Bangor Daily News Article

If you spend a lot of time hiking, you may be asked, ‘‘Why do you do it?’’ I’ve been asked that a lot in my 24 years of trail hiking. My response always seems to fall short of a full explanation of just what it is that I get out of hiking.

Perhaps people expect a couple of words that will sum up the entire experience for them. I think most people don’t really expect the answer to be complete, like asking, ‘‘How are you?’’ and not really listening to the reply. If the reply is not enough of an explanation, they probably figure there actually isn’t a good reason to hike and I just go for nothing better to do. They probably are correct on that one. I sometimes can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing than tramping down a trail.

Each trip into the backcountry provides me with an experience that I haven’t been able to find in any other pursuit. Sure, it’s communing with nature in its own element, but it’s more than that. I’ve never felt so close to all of nature’s patterns of life as when I’m putting one foot in front of the other, simply walking up a trail. At my feet is the geology of Maine. There are stories in the landscape about glacial activity, continental drift and weathering. With the very act of hiking a trail we contribute to that history of place. We’re seeing the scars of rain and ice that passed that way in ages before us.

The cyclical process of life displays itself with every new adventure into the wild. The subtle changes in season occur from the ground up. Wildflowers bloom and pass in turn, as spring turns to summer under seasonal changes in daylight and sky. The forest comes alive, first with newly arrived flocks of migrating birds, then animal spring births and hatching insects. That there are cycles of life at all is miraculous; hiking in the woods to observe them in the subtlest of forms is a marvel.

One of my favorite seasons (and reasons to go) is butterfly season. I think butterflies must like people, or because of the colors we wear, they confuse us with flowers. It’s really fascinating to stop and let a tiger swallowtail light on your shoulder for as long as it wants. If I told people that I go hiking to see butterflies or dragonflies (another favorite insect), they’d probably think I’m some kind of bug nut. Not really, I’d say, I still hate black flies, moose and deer flies, and have yet to find a reason why they have to grace the green Earth.

A day hike on a morning which passes to afternoon allows me to follow the progress of the day’s events as they were meant to be seen, firsthand. The sun vacuums the early morning fog to reveal cool morning air. Over the course of the next couple of hours the air warms, a breeze kicks up and the biting flies are kept at bay. The sky turns from a pale robin’s egg blue to a deep summer blue. Clouds cross the landscape, then dissolve and reform on their way to somewhere else. It could be on Peaked Mountain (Chick Hill) in Clifton, or Mount Blue in Farmington or one of hundreds of day trips in locales across Maine. The effect on me is the same, because I was there to observe it happening, and I hiked to get there. I’m not sure there is another way to have that same sensation other than by hiking.

Then there’s the scenery. Most of the hikes I take usually involve walking through a lot of forest and then climbing to the summit of some mountain and, after spending as long as I can at the summit, leaving. It’s an attraction that’s compelling, in a way. When a reporter asked Earl Shaffer, the first person to hike the Appalachian Trail from end to end in a single season in 1948, why he hiked, he said, ‘‘Because I like walking in the woods and sleeping on mountaintops.’’ I try to spend as much time as I can on mountaintops after hiking there, to watch the scenery and just do nothing. I come home with images of distant peaks etched in my head. The more I hike, the more lingering they become — the scenery is that captivating. The basins, or bowls, of Mount Katahdin are a favorite, after more than 50 hikes up there. But all views are great, and I have a long list, from Camden Hills to Bigelow Mountain, in no particular order.

If the scenery wasn’t enough, there are internal rewards that come from the simplest day hike to the longest multiday trek. Over many days the routine world of traffic, shopping, work drifts away as you purposefully hike to water and a flat spot to camp. It’s not so much an escape as it is a return to basics. Your routine is simplified in a way that involves adapting to the ever-present day and the miles to go that lie ahead.

Aside from all of nature’s wonders, from the summer sky overhead to the day unfolding at your feet to the scenery before your eyes, there are internal rewards that far outweigh the long effort required to get through the day. One of those is the satisfaction of walking to get to your destination. The actual, planting of one foot to a place that’s foreign and new, then holding it there before placing the next step is itself gratifying. The penalties for missteps can be instant, resulting in a fall, sometimes serious, but usually nothing more than a misstep and a reminder of where you are walking. I bring lessons home from hiking, like how to be deliberate in the face of adversity, or looking at problems from every angle for solutions and adapting to ever-changing conditions.

The physical action of hiking through the day or longer can test so many aspects of people. The struggle to make that last hundred feet up Pemetic Mountain in Acadia National Park will work the determination of some. For others, it’s the challenge of overnighting in Safford Notch on Bigelow Mountain before exploring the peaks all day the next day. Or a four-day, three-night hike through the Mahoosucs in western Maine, home of ‘‘the toughest mile’’ on the entire 2,155-mile length of the Appalachian Trail, Mahoosuc Notch. Even with the challenges of just finding the time to go hiking, you’ve gained a benefit. You’ve set a priority for that time and the activity is walking across a landscape, maybe through a wild place.

Which brings me to my final reason for hiking. I go out there so I can continue to hike. It’s like practice for my feet, so that when they are older they’ll still be quick and strong enough to carry me up the trail. With every hike that I take now, I ensure that there will be more hikes to come later.

Brad Viles is an lifelong hiker and trail maintainer for the Maine Appalachian Trail Club.

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