A few years ago, I posted The New Nomad’s List of 101 Truly Compelling Reasons to Do a Long-Distance Hike . Since then I’ve thought of many more, and in case that wasn’t enough to convince you, I now present:
The New Nomads List of 101 MORE Truly Compelling Reasons To Go On a Very Long Distance Hike
- See a bear
- See a mountain lion
- See full grown men carrying parasols to protect themselves from the sun
- Hear silence
- Finally hear what the non-stop thoughts in your head have been saying to you about yourself and others your whole life
- Get all of your aging over with in one season
- Give you something other than food to subject your fb status updates with
- Get crazy fit
- Wear socks with sandals without appearing geeky
- Have only one task per day for 5 whole months
- Explore the exciting realm of sexting and/or phone sex with partner left at home
- Determine if your facial hair really would eat your head if left ungroomed for 5 months
- Learn how to get lost
- Become very adept at knowing exactly what time it is based on the sun’s position in the sky and what the bugs are doing
- Learn how to help other people
- Instantly belong to community of giddy like-minded people
- Forget what day and time it is
- Forget what your real name is
- Forget why you ever became a career person
- Forget what you look like with mascara on
- Watch your feet grow
- Watch your hair grow
- Watch your patience with discomfort grow
- Finally get through the entire library of “The Great Courses”
- Finally understand what an empty mind feels like
- Quit smoking
- Quit drinking
- Quit caring what you look like
- Quit waking up late
- Learn 25 uses for duct tape
- Learn 25 uses for an umbrella
- Learn 25 uses for trekking poles
- Accrue daily skills at manipulating your partner to do what you want
- Learn how to be submissive to your partner
- Leave your partner
- Get a new partner
- Feel bad-ass
- Be actually weird, instead of poser weird
- Earn a tattoo
- Have an accomplishment that absolutely no one can relate to
- Meet other tourists in Canada and be able to respond to no matter what they say with, “yeah, but I walked here”
- Experience pain that might actually trump the pain of giving birth
- Become an excellent map reader
- Become an excellent hitchhiker
- Become psychic about where car campers are with food
- Finally “get” that “one day at a time” mantra you’ve heard others spout all your life
- Sit gleefully around a campfire drinking beer with strangers and laughing til your body hurts
- Get free pie
- Witness first hand the intensity of a forest fire
- Behold trees that are hundreds of years old
- See beauty you couldn’t possibly describe
- Figure out that your skin is waterproof
- Debt collectors can’t reach you by phone anymore
- Don’t have to worry about drinking “too much coffee”
- Don’t have to pay car insurance for 5 months
- Get over fear of heights
- Get over fear of pencil thin tread across steep slopes of loose sand or snow
- Get over fear of naked hippies in hot springs
- Learn how fun being knocked over by a wind gust can be when choreographed correctly
- Learn how to sleep in all situations without chemical help
- Have time to think about what the hell you’re doing with your life
- Have opportunity to forget about what the hell you’re doing with your life
- Possibly get your money’s worth out of your health insurance
- Relief from making daily abstract decisions about things
- Fall madly in love with a puffy jacket
- Fall madly in love with a pair of sandals
- Fall madly in love with random beds
- Fall madly in love with an apple
- Meet people from all over the world
- Meet trail angels and learn the true meaning of gratitude
- Watch people gather around water sources like animals do
- Remember that you’re animal
- Be cared about by strangers
- Have non-stop haiku material
- TRULY test gear
- Learn 100 uses for a bandana
- Be a single woman on a trail mostly populated by fit and happy men
- Be a man away from the wily ways of evil women
- Test your relationship
- Let your kids develop a closer relationship to their mother/father while your away
- Make your kids proud of you
- Prove endurance and stick-to-it-tiveness on your resume
- Truly feel like you’ve done something for yourself in your life
- Learn how strong you can be
- Be amazed at what the human body can endure
- Put your feet in a cool stream after miles of desert hiking
- Hallucinate without drugs
- Give your parents another opportunity to compare you to some strange relative in the way past the whole family still talks about
- Get family members to join you for sections for quality bonding time
- Be “in the world and not of the world”
- Not care about politics or sports outcomes for 5 months
- Become unreliable to needy people in your life for 5 months
- Begin to see a forest as your home and not feel like you’re an outsider exploring it
- Learn at least 15 different ways to prepare couscous
- See and maybe even grow some of your own super impressive blisters
- Learn how popular a flask of tequila can make you
- Learn how to NOT take pictures when having an experience
- Stand underneath hyperactive wind turbines
- Earn every meal
- Learn a new language
- But MOSTLY, have an experience of a lifetime that you will never forget!
Happy trails, friends!
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Great stuff! Thanks! Shared it on my page.
I am going to put a link to this in my next newsletter. So true and such fun. Thank you!
Love this! Shared it on our fb page. Let’s write haikus together all summer