It Happens Out There

I am shirking my work to write this. I’ve been wanting to blog all week, but I am in catch-up mode, as usual. I woke up this morning determined to get a certain list of things accomplished. I hammered, I processed, I answered mail. Then one of my authors sent me an email titled “Bonus Article” so I opened it because I simply can’t ignore gifts like that from authors I like. Great, I thought, I can get another article in this week, and I added it to my list. But as I read it, his descriptions of what he saw along the trail, of what he was thinking about, I was reduced to tears.

Here are his words:

“With an afternoon of downtime, I thought about taking my laptop down to the hotel pool to get a little work done. I’ve got some free time. I should go work. Ridiculous, right? I planned on plugging in my headset, launching Spotify, answering emails, and making myself available to any coworkers who might need to call or text me. And I almost did it. Instead, I went hiking.”

Further on he says:

“And that’s when I really started thinking…. And that’s what hiking offers: time to think. I doubt that I would have had any of these thoughts if I’d stayed back at the hotel, deliberately trying to have them. I would have been tethered to the expectation of coming up with something brilliant, and probably slinking off to Facebook when lightning failed to strike.”

And this hit me hard because this is me, he is exactly me right there. I know I come up with most of my best stuff when I am on the trails, or running or traveling, out, away from machines and confining, square workspace and rapid-fire distractions. Yet we force ourselves to stay here in it. He continues:

“I think hikers are thoughtful people. Look at a sampling of those who went into the wilderness and came out with something worth writing down and talking about: Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Meriwether Lewis, Thoreau, Emerson, John Muir. Even every U.S. President since FDR has left the Beltway for Camp David. That’s because hiking gives us what so many of our tools steal: the time and the solitude to think our own thoughts.”

It was a perfect reminder of why I began this outdoor magazine project in the first place; of how much more effective, productive and happy we are when we’re out there.