Are you longing for something truly positive in your life right now? Are you wanting a getaway, but don’t know where to go?
Taking a hike just might be the best thing you’ve done for yourself in a long time. Hiking has amazing benefits. Both physically and mentally.
I’m here to encourage you to reap these amazing benefits and go for that hike.
BUT with a twist… make your hike be exactly what you want it to be.
Okay, what does “make it be exactly what you want it to be” even mean? Let me start with an example.
Two of my favorite activities in this world are hiking and skiing. I started skiing early in life. My first trip that I remember was to Breckenridge, Colorado when I was 8 or 9. Flying down the mountain with such freedom got me hooked.
For years, my family had a time-share in Lake Tahoe. So we spent two weeks every Christmas skiing at Heavenly Valley (“Heavenly” now). Such fun memories. I skied all through college and for a few years after college. Then life got busy and I fell out of the sport for a while.
Okay, so now you’re asking “what does YOUR skiing have to do with HIKING and more importantly, with me?”
I’m getting to that part.
About 7 years ago, I got back into skiing. Since then, I take a trip every year “out west” as people on the East Coast like to say. I’ve skied Jackson Hole, Vail, Steamboat, Beaver Creek, and my favorite of all time, Crested Butte.
I was on a long chairlift at Crested Butte a couple of months ago. It was 10 degrees outside with 25 mile per hour winds. The snow was blowing hard against my face and the moisture from my breath was freezing to the outside of my ski mask. I could barely feel my fingers or toes and I was loving every minute of it! Crazy, right?
Okay, so here’s the important part.
I thought to myself for a second…. What am I doing? Why would I be outside for 8 hours in temperatures that would otherwise have me curled up on the couch? What was it that drove me to put up with my breath freezing on the mask I was wearing? What was it about this skiing thing that I love so much?
Well, to me skiing is freedom. The wind blowing through my non-existent hair, the speed, the adrenaline rush.
But more than that, what I discovered on that chairlift was that what I love is the free rein to make skiing anything I want it to be.
It can be extreme, or easy. Fast and hard-charging, or relaxed and rhythmic.
Skiing can cause my lungs to burn and my heart to pound, or it can be an easy walk in the park.
And that is exactly what can happen with hiking. It’s why I fell in love with hiking.
You can make hiking be anything you want it to be. And the benefits of hiking this way are amazing. It can be:
-
- A great workout.
- An easy walk in the woods.
- A fun time with family and friends.
- Time alone.
- An opportunity to be alone with your thoughts.
- A break from your thoughts.
If you’ve never hiked before or have just dabbled in the sport, you may not have even thought of these different possibilities. And remember, it’s never too early or too late to start enjoying the amazing benefits of “taking a hike”.
For me, hiking began fairly recently. It all started about 8 years ago. I was running a small business and I was exhausted. I was not eating or sleeping well. Even though I owned a gym, I was not working out the way I knew I should have been. And I was working 60-70 hours a week. It was not pretty…nor were the bags under my eyes.
I needed a break. An actual getaway vacation.
And I knew I needed something to train for.
So, I signed up for a 5-day backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to hike the Grand Canyon to reap amazing benefits from hiking.
When I decided to do the Grand Canyon hike, I had never hiked, put on a backpack, or camped. The whole trip was going to be a new experience for me.
But, for 5 months I trained. And it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. Life-changing in many ways. You can read more about my trip and how I trained for it on the blog post 5 Essential Training Tips to Hike the Grand Canyon.
But through training for the trip, I fell in love with hiking. That’s when I discovered that, just like skiing, you can make hiking anything you want it to be.
Each hike can be something different. You can make each mile something different. You can get out of it whatever it is, physical or psychological, that you want or need to get out of it.
Hiking can be:
- A great workout – You can choose a difficult trail filled with long uphill sections, steep downhills, scrambling, and rocks. And you can always pick up the pace to the point that you are getting a fantastic cardiovascular workout. Your heart will be pumping and your legs will be burning.
Or hiking can be:
- An easy walk in the woods – Not all hikes have to be a lung-busting death march. If you are in the mood for an easy walk in nature, hiking can be that as well. Slow down your pace, choose a trail with fewer hills and just relax. Notice the incredible nature all around you. You will be refreshed!
Hiking can be:
- Time with your family and friends –You can hike with a friend or two or twenty. With family members of all ages, you can bond or just be together. Laugh or sing or enjoy nature. It’s your choice. Have fun! There are no rules.
A couple of years ago, my entire family rented a house for a vacation in Stowe, Vermont. It was my parents, my two brothers, my two sisters-in-law (both named Jessica, by the way), my three nieces and nephew. We ranged in age from 5-75.
We relaxed and enjoyed our time together. During our week, we took a tour of the Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream factory, went for bike rides and hikes, ate great meals on the deck overlooking the mountains of Stowe, and I played more games of hide and go seek than you can imagine.
On two of the days, we went for a group hike. My 10-year-old niece, my 5-year-old niece and my 12-year-old nephew led the way. I was right behind them. Behind me was my 73-year-old mother. Quite a bit behind us was my older brother documenting the hike with his camera. The rest of the group filled in behind.
I loved every minute.
The kids loved leading the way.
My mom loved being active and of course, having her family playing together.
My brothers loved taking pictures.
Even the Jessicas loved the workout.
For several of us, the hikes were the highlight of the trip. On the last day, we hiked the Sterling Falls Trail. Hiking to a freezing cold swimming-hole was a blast — as was trying to convince everyone else to join me in the water. I got my nieces, my nephew, and one brother to join me. The hike was a perfect way to spend time together, doing something we could all enjoy in our different ways.
Or Hiking can be:
-
- Time alone – With busy lives, kids, jobs, outside obligations, we could all use some alone time. Do you find that it’s often hard to find that time for just you? Hiking, if even for a short time, can give you that needed break to put yourself first and just be alone.
I am an extrovert. I love people. And I love talking. I get energy from being around others. And owning a fitness center is perfect for that. There is always someone around to talk with. Clients often just pop into my office just for a conversation. Not about their workouts or losing weight. We just talk about life, their kids and grandkids, their businesses, their husbands and wives (even their ex-husbands or soon to be ex-husbands — TMI).
And as much as I love it, by the end of the week, I am talked out. I often feel like I just want to get away and be by myself for a while. Hiking is the perfect answer.
My favorite trail in the DC area is the Billy Goat Trail in Great Falls State Park. If you live in the area, you may have hiked it or at least heard about it. On a spring weekend, it looks more like a freeway during rush hour, but pick the right time and you have the entire trail to yourself.
Try hiking as the perfect getaway. Choose a trail that is not too crowded or go off-peak times and you will have it all to yourself. It will be just you, the trees, birds, and any other creatures that you may run across. And you don’t have to talk!
Hiking can be:
- Time to be alone with your thoughts – It is amazing to me how distracted we are. I bet, if you are like me, your phone is within reach of you right now. Am I right? How many times has it made some kind of beep or noise in the last few minutes? Just how many “alerts” in the past hour?
Technology, as good as it is, is often a distraction. It breaks your train of thought and makes it harder to focus on one thing at a time.
But hiking, alone in nature gives you the time and opportunity to think.
To think without the distractions of everyday life. And what will come from the thinking may surprise you. I bet you will notice that your creativity soars. How solutions for problems that you have tried to solve for months suddenly pop into your mind.
Or hiking can be:
- A break from your thoughts – Do you ever feel like you need a break? A break from your brain? Researchers have calculated that most of us have between 70,000-80,000 thoughts a day.
Our minds are always going, always planning, always racing. That is what the mind does. It tries to figure out the past and plan for the future. It wants to think about where you will be in 5 years or what to make for dinner. And it never stops.
How do you take a break from your thoughts? There are many ways to do it. Some can be destructive if excessive – drinking, drugs, gambling, shopping, eating.
But, there are positive ways to calm your mind also – meditation, exercise, and hiking. Yes, hiking.
When you are out in nature on a long hike, your mind gets so focused on what you are doing that all other thoughts drift away.
You will start to relax and begin to look at the world in a new way. Literally. All of your senses come alive. You start to see things that you wouldn’t otherwise see. And hear things that you otherwise wouldn’t hear. The sky seems bluer. The birds seem louder. The grass seems greener. The air seems fresher and you feel the breeze.
When your mind is calm, you can enjoy each moment.
Set an intention before you go for a hike.
So appreciating that hiking can be whatever you want it to be, you have the power to decide exactly what you want to get from it each outing.
I love self-help books. So much so, that I wrote one. Swim Lessons – Ten Secrets for Making Any Dream Come True is the story of my 1550-mile swim down the Mississippi River and is about how to make dreams come true. You can get a copy on Amazon.
In the numerous self-help books I’ve read, meditation if often talked about. There is a lot of information about guided meditation and the idea of “setting an intention.” Sounds incredibly “new-agie” doesn’t it? It simply means you can choose what you want to get out of any situation or experience. 
If you “set an intention” before you go for a hike, you are deciding what you want that hike to be.
What do you want to get out of the experience? Are you looking for a hard workout or an easy stroll? Are you looking to find an answer to a burning question or are you looking to take your mind off a problem? Would you like to be alone with your thoughts or would you like to turn them off?
Since hiking can be anything, you get to choose what you want it to be.
So when you take your first or next hike, I encourage you to stop for a few minutes before you start off on the trail. What do you want to get out of this hike, this day? What do you want your hike to be like?
Then set that intention and go for it. It will be exactly what you want it to be. I think you’ll love the experience. You may even get hooked.
That’s it. Now, let’s all GO TAKE A HIKE!
I would love to hear in the comments what you want hiking to be for you.
