Hiking Log – The Journey…

Hiking Log – The Journey…

This is part 16 of excerpts from the trail log which was located on a New York portion of the Appalachian trail. For the post which explains this series, click here.  Each new edition includes a quote from a hiker, along with this writer’s insight into what the person might have meant. Your interpretation may be different!

Following is my selection of this week’s thoughts of a hiker.

June 5, 2016

Are we there yet?

This made me laugh when I first read it, since I could just envision a young child in the back seat five minutes into a multi-hour trip stating these words all parents dread. And then repeating them every few minutes until someone loses patience!

Then I read the words again and thought about them coming from a hiker. I’m sure they were written with a sense of humor. They might have even chuckled as they wrote them.

Perhaps these words were written by someone hiking the entire trail. They’ve been on the trail for months and are nearing the end and are anxious to be done.

Or perhaps they were written by someone who is just doing a short day hike, and they just climbed up the hills to the trail log. Their legs and feet ache and they are looking forward to getting home for the evening.

But regardless of what kind of a hiker wrote these words, I wonder if perhaps they are missing something important. And that is, that life is all about the journey. We have mountains to climb, rivers to forge, car rides to take. Every breath we take is taken while on a journey of some sort. And we owe it to ourselves to try our best to enjoy it all by being in the moment. By paying attention to the where we are as much as to the where we are going.

So my thoughts for this hiker are that I hope he made it to his destination, but was able to enjoy the time spent on the way there.

For more thehousekat.com Hiking-related posts, click here.