ordinary. But no trail is really ordinary, even the flat dusty ones that have the same terrain and vegetation for miles, because that in and of itself is out of the ordinary, with something to teach us about patience and endurance. On the Clingman’s Dome hike where we went five mountain miles in the wrong direction, we learned something about trusting our instincts and speaking up when we think we’re on the wrong path while also giving ourselves the grace in tough mistakes and finding the beauty in an unplanned path. We continued on the new path and eventually went back to the Smokies the next year to check off the original hike.
We’re now on our third year of the 52 Hike Challenge, this time challenging us to find 52 new-to-us trails. We are fortunate to live in an area with much green space, but each time we’re having to venture a little further away to find them. By year’s end we’ll have all the NC State Parks and next year we plan to do the Camino de Santiago. When we first started this, I remember confessing to someone that I felt this practice to be a little self-indulgent. Shouldn’t I be doing something for others on my days off? I am then reminded what I preach to my work team, that taking time to rest and restore is necessary, radical work. The structure of a trail combined with the awe that comes from exploration of a new space, especially sharing it with someone I love, is rejuvenating and allows me to do the work I do during the week with more integrity. And the work week goes by quickly with the anticipation of wondering where to next.
- Cris Rivera, Director of Finance and Operations, Durham Public Schools Foundation & RCWMS Trustee
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