“That my complicated life could be made so simple was astounding.” – Cheryl Strayed, “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail”
I watched a lot of TV last weekend. It was US Open time. I was telling my daughter Alexis last Saturday, over the telephone, that this was always the weekend of her dance recitals. “Those were the salad days,” as H.I. McDunnough narrated in “Raising Arizona.” Those were also the grumbling days, as my buddy Judge Morley can attest, because with all the days of the year to choose from, the dance recital coordinators almost always picked U.S. Open Sunday.
But we did love watching all the little girls try so hard, and laughing at the one in every number who decided to improvise, sometimes by just standing there, and sometimes by sauntering, at her own slow pace, off the stage. And Amy Morley, who no matter where her teacher had placed her at the beginning of a number, always managed to work her way to front and center by the end. Yes, those were the salad days.
Now Alexis is working far, far away, in Montana at Glacier National Park, while her brother Matt and his high school buddy Hall are hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s a “Wild” life.
The boys (they’re 30, but I guess I’ll always think of them as boys) had gone 450 miles as of last weekend. Matt called and told me that after hiking about 20 miles of the Mojave Desert, they were following the advice of other hikers and getting on a bus to drive around the remaining 250 miles of sun, sand, and thirst. I thought that was a good plan.
They started a month ago at the Southern Terminus of the PCT, at a spot where California touches Mexico, about 100 miles east of San Diego. They have permits to be on the trail for four months. If they average 22.167 miles a day for 120 days, then they can do the 2,660 miles, or what’s called a thru-hike, but that isn’t the plan. I think they’re shooting for more like 1,000 miles, which is close to what Cheryl Strayed did, the woman who wrote the book “Wild.”
My kids obviously love the outdoors, which I’m thankful for. I take no credit, as the only camping adventure I ever took them on ended with a drive home in the rain.
But I get the draw of nature; it’s the same feeling I get when I sit in the sand and stare at those Gulf waves. It makes us feel closer to the Creator, whether we’re aware of it or not.
Strayed said it better, though: “It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.”
But back home in the South, these aren’t the most pleasant feeling days. Ninety-five with a heavy dose of humidity zaps me pretty quick, as I found out while cutting my grass on Saturday. So I spent the rest enjoying those great inventions, the AC and TV, watching grown men cry while trying to play with clubs and balls, also out West in nature. I always enjoy the crying part, in a sick sort of way.
Jay Edwards is editor-in-chief of the Hamilton County Herald and an award-winning columnist. Contact him at jedwards@dailydata.com.
“T
hat my complicated life could be made so simple was astounding.” – Cheryl Strayed, “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail”
I watched a lot of TV last weekend. It was US Open time. I was telling my daughter Alexis last Saturday, over the telephone, that this was always the weekend of her dance recitals. “Those were the salad days,” as H.I. McDunnough narrated in “Raising Arizona.” Those were also the grumbling days, as my buddy Judge Morley can attest, because with all the days of the year to choose from, the dance recital coordinators almost always picked U.S. Open Sunday.
But we did love watching all the little girls try so hard, and laughing at the one in every number who decided to improvise, sometimes by just standing there, and sometimes by sauntering, at her own slow pace, off the stage. And Amy Morley, who no matter where her teacher had placed her at the beginning of a number, always managed to work her way to front and center by the end. Yes, those were the salad days.
Now Alexis is working far, far away, in Montana at Glacier National Park, while her brother Matt and his high school buddy Hall are hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s a “Wild” life.
The boys (they’re 30, but I guess I’ll always think of them as boys) had gone 450 miles as of last weekend. Matt called and told me that after hiking about 20 miles of the Mojave Desert, they were following the advice of other hikers and getting on a bus to drive around the remaining 250 miles of sun, sand, and thirst. I thought that was a good plan.
They started a month ago at the Southern Terminus of the PCT, at a spot where California touches Mexico, about 100 miles east of San Diego. They have permits to be on the trail for four months. If they average 22.167 miles a day for 120 days, then they can do the 2,660 miles, or what’s called a thru-hike, but that isn’t the plan. I think they’re shooting for more like 1,000 miles, which is close to what Cheryl Strayed did, the woman who wrote the book “Wild.”
My kids obviously love the outdoors, which I’m thankful for. I take no credit, as the only camping adventure I ever took them on ended with a drive home in the rain.
But I get the draw of nature; it’s the same feeling I get when I sit in the sand and stare at those Gulf waves. It makes us feel closer to the Creator, whether we’re aware of it or not.
Strayed said it better, though: “It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.”
But back home in the South, these aren’t the most pleasant feeling days. Ninety-five with a heavy dose of humidity zaps me pretty quick, as I found out while cutting my grass on Saturday. So I spent the rest enjoying those great inventions, the AC and TV, watching grown men cry while trying to play with clubs and balls, also out West in nature. I always enjoy the crying part, in a sick sort of way.
Jay Edwards is editor-in-chief of the Hamilton County Herald and an award-winning columnist. Contact him at jedwards@dailydata.com. v