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By Alex Hamilton
Have You Ever TRULY Hiked? This question raced through my head at 6 AM on the dark trail in Rockford, MI. No one was awake, and I was alone with God and my thoughts. Looking around I saw trees bare of the leaves that had once occupied them, now blanketing the trail in a layer of passing time and filling the air with the crunch of their past life.
“What does it truly mean to hike,” I asked myself, “Have I ever really experienced nature?” Does it mean to get outside and exercise in the woods on a trail that cuts down the middle of them? Whether your trail experience is for health, to be social, or you are a nature enthusiast, your experience has been lacking. There is a spirit to the trail that resonates with the soul of those whose feet meet its paths, and eyes rest on the sights paralleling either side.
When you look at a tree, what do you see? Take a moment to think about that. Do you see wood there for the taking to be made into a table or burned in a campfire or woodstove? Do you see a source of shady relief from the hot summer sun? What about a diverse and complex ecosystem with infinite moving parts?
Consider that each tree has many functions. There are roots far underground that sort through the nutrient-rich soil and take in water, phosphorus, and nitrogen that the tree needs to live. Countless leaves grow at the ends of branches, knowing when to bud in the spring and fall come autumn. They also use sun and carbon dioxide to go through photosynthesis, which both produce glucose that the tree needs and, as a byproduct, emits oxygen that all living things need to live. The tree branches are home to many birds and squirrels and their forest companions. Under the bark, you might even find a colony of ants or other insects that the woodpeckers eat from. The tree itself is its own miniature ecosystem.
Tell me what you see now. Is nature not living art and science?
There was once a time when there was no divide between people and nature. Before borders and civilization, man and wilderness lived together. There was respect for each other. The man knew the power of the earth and took only what he needed.
Have you ever looked at the trail, seen trash, and been deeply saddened by it? Have you ever been concerned with if there will be any outdoors left for our children to experience the way we did?
There are three things that you experience when you TRULY hike.
First, you experience a sense of ownership and responsibility for the resources around you. There is a reason that Theodore Roosevelt set them aside as public land, and he said this, “We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.” Our God-given responsibility is to steward the world that we were gifted. Taking only photos and leaving only footprints is a great place to start, but there is also a need to undo the damage to our world that we have already done and right the wrong we have committed against her.
Second, when you truly have a heart and mind quiet and ready to experience nature in its entirety, you will walk and touch and smell and take in everything around you; inevitably and unavoidably you will be humbled by it. You can not have pride when you are walking through the mountains or along the mighty rivers; their demand for respect will overtake you. From my personal experience, you might even cry once or twice (if it happens, just let it happen).
The third thing is, whether you are Christian or not, when you walk through the woods next to wooden giants, under vast dark skies dotted with stars, or experience the true magnitude of the mountains that rise from the earth, there is an undeniable sense of something greater ― a being that created it all. In considering the staggering improbability that everything around you is a product of chance, the trail reveals itself to be the specific, intricate, and deliberate product of a designer who intentionally told the rivers which way to run and told the flowers when it was time to bloom.
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