I just got back this week from a very lovely solo bike-and-backpack adventure, which maybe I will write more about later. But something I was thinking a lot about while out rambling was speed.
.
(stopping to take pictures does not make you fast, heh) From part of my trip, on the Palouse to Cascades Trail)
.
A younger version of myself was much more excited about being fast. Some of that was pragmatic: when I was in grad school, say, and also student teaching, for a few months I had nearly 50 daily miles of commuting (by bike, that is), just to get to my student teaching placement, grad school, and home again — so it was definitely quite helpful to be able to ride fast fast fast. (I have no idea anymore how I had time to do anything then!) But even aside from that, I don’t know, it was just part of my self-concept that I could be fast, cuz fast, I thought = strong and capable.
.
(stopping to look for the sweet little pikas does not make you fast either;)
.
But on this trip, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I have somehow actually become quite slow. I was mostly thinking about hiking speed, not biking, since I had a lot of backpacking/hiking time to stew on this, but the same applies to both, I think. I think my default has become slow, though sometimes I still do enjoy embracing fast. And I’ve thought a lot over the last week about this.
Reasons why I am (mostly) a slow hiker:
- I get distracted by bird calls and stop to watch the birds fly over me
- I marvel at the tiniest of flowers
- (Or really any flowers. Or mushrooms. Or cool trees. Or neat rocks. You get the point)
- I stop to eat all the edible berries
- I whistle back at the marmots and try to find the pikas peeping from the rocks
- Sometimes I just end up deep in thought, and don’t realize I’m walking more and more slowly while I spin my brain
- I like to jump in lakes; I dunk my head in stream crossings
- I take a lot of pictures of things I think are beautiful
- If I’m up high, I like to look deeply at the landscape to see where I’ve been, where I’m going, and which mountains or lakes are which.
- I also like to see if I can guess where the trail ahead of me goes, like where is the pass? How will I get around that crazy mountain ahead of me?
- AND I also frequently cross-reference all of this with a map, which slows this process down even more
- Etc, etc, etc.
.
(eating the low-growing blueberries really slows you down;) Especially if you are as much of a little foraging bear as I am, heh)
.
And then there are the times when I actually like to go fast. I am still capable of this, when I want, sometimes;)
Reasons why I am (sometimes) a fast hiker:
- Sometimes I am actually trail running
- (Though if we were comparing in a category of trail runners, I would be slow there too. But fast in comparison to hiking!:)
- If it is a really crowded trail, sometimes I end up in “crush” mode and just want to pass people and bust it out
- Sometimes the number of miles I need to travel is higher than I expected and I need to make it back before dark
- If you zoom out to a big enough day, sometimes I give the illusion of fast because I can hike basically forever without getting tired, so if it’s a long enough day I will seem fast simply because of the tortoise and the hare phenomenon.
.
(sometimes I just keep going because everything is so beautiful but then realize I don’t have that much daylight left to get back, and then I might be fast;) This is the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, also from my trip)
.
But mostly I am not fast. And I think I’ve largely jettisoned the self-concept that fast is what signals strong and capable, because I still feel pretty damn strong and capable, thank you very much. I just also notice a lot more of the little things around me. And that is a tradeoff I like.