Hubby and I have been pursuing our own avenues of personal fitness. He is an avid bike rider and will go for 25 miles on any given weekend through the wilds of South Jersey. I'm not very confident on a bike, especially on roads with cars on them, so I've been left to my own devices, so to speak. I joined a gym with the eldest was still living at home and have sporadically attended, but tried to keep up somewhat with the idea that if I at least move I won't eventually become immobile.
In the light of the fact that we go our separate ways in so many ways, it was interesting to note that a few weeks ago, Hubby suggested that we do something physical together (no not that, you cretin). He suggested we find ourselves on a hike.
I dived into the idea, looking up hiking clubs, finding out the local places where they would go, what kind of equipment would be needed and if it cost anything. I printed out pages and pages of information to "get us ready". I contacted a local hiking club for their "beginner's hike" and we were set.
One of the things I noticed about these hiking websites is that they will tell you what kind of hike it is, easy, hard, fast paced, rocky, hilly, all the required elements to let you figure out if this is the right place for you to go. They also have these little codes on their sites to let you know how many miles, how easy, etc. For example, the hike we were to try was labeled 2A/c/5-6, which roughly translated means this is an easy hike for about 5 or 6 miles if you're game. So I figured we were game.
We were to meet at a National Park for this walk in the woods, so we left a little early and got there in plenty of time. We were trying to figure out who was hiking along with us, making comments about the people walking around with their dogs, admiring the myriads of butterflies donning the butterfly bushes. An older guy walked past us wearing one of those well-worn fishing hats, tall dark socks and wispy white hair. My husband just knew he would be on the hike with us and sure enough he came and sat beside us on the bench.
As the group finally gathered together there were very few novices I noticed. Many had hiking boots (we had old sneakers), many were holding walking sticks (we had a camera), most had backpacks--and so did we! However, the contents of theirs was different from ours. But we didn't know that at first. The person who was to be our leader was apparently well known by most of the group. She told us the general direction and route we would take, asked for questions, let us know about how to join the hiking club they were all apparently members of, and then we were off.
We walked a small incline, a paved road no less, then branched off through the forest following the painted blobs (called blazes-as in "what the blazes is that?") on various trees. Now the problem of our hiking with a group soon became evident. For one thing, when I walk anywhere, woods or otherwise, I like to look at things. Flowers, trees, birds in flight or on branches, even interesting bugs. I can walk quite quickly if I don't want to observe all this, but in new environments especially, I like to see what's around. My husband doesn't walk fast. For any reason. The guy who saunters through the crosswalk after the light changes? That's him. He is not arrogant. Okay, he can be, but in most instances he just has one speed: slow. When we walk together, I have to slow down to keep up, he won't be speeding up for me, you can be sure. So there the two of us are in the new found wilderness with 15 or so people who are there to hike, goddammit, not to dawdle. We were soon at the back of the pack. Thankfully there were some who were even behind us. They were the woman who could not put down the cell phone no matter where she was-talking loudly and gesturing. And the older, portly guy who was obviously laboring to stay with the pack in some way, even if only from a distance.
The problem with not being as quick as the rest of the group, or should I say as directed, is that they get ahead of you and then find a place to stop and rest. So that by the time you reach them, they are all rested up and proceed to pull up stakes and continue, leaving you puffing and panting in their wake as you've not had a proper rest since this whole sorry episode began. By the time we reached the "halfway" point, my husband and I were tired, somewhat grumpy, and our idealized dream of tramping through the woods was ruined. Okay, not ruined, but bruised. We checked our pedometers to see how far along we were when we realized that the blurb on the web site misstated our total mileage and this hike would end up being 8 miles. For someone who hadn't exercised for a while, eight miles seemed like not just pushing the envelope, but carrying the missive by hand across country. This was not what I signed up for! But if we didn't continue, we'd never see our car again as it was parked at the place where we began. Oh, Lord, I thought, please deliver me! By the time the end of the trail was in sight, I was red in the face from the heat of the day, the exertion and the frustration of being lead out and brought back without a good "timeout".
We learned a lot that day about hiking and what to do and not to do. It was important to bring extra water (which we did). To bring along binoculars (which we didn't). To carry a walking stick to help take some of the weight off your knees. And if you're walking with a hiking club, keep up with the leader to get a proper rest every now and then. It was an interesting experience. However, now my husband and I walk on trails by ourselves. We go at our own pace, looking at the things we pass, admiring whatever views are there to admire, appreciating the nature and the silence of being away from the constant sound of phones and cars. I like this hiking better. And we are doing it together, which is really nice. And we can rest whenever we feel like it. But we still don't have walking sticks.
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