By Sophia Mattice-Aldous
While perusing a list of local hikes sent to me by a correspondent from the Washington Trails Association (WTA), I felt a skittering of exercise insecurity. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to receive said list, but some of the difficulty ratings on the trails had me muttering, “Not all of us have the stamina of Pheidippides and the lungs of a draft horse, Holly.”
In all reality, it’s not WTA’s or Holly’s fault that my physical endurance currently competes with that of an ant driving a motor scooter around the inside of a donut (hhhmmm, donuts!).
I just dislike exercising. Our society’s obsession with it, and how you’re supposed to look before you even start exercising, annoys me. My eyes glaze over when people start to talk about their diets, especially those that purport bodies can be transformed with powders, “all natural” energy drinks, and numerous other supplements, but act like eating a slice of bread is akin to licking an underground tank at Hanford.
But I love to go hiking. And if I’m being truthful with myself, my family’s history of heart health and diabetes has a high likelihood of being part of my inheritance. It is with this in mind that I have become an unofficial member of the Out of Breath Hiking Society, a loosely organized group of mostly me, myself and I, along with my mother who occasionally joins me for outdoor expeditions in Pend Oreille and Stevens counties. We sweat a lot and sometimes my heart feels like a hamster is holding a heavy metal concert in my chest cavity, but we have a good time.
If you’ve lived in eastern Washington/north Idaho for any length of time, you may know it’s not an understatement that our backyard is huge. Between the Idaho Panhandle and Colville National Forest, Bureau of Land Management, Department of National Resources, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, we literally have millions of acres of public land to play on. I’ve been fortunate enough to do some traveling in my lifetime, and such access to land and the ability to protect it is not guaranteed, or even possible, in some places.
Short story long, why not take advantage of the proximity?
Growing up, my family didn’t have a lot of money. We never wanted for food, shelter, or clothing, but vacations were usually kept within the Inland Northwest and involved a lot of camping. Spokane was two hours away; Kettle Falls was 30 minutes, and the Inchelium Reservation was right across the river. Family outings usually consisted of packing lunches, going to a trailhead, and following said trail to whatever summit lay ahead. Sometimes we would go pick morels or huckleberries. If it were a particularly long trek and my parents had a little extra cash, we would eat out for an early dinner. Sometimes Mom would bring a book of poetry or haikus to read aloud when we stopped for a short break. Though my brother and I groaned and rolled our eyes as we entered teenagerhood, I did, and still do, appreciate her and my late father’s efforts to expose us to the arts, literature and the ways they would combine them with nature. Some of my best memories are the seemingly little moments: taking in the lush greenery of spring as we drove down a dirt road, laughing as we sat in tall grass on our way up White Mountain, eating our sandwiches and teasing poor mom because she had made them with enough peanut butter to choke a horse, or just standing silently as a family on a summit, looking at a horizon that was so vast and yet somehow so reassuring. You could argue that I have my nostalgia goggles firmly strapped, but why not, when the views are so beautiful?
The real question is, why did I not consistently maintain these excursions into adulthood? There were a lot of reasons, some of them valid and some excuses masquerading as reasons. For now, the hiking boots are laced, the backpack is packed (including sandwiches with an evenhanded amount of peanut butter this time) and now I just need to get to the trailhead.
You’re welcome to come along.
Sophia Mattice-Aldous is not a doctor, personal trainer or dietician, so if you’re looking for that kind of exercise and health column, it’s not this one. However, she is a lifelong Washington resident and reporter with an affinity for The Great Outdoors who thinks fitness should be fun, and that looks different for everyone. For her, it’s going outside. If you have questions and/or comments, including hiking suggestions, email [email protected].
