Hiking is Just Walking

I am not a hiker. I went camping with friends one time and got pissed at them when they made me walk uphill to a waterfall. “You guys said there was no hiking! Assholes.”

I get now that there was no hiking involved in that trip. It was simply walking uphill with a bit of extra effort and hard breathing. Although I’ve been told that the secret about hiking is that it is, in fact, just walking. And by “I’ve been told”, I mean, “I saw it on Sex and the City”, so basically it’s fact.

I ended up slipping on the rocks and falling on that not-hike. I flailed my arms and reached for whatever I could find on the way down. Which ended up being the tank top of my friend who was walking behind me. If nothing else, we put on a good show.

I have moved to Oregon since that not-hiking waterfall incident and I have had to come to terms with this whole hiking thing. Apparently, it is a little more than just walking. (Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that “hiking is just walking” statement was made by one of Carrie Bradshaw’s ex-boyfriends who she was visiting in a mental facility. But, I digress.)

Recently, my boyfriend had some friends in town so we took them on a couple of easy trail hikes down to the beach. As we were walking, one of the girls asked if I was a Sex and the City fan. (Is it that obvious?) She said, “Remember that episode when Carrie’s old boyfriend told her the secret to hiking is that it’s actually just walking?” We laughed and chatted about how funny that episode was.

An hour later we’re hiking (not walking) to the top of Cape Perpetua. As I am gasping for air, feeling my face burning twenty shades of red, turning switch back after switch back, wondering where the hell the top of this mountain is, all I could think was “Fuck that guy. Hiking is not walking. It’s not. At all….. and I might die here.”

I didn’t die there. I made it all the way to the top, where gasping for air wasn’t too high a price to pay for the amazing view of the ocean and forest below. My boyfriend even picked few flowers for me along the way. And thankfully, we had parked a car at the top of the hill because crawling my way back down to the bottom of the mountain was not something I wanted anyone to see.

So maybe I am a hiker. Or at very least, I no longer associate hiking with things like jumping out of airplanes or becoming an astronaut. Sometimes it’s the smallest paradigm shift that can make the biggest difference.