Take a Hike

This afternoon, after classes, my friend Blake and I headed out for a short hike in the Vermont foothills, where we live.  Blake got some bad news last night, and needed to take his mind off it.  I’d spent a boring two hours on the trainer (why does ESPN2 carry tractor pulls in the middle of the day on Saturday?) and wanted to reaffirm my existence as a person.  Riding the trainer, since it is simply a way to stay on top of one’s fitness, is empty of any of the pleasures of exercise: the world going by at a more pedestrian pace, the winter’s first snows, a tree of orange leaves.  The pool presents the same problem, really, the sense of one as doomed mouse, slaved to desire and ambition.

It was a short hike, about an hour out and forty minutes back, and our only view came at the turnaround, where we looked out onto a grey and white valley silenced by snow (even this only lasted minutes, as the eerie rumble of a plow rose from somewhere far below us).  We only talked a little, and that was the nervous chatter of two good but not great friends, and it was spiked with poses and irony.  But although each other’s company gave the reason for the hike, we were both out there for ourselves.  As we walked, I found myself falling into that contempletive, dreamy state that long effort brings.  Another friend of mine, named Ben, is a schemer. He likes to dream.  I didn’t realize this until I’d known him for years, and I would respond pragmatically to his grandiose plans.  He’d talk about buying land and real estate and profiting hugely on it, or about opening the first Krazy Kreme franchise in New England.  I used to think that either he was serious or joking, the only two options I could see.  It wasn’t until he answered my pragmatism with “I just like to scheme. I’m not serious. But I’m not joking, either,” that I realized the significance that dreaming held for him.

And then I recognized that I did it too, but I would be disappointed, later, when I realized I hadn’t acted to bring those dreams to fruition.  I had fallen into the results oriented world in which so many of us exist, a world that thinks dreams are foolish, if not acted upon.

As Blake and I walked through the snowy, grand, quiet woods, we each sunk deeper into our thoughts.  I dreamed about the articles I was writing in my mind, about a wild canoe race in Quebec and an access issue here in Windham county.  Blake was, I’m sure, erecting a positive end to his current troubles.  The possibilities seemed so simple, there, walking easily through the snow; all you’d have to do, upon returning home, would be to take the steps one at a time: call the subject, then the magazine, schedule the interviews, write, re-write, discuss, publish, bask.  It was lovely.

This is one of the gifts of training. The body moves repetitively, sometimes for hours, and the brain slowly becomes disinterested in the bland physical.  The world lines up in simple terms, understandable and uncomplicated.  This is all illusion, but don’t be disappointed at the illusion’s dissapation upon your return home.  We only get to live a few of those dreams our active bodies shake free from the darkened corners of our brains.  Enjoy the schemes.