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 sitting at my computer?
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, some of it carbon infused. I’ve double lined my backpack’s liner. I could start a fire anywhere, trudge through the rain for hours, fortify my shelter 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… 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, that can provide me with loadout suggestions, heartrate monitoring, step-length optimization, which will bring me to the next level?
I spend hours optimizing my loadout. 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.
I rush my hikes to flaunt my Garmin logs, pushing myself to the limit, and 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 long. The Clif bars were dry, I sweat too much, my 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.
The fun for me comes when I return home. When I’ve survived my expedition, set a new time record, nearly ripped apart my muscles… and now I can post about it on Instagram, a warrior.
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. One said, 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… 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 and I know all the trails. My diet is optimized, my gear is optimized, my skills are sharp, my training is optimized, my footwear, my clothes are treated with all the anti-tick 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 all 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, to set me apart from the crowd! 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.
It must happen. I must be prepared, more prepared, infinitely prepared for every situation. I need to survive, as an individual, self-sufficient. I need not even look at the view, I must sprint over the summits to keep my Strava time low.
Have I been thinking about this wrong all along?
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 my hobby to the point of crushing it, and must turn back.
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?
To enjoy the activity for what it is, and not a conceded image of what it should be, that is true living! An activity that exists in its own right, without an “other” to destroy to maintain its solidarity! Maybe, just maybe, gatekeeping is projection, it is 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.
The chip on my shoulder has ruined my time in the mountains! Blasted!
Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson, 1992