MY DIRECTION: The education of a backpacker

I have nothing planned.

I’ll go to Vermont in two weeks for a four-day walk on the famous Long Trail, nab a few Green Mountain high points, and then, I have nothing planned.

That feels a little strange.

I remember a weekend jaunt in New York’s Catskills many years ago, and once inside my car, I spent one moment remembering the emerald quality of the view from Wittenberg Mountain and several more thinking about the next trip I had scheduled – a weekend on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia. I remember a sleeping in the snowy New Hampshire woods thinking of a spring trip I had scheduled for Pennsylvania’s Golden Eagle Trail.

There was always something next.

But this trip to the Green Mountains next month represents the only major backpacking weekend I have scheduled before the birth of my son in December. After I finish near Camels Hump, I will for the first time in about six years have nothing next. No trip for which to train, about which to daydream, about which to anticipate.

Consider it the punctuation of a seven-year journey.

When I wrote last month about my pending trip to the Adirondacks – the one I canceled due to a family emergency, the one I said I was searching for something I could not identify – I now know what stirred inside me. It was a recognition that the opening chapter of my hiking career was reaching its conclusion. I have grown from a naive college graduate who had never heard of Gore-Tex to a proud contributor to Backpacker and to the creator of this hiking website. I have laced up my boots for trails in the Adirondacks to Arizona, from Ireland to Costa Rica, from the Smokies to Zion. I’ve seen about a dozen black bears in the wild. I’ve had my share of failures and triumphs.

Yet I fear that my backpacking education has so much further to go. There are so many places I haven’t yet hiked. There’s so many skills I haven’t mastered. So much I need to learn so I can teach my son.

My son. My first child. These past several months have been filled with visions of introducing him to the wilds of the United States, to stash him in a kid carrier and take him to those amazing sites which you can only reach by your feet – the waterfalls of Ricketts Glen, the vastness of the Grand Canyon, smell of balsam trees as you emerge above treeline in New England. I want to show him the joy of morning’s gray light white it firsts illuminates your tent, the determination of ascending a high peak with your pack tugging against your shoulders, the way a mountain stream cools your skin, the way a waterfall spotted in the distance through the trees accelerates your adrenaline. I want to teach him the skills he needs.

I have so much to learn so I can teach him. And after he’s born, those first six months or so, I won’t be hiking. I’ll be near him, caring for him, caring for his mother, building our life as a family. Hiking won’t be a priority. It will be a memory. It will be a hope for the future.

Honestly, though, what puts my fear at ease is a mindset to which I’ve committed. Yes, this current chapter in my hiking career has reached its conclusion. Naturally, a new one begins, and this time, with a new hiking partner. After stepping away from backpacking, maybe he and I will discover it together, for him a whole world to explore for the first time. And for me as if it’s brand new again.

There’s no need for us fathers-to-be to be panicked about losing our identity, about sacrificing parts of ourselves to raise our children. I see our experiences – and for me, that means time spent hiking trails – as the foundation for the world we’re going to introduce to our children. I don’t know if my son will love hiking the way I do. But I can take him to the trailhead and invite him to come along.

Yes, this trip to Vermont in two weeks represents something. It is a celebration to mark the evolution of this backpacker and to begin anticipating the next hike. whenever that may be, with a new partner.