Random Thoughts Along the Way — Part 1

c) Andrew Carter, 2021

For someone who once considered himself a writer, I have studiously avoided writing almost anything about my hike other than within the context of the photos and videos I have posted.  To be honest, I don’t know why that is the case.  Laziness?  Perhaps, but I feel it is something more.  Maybe a feeling that my words will fall short of the thoughts I’ve been experiencing along the way, but here goes.

Gratitude

Hiking helps me experience and acknowledge gratitude.  There is the incredible beauty along the way for which I’m profoundly grateful, but it’s more that that.  Something about the exertion and exhaustion makes me grateful when that exertion and exhaustion is diminished. 

When it’s hot, I’m grateful for the shade and wind.  When it’s cold, I’m grateful for the sun and shelter from the wind.  When I’ve been climbing, I’m grateful for when the trail levels off and starts to go down.  When I’m thirsty, I’m grateful for a spring or stream.  When I’m in town, for an ice-cold beer or juice or a milkshake.  When I’m hungry, I’m grateful for the next meal and grateful to go into a town to get some restaurant food.  When I’m tired, I’m grateful for a nice place to sit and rest during the day – the perfect log, the perfect rock.  At the end of the day, I’m grateful for a nice place to camp – for flat ground, no rocks, and soft soil.  When I’m dirty, I’m grateful for a lake or stream in which to get clean.  When I’m in town, for the joy of a hot shower and of clean clothes. 

When I’m living in the relative comfort of civilization, I don’t notice, let alone remark on, any of these things.  When I’m out in the woods, I do.

Feeling Small

There is something about an expansive view which makes me feel small.  That’s a good thing.  Normally, I’m wrapped up in my own sense of self-importance.  It’s a wonderful thing to escape that.  None of us are all that special.  I think the world would be a better place if we thought less of ourselves.  We might take better care of our environment.  We might take better care of each other.

Infinite Beauty

When I’m out in the woods, I quickly realize that the definition of beauty is infinite.  Yes, the expansive views are beautiful.  And they are infinite in variety.  But the small things are beautiful too, in infinite ways. 

The look of a rock or tree.  The tree can be dead or alive.  The look of a leaf on the trail.  The look of the trail itself – curving, straight, bending up, bending down, disappearing in the distance, reemerging.  Fallen branches, fallen leaves, rocks scattered about.  The shape of boulders.  The cracks in those boulders.  The interplay of sun and shade, particularly if the trees casting that shade are moving in the wind.  Sunset, sunrise, dusk, dawn.  The look of the clouds, particularly when they are moving across the sky.  The look of a storm coming in.  The smell of that storm and of moisture in the air.  How that moisture feels on your skin.  Mist.  The vibrant smell of wet moss and wet dirt.  The sound of rain falling.  The sound of the wind.  The sound of silence, particularly at the beginning and end of the day.  So full of calm and peace.  Colors – bright and vibrant or muted and washed out.  The way those colors disappear as the night comes on, then reemerge at the beginning of a new day. 

So much beauty.  It is infinite.  There is no limit.  There is no boundary.

Soil, slope, altitude, direction

I spent the first 39 years of my life in the East and the last 25 years here in the West.  The climate in the East where there is rain year-round is so profoundly different than the climate in the West, at least here in California where it rains only part of the year and the amount of rain we receive each winter is variable.  That seasonality and variability in rainfall has a tremendous impact on the vegetation one sees while hiking.  What it means is that there is greater variability in vegetation, including no vegetation, as a result of differences in any one place of soil, slope, altitude, and direction. 

In the East on a hill or mountain, whether facing north, south, east, or west, the vegetation is almost always the same.  It’s only as one goes up or down a mountain that the vegetation may change. 

Here in the West, what’s growing on the north side of a hill or mountain is often completely different from what’s growing on the south; simply because the south side gets more sun and is therefore drier.  On the Central Coast, it’s often the case that there is grass on the south-facing slopes and chaparral on the north-facing ones. 

Similarly, the soil type and slope have a more dramatic effect.  Does that soil hold water or not?  Does the slope cause what water there is to run off quickly or slowly?  Is there a fold in the mountain such that the water run-off is focused there? 

What’s more, the impact of altitude change is strengthened with a greater and quicker variety of vegetation as one goes up or down.  And if high enough, no vegetation at all. 

This is one of the things I’m always noticing when hiking.  In Yosemite, for instance, it’s possible to hike in a single day from above treeline to pine, spruce and balsam forests to live oak and poison oak forests at the lower elevations.

I will write more.