Why hiking alone?

Why hiking alone?

The film Wild has been my new favorite movie for more than 6 months. It's a story of self-redemption, adapted from Cheryl Strayed's memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. The heroine Cheryl, played by Reese Witherspoon, determined to stop her life from spiraling downwards after her mother's death and find back her better self by hiking the PCT alone. I believe the question many people have in mind is how exactly hiking alone can help accomplish any sort of spiritual lift. I'll try to answer this question with my own experience.

First let's take a look at what kind of trail Cheryl is hiking. The PCT is on America's west coast, stretching all the way from Mexico to Canada. It's about 120 to 150 miles, and typically takes more than 3 months to finish. Hikers must endure extreme heat in desert areas and knee high snow on mountain tops. There are general stores scattered along the trail where hikers can pick up their resupply boxes, which they couriered before setting out. The PCT is a serious challenge even for seasoned hikers.

Cheryl obviously hasn't done any long-distance hike before. She packed tons of unnecessary stuffs, and has to discard a lot of them on the road. A very moving plot is that rookie Cheryl  outperformed experienced hiker Greg, who she encountered on the trail, by making through the high elevation in a heavy snow year, while Greg decided to try it next year. The joy of discovering our physical strengths is very straightforward, but that doesn't fully explain why we are obsessed about doing it alone.

Why hiking alone? Although I believe indulging oneself in absolute wilderness has different meanings for different hikers, the film strongly resonates with a piece of my own experience. Last year, I moved to Vancouver for work, while my husband remained in Toronto and my parents were living in China. It's the very first and only time I live by myself so far, and turns out that I was not able to enjoy my "quality time with myself" so much as I expected.

Without those people, I lost my coordinates in the world. Things that used to matter a lot became trivial or even disappeared. I don't need to spent large chunk of my time keeping my families accompanied anymore, at least no more than half an hour over the phone. The short time isolation made me think what to do with life if one is not subjected to other people's expectations but her own.

I've always wanted to explore the wilderness, and now without their over protection, why not? That's how I decided to set out my foot, it's really this simple. However, the hiking experience offered me an unexpected life long lesson. If I close my eyes now in my Toronto home, I can still hear breeze traveling through woods and the creek singing in Lynn Valley.

Why hiking alone?

Hiking alone resembles the essence of life. On trail, the only thing I care about is how to survive and enjoy the journey. I stopped thinking what troubles I still was going to face when I went back to city. Without any company, I please no one but myself. "To please no one but ourselves" is almost impossible in adults' everyday life. We made compromises every now and then, consciously or unconsciously.

What fascinates me is not the transient freedom I find in woods, but the fact that hiking by myself automatically helps me cut off unnecessaries in life. When I was lying naked on a huge flat warm rock under the sun by the Lynn Creek, only things that make me feel grateful to life came to mind. Not what the society taught me what's important, neither ambitions cultivated by peer pressure. I can only think of the people I love, the poems I enjoy, sunshine and air, and of course the sea waves in my far, far away hometown.

It's a process about letting go alienated ambitions and strengthening our mind on real life pursuits. When forest breeze takes away unnecessaries, what we really want in life will emerge in front of our eyes, crystal clear. Lying on the rock, I thought if I was going to die the next minute, then let me. Sorry Darwin, I hadn't procreated yet, but my life was fulfilled.

(The second photo is a poster of the film Wild. The last photo is taken by me in Lynn Valley, B.C., Canada, 2015)