My friends, I turn to you for sage advice, on a very particular matter which must be resolved immediately. An imminent threat is approaching, it is inbound, it is right in front of me, it consumes me, and it must be handled. Yet I cannot do this alone – the vast brain of the internet must assist. I have used it to get this far. There must be something that can be done. Yet, I can’t quite figure it out. It tears my brain apart late at night in worry, worry if I have gotten the most out of this.
… Dare I ask, my fellow hikers:
Have I optimized my activity?
Am I ready to perform the hike at hand? Have my purchases nailed the exact niche of such an activity? How much more shall I invest into R&D? How will I know, definitively, that I have optimized enough? Are there rankings I have overlooked? Perhaps I have not thought about this from all angles, in multiple dimensions, or gamed it out in-situ? Perhaps there is an edge scenario which causes me to overheat – or freeze. A sandstorm. A whale breaching. Ice buildup on my beard. What could it be?
What could there be which I would not have the skill, or a consumer product, tool, device to handle? Perhaps I need more redundancy in my loadout – no – I must remain ultralight. What more can I squeeze out of preparing for this experience?
Yes, I need to work on my calves… (deep sigh) … and I have started training them more… I am inferior in this regard and bow down in respect, and fear, of the larger man. Here, take a look at my Excel spreadsheet. I have gone full synthetic – I dare not touch a piece of cotton now to avoid a bad omen. My footwear is fresh and grippy. I’ve double lined my backpack’s liner. I could start a fire anywhere, trudge through the rain for hours, fortify my shelter against wind with this paracord, hang my food to thwart bears. I dry-hump cold food in a sack on my crotch for the last hour of my hiking, so that I don’t have to carry the extra pound of a stove and fuel. It is worth it – it makes me faster, more agile, more capable than… than… uh… other hikers – slower hikers, casuals, day hikers, TOURISTS…!
The absolute last thing I would ever want to appear as, is a casual, weekend hiker. I am a force of nature, a mountaineer – the $2,000 of niche sportswear and ultralight Dyneema fabrics define my serious interest in this… extreme sport. It is not a hobby – the tourists who visit to climb Elephant Head are naive, they have no idea what real hikers go through, the pain and trials of the Whites. They are unprepared sheep, sucking wind and laughing and having fun – as if this is some hobby to escape the deadening work week, like a hot dog grill out. Their erratic, noncontinuous training for such trails leaves them sore. HA! The fools.
I digress. My problem still remains, so I must come back to that.
The problem, as I see it, is this: I cannot find another level to reach. I am thousands deep into my investment in niche, home-grown sportsgear. I have chosen optimal gear for every season, every condition, every possible scenario – yet I feel as if I am missing some philosophy, some optimization scheme which will finally make this all click. Which $600 Dyneema backpack is actually the perfect choice for my trip? Will I benefit from an extra tie-down on the back, or not? Is my survival machete enough in a bushwacking scenario? Is there an app, perhaps that employs machine learning, or cutting-edge AI, that can provide me with loadout suggestions, heartrate monitoring, step-length optimization, which will bring me to the next level?
I am perplexed, and I choke, in trying to pick my loadout within the hour. A weekend appears, the weather is surprisingly good, and suddenly I must optimize. A fleece – it is autumn, after all – or a hoodie, for a walk to my mailbox? The neighbors might see me. My hands may feel brisk, yet gloves may hamper my ability to grab the mail inside the mailbox. Perhaps I need to purchase thin gloves with grippy fingertips? Ah, I see they have insulated and non-insulated versions – I can choose a synthetic vegan leather too. This is the same company from the Everest expedition gear, so I trust it. Oh, and color scheme? A woodland camo is masculine, yet overplayed. A postmodern style may attract the wrong attention. Blasted, I will make the decision later.
But most importantly, I return with more problems than I leave with. The Merino wool undershirt felt weird, the name-brand ultralight hat’s brim was too short, these trail runners' shoelaces are too thin. The Clif bars were dry, I sweat too much, the sun hoodie was too loose, the view was stunning yet I had no time to enjoy it to make my personal time goals… and my dinner was cold. I saw too many casuals on the trail in crocs earlier, going down to the river to have fun. Fun.
No, of course I do not envy them or their little group, why would you suggest such a thing? They were 10 minutes into a hike with 5 more minutes to go to reach the river – well, 10 minutes at their pace, with all the chatting (heh… probably broke college hippies, useless art students perhaps) – all wearing sandals and crocs and cotton and older style Jansport backpacks and some of them didn’t even have backpacks! They had drawstring bags with beach towels and phones (ugh!) and shorts to get eaten alive by the bugs and skinny noodle calves! One slung a collapsable chair bag around their shoulder. What a joke, a fool’s party, a caricature of modern hikers. I imagine they must have felt awe and inspiration in seeing someone like me, returning from a 15 mile jaunt up to the high peaks, high on mountain air and gritty in appearance. If it were not for this bluebird weather, I would never have to see such a nuisance.
They were too friendly. How am I doing? What is this? I scoffed and hand waved them away quickly. What a game people have made of these trails. I bet none of them even knew CPR, yet they were going to dip their feet, surely, in a moment, onto slippery rocks to reach the sites along the river. I should have stuck around to see them fording.
Blasted, I am still on the tangent. These people, they are everywhere, and don’t understand their place on the hierarchy… the hierarchy of… uh, all of this! The natural social and muscular order of things! God, I must digress now, and save my heart.
Please, I beg of you all, all my real explorers out there, where can I go from here? What level is there to pursue? I am local to the area – I know all the trails. My diet is optimized, my gear is optimized, my skills are sharp, my training is optimized, my footwear is replaced monthly, my clothes are treated with all the chemicals, my sunglasses are polarized, my posture and gait have been fixed, my calves… well, I have already mentioned the extra training I started for them – stop it!, my breathing, my Dyneema, my optimized loadout, the ultralight dream, it burns within me. It is a problem which must be solved and I am willing to put in the research, the training, the work, to transcend higher into expertise…!
I spend too much time at my job, sitting, and I have so much time to invest to dream about getting away from it. And that puts pressure on each weekend, each small sniff of outdoor time! I must take advantage of it, every second, I cannot afford not to.
So tell me, now! Where is there to go? What expertise am I missing, what tool have I overlooked? I am bored here, with nothing left to conquer! What rabbit hole will quell my suffering? What shall I buy? Ah, the gloves for the mail… yes, but that is a fleeting issue, it will be solved surely with a few YouTube reviews and a credit card.
Wait…
My car. Blasted, I didn’t even think to upgrade to a 4x4. I bet I could get a loan on a Tacoma or a Ram. How can I call myself a true explorer without a 4x4? What happens if my sedan gets stuck in a snow patch and it is nighttime and a storm is coming? Surely my emergency bag will save me for a day or two – granola bars and emergency bivvy and flashlight and all – but what would I do? It would be an embarrassment of someone of my stature and skill to need someone else, a tug from someone with a truck – someone more prepared than me for this situation! My God! To imagine me walking a mile or two down the road, on the side of the road, while my enemies drive past – the casuals, all of them!
It must happen. I must be prepared, more prepared, infinitely prepared for every situation. I need to survive, as an individual, self-sufficient –
There is someone knocking at my door, hold on. What on Earth could someone need, for the love of hardtack?!
My God, it was the hippies. Standing alongside the girl scouts, they have sold me cookies. My macros will be ruined… I can’t believe I’ve done this, to fall into this trap! Blasted! They were too friendly – and now I have lost my composure, my resistence, my hardness! By tomorrow I may very well have a muffintop. It’s over. Did my neighbors see? I put on my GORETEX fleece before opening the door, so I have maintained my external character.
Perhaps I can compensate for the extra sugar by taking a hike tomorrow. Ah yes, that’s a good idea. Uh… I wonder what I should wear… and pack? I must go now –
NO, no, no, I can’t do it. The pile of gear is too tiring to sift through. I must make a change – I started this rant knowing I must take some action, and now it is clear what I must do.
I am losing it with all this crap, I have never been impressed with any of it, I desire to go back, to simplify, to pack the essentials and blast off into adventure. There is no gadget to augment my experience that will make it better. It is only me, boots on the ground, head in the mountain wind – there is no hierarchy here. I’ve optimized, and overfit, and must turn back.
What a ruse, these companies have convinced me that all my problems are just out of reach, waiting to be solved. Maybe I need Thoreau’s “simplify, simplify” philosophy, maybe this is the direction I am missing. Perhaps an expert is adaptable. Prepared and adaptable to the situation at hand – but not overfit with gear. Have I been thinking about this wrong all along? No – it is the evil advertisers and marketing that has sucked me in, maybe. Blasted! I have wasted my money and I knew it all along.
My sport became usurped by this hobby of dreaming about myself perfecting it – instead of performing it, adapting to it, breathing it in, enjoying the view, grilling hot dogs at base camp and eating pop tarts like a hippie! What is a sport without enjoyment? What is an optimized activity, after all? What is this complexity, this tedium, this overanalysis? Why is the activity a problem to be solved? What is there to beat?
Perhaps an expert transcends all of this – perhaps, they enjoy the activity for what it is, and not a conceded image of what it should be. Maybe, just maybe, gatekeeping is projection – fear of the hierarchy itself, fear of the self-awareness of imperfection, exhaustion of the burning judgment within, thrown outwards to try to get rid of it.
Blasted!
Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson, 1992