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| Just a little jaunt down the block and back... |
For those who follow, you know that hikes -- day-hikes; overnight backcountry ordeals; walks in interesting areas -- are a part of my family's identity and connection. While I couldn't quite convince my sons to get into Scouting, our camping and hiking trips together became my way to impart what I saw as the best of those ideals and skills: comradery, teamwork, duty, orienteering and survival, appreciation and knowledge of nature and natural processes, good stewardship of our natural resources, and all the good ol' fun that comes from sleeping and living amongst the rocks and trees and dirt apart from the mind-numbing comfort of electronics and permanent shelter and endless consumerism. How can one truly take a measure of themselves, and understand their part
and their relative insignificance in a broader world, when your contact is Minecraft and clever documentaries? Minecraft has its place, but my boys and I have seen and felt the inspiration and awe that you can only get from sunsets over lakes and the impassable, impossible mountains.
I digress. You get it: we like hikes.
I'm really here in this episode to address a thing, and it's where an especially shitty meme and a really tragic news article converge, and it's about hikes.
Let's start with the shitty meme:
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| Maaaaan...screw you |
I hate this meme. It's probably meant to be funny, and poke at people who get intense about a thing: "take a step back and see your own intensity" kind of thing. I'm sure we could find similar, and similarly-shitty, memes about running, weight-lifting, eating breakfast cereal, whatever. But this one strikes at what I love, so my turn for outrage I guess.
Now, let's look at this tragic and mildly-preventable article in the Detroit News recently:
by Michael Gerstein
If it's behind a paywall, allow me to extract a couple highlights to confirm what you likely guess is the general direction the article is taking:
Rangers in the state's most remote wilderness continue to scramble to rescue a surge of people who lose their way, injure themselves or become disoriented in the vast Porcupine Mountains wilderness in the western Upper Peninsula. In 2020, the state Department of Natural Resources sent a record number of rangers on search-and-rescue missions there to save hikers who were underprepared for the rigor of the backwoods.
Yeah, I get it. This can - and does - happen to even the most prepared of us. But:
The fatalities include a 36-year-old man from Chicago who died last year while hiking in the Porcupine Mountains about 2 miles from the parking lot of a hiking trail, according to local news reports.
“We have a lot of people from the Midwest who come to the Porkies, and they say they hike a lot of miles in their neighborhood ... and they seem to underestimate the difficulty of the terrain here in the Porkies, and seem to bite off more than they can chew,” Park Manager Mike Knack said.
The problem appears unique to the Porcupine Mountains among state parks but is common across national parks [emphasis added by me]
Guys.
"Hiking a lot of miles in your neighborhood" is not a gods-damned hike. It's a walk. In your neighborhood. Is your neighborhood hilly? Sure. Is your neighborhood festooned with roots, difficult traverses, hard-to-discern pathways, massive shifts in topography and elevation, and natural (and sometimes hidden) hazards? Do you have to suspend your food from a tree every night in your neighborhood so bears don't eat it? When it rains outside, can you not light your kitchen range? When it's warm and sunny, and all of a sudden it downpours in your neighborhood and the temperature drops by 10 or more degrees, is it difficult to get dry and warm?
Many people rely too much on cell service for navigation, which is at best spotty, according to rangers. The people who rangers rescue are often not prepared, don’t bring enough water or pack too much equipment and become exhausted, Knack said.
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“A lot of times, it’s lack of preparation and planning," Reece added. "We are seeing that: People going out with no water, people wearing flip flops."
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| That's not a hike...that's a hike |
Listen, I don't think you have to strap-on a day pack with a 3L water bladder and a 4-person first aid kit for every National or State Park walk. I'm not trying to be all Crocodile Dundee about walks and hikes. There are many, many walks that are "family-accessible" to meet the needs of toddlers' legs, casual shoes, and a nice family photo-op (
Accessibility is another chat for another day).
But let's circle back to that shitty meme in light of the culmination of the News article: "a lot of times, it's lack of preparation and planning."
That shitty meme begrudges people who prepare for what they're about to face. Sometimes that preparation is as simple as reading a Park's website, which helpfully rates trails, gives lengths, and offers warnings; sometimes it can be experience that informs a walker or hiker. And at the end of it, when your toddler wears out because what you thought was 1.5 easy miles is instead 1.5 miles of strenuous ankle-deep sand dunes at 33-degree angles, you can pick the kid up. When you find yourself hypothermic or heat-exhausted, I don't think Crocs and Barbie-dolls are gonna help much. Maybe the extra water and walking sticks would have.
Allow me one more example, because when Dads get going on a lecture, we just can't help but flog a dead horse:
Recently, my family walked the Blue Ridge Tunnel in Nelson County, Virginia. Awesome experience.
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Hiking boots? Nah. But
neither high heels... |
The trail is about a 5-mile loop. We took water and head lamps. See, there's a web site that talks all about it, and even has a section called
What to Bring. Could a toddler in flip-flops do this walk? Likely. The trail itself is damn-near paved, and you literally can't walk anywhere but on this highly-accessible, perfectly-groomed trail. The tunnel gets damn dark, though, and if we didn't bring head lamps, it would have been very tough: some real ankle-twisting dips to the right and left of the trail, and if you try to just feel your way along, you'll slice your hand. Why am I wearing a day pack? Sunscreen, an extra bottle of water, some snacks because we were going to have a late dinner, and the stuff that keeps my diabetic ass from passing-out is in there too.
By comparison, here's my boys and I along the trails at Wilderness State Park, our most favored of the Parks here. The trails are very well-marked, very well-maintained, and the elevation doesn't change much at all. Yet, here we are with day packs filled with food, water, and first aid. Why? Because we knew we were going to combine several of the trails into a very long walk (8.5 miles at the end of it), we wanted to eat lunch on the trail, and though the trails are marked, maintained, and obvious to follow, they're still rutty, muddy, root-y, rocky, tick-y, and not, ya know, sidewalks.
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It's hard to see how steep this was; Dom is
holding the tree because he has to, or
he'd fall |
My sons and I enjoyed the
Manistee River Trail recently. It is a well-known section of stunningly-beautiful but difficult trail that parallels the North Country Trail along the river. We wore full packs filled with what it takes to live on a trail for a few days. The Manistee River Trail portion is, from one trailhead to the next, about 11 miles, and it's not 11 easy miles. Ups, downs, and plenty of ankle-biting terrain despite the beauty. We ran into a group of sight-see-ers who had parked at a nearby dam and walked the 3/4 mile along the trailhead, where we happened upon them. They had a bottle of water, and wore sneakers. They asked us how far it was to a particular feature, and we broke the news that it was "
about 10, 11 miles." Crestfallen, they turned around. What would have happened if we hadn't seen them? Were they prepared to walk 20 miles? Would they have called for help when it got dark?
Look, hiking is god damn wonderful. You get to really get into a place, see things not everyone wants to see. It can be dangerous. It doesn't need to be dangerous. Let's leave it here wit a repeat quote:
The fatalities include a 36-year-old man from Chicago who died last year while hiking in the Porcupine Mountains about 2 miles from the parking lot of a hiking trail, according to local news reports.
Two. Miles. In his neighborhood, that's 20, 25 minutes at a nice walk, along well-marked streets and sidewalks. But in the wild, that could be an hour or two of back- and knee-busting trail. And if you make your kid walk along with a Barbie Doll** instead of water, and the wrong damn shoes, well then, you ain't much of a dad.
**I get it. Toddlers will Toddler. They burst into tears when you won't let them wear a "hat" made of razor blades and fire, and throw a tantrum because you won't let them drink used motor oil. Fine. Barbie it is. But maybe some water too?
