It’s nearing the end of summer and I’ve been home and off the Salt Path for a week. I was driving Matt home from a friend’s house when he made this observation.
“Hey, Dad. Those first few weeks I spent with you in England seemed like they were
way longer than the whole rest of my summer vacation.”
“Sorry about that.”
“No, I mean they felt longer in a good way. I think it seemed like it was longer because
we slept in a different place every night or something. It was different. These last several weeks
just flew by, and now summer vacation is about gone.”
“I think it was the novelty of it,” I said. “People remember things they see and things they do, but they don’t really remember how many times they did them. So a couple weeks of doing strange things will make more memories than a couple months of doing familiar things. Other than England you had a good summer though, right?”
“Oh yeah, especially when I was over in Eastern
Washington at Aunt Rhonda’s.”
“Well that was out of the ordinary for you too. Not the same old, same old, see?”
“Uh huh.”
“You know, that’s the main reason I like doing these
long hikes, Matt. The novelty of it, and when
you’re walking you see more novel things.
We’ll remember things from over there that we only experienced once as much or more than the things that we see here all the time.
Like that patch of trees in the valley between Porlock and Lynton that
had a really noisy cuckoo bird in it.”
“Yeah, and drifting in the Tesco store with those
shopping carts that have crazy wheels on the front and the back.”
“What about that iffy-looking stone archway we had to
walk under by the monastery that was seven hundred years old?”
“Or that porta-potty that hit the road and split open
like a poop slurpee because the sideboards on that guy's lorry were too short?”
“Oh,
yeah. I’d almost forgotten that,” I
said. “See, we’re different people, so we’ll
remember different things. But we’ll
still each remember more of those things from England, because they were novel to us. Even if you’re having fun, even if you’re
enjoying what you’re doing, when you look back on it, you won’t remember it as
much if you’ve already done it a lot times, over and over again.”
“Uh huh.” Apparently,
Matt’s phone was vibrating because he was working it out of his pants pocket from under the seatbelt. This particular father-to-son wisdom window was closing
fast.
“We only have one lifetime here, but one of my life
goals is to pack as many lifetime’s worths of memories into mine as I can. Hear what I’m saying?”
“Uh huh.” He
was otherwise immersed now, both thumbs dancing on his phone.
I left him to it, and quit talking.
As often happens in these situations, I remembered what my friend Eric, a wildlife photographer, had told me about a momma grizzly and twin cubs he’d watched from a tree stand one early morning. They had emerged from the woods and crossed the meadow single file, mama in front and the cubs just behind. There was an old log at the far edge of the
meadow, and Mama stopped and looked back at her cubs when she reached it.
Satisfied that she had their attention, she turned back to the log, held it
down with one big paw and clawed a hunk off with the other. She ate the grubs she had exposed, then stood
aside to let her cubs try it.
But the cubs hadn’t seen, because the moment she had
turned back to the log to demonstrate, one cub had jumped on the other and
clamped his jaws on an ear.
Mama Bear, disgusted, walked off into the woods- leaving the snarling ball of fur and saliva to roll around in the grass without
her. Eric got some good camera shots but
couldn’t help worrying about the cubs’ long-term chances of survival, being
that they were such inattentive and self-absorbed dunderheads. Mama was gone a good four minutes before the
cubs noticed. They looked back the way
they had come, then into the woods ahead.
No mama anywhere. Eric thought
they would panic or sit and bawl for her, but they didn’t. Instead, they went
to the log, and each of them put a paw on top to hold it steady and clawed into
it with their free paws to expose more grubs.
They ate them, scratched themselves, then went into the woods on their
mother’s trail.
“Those idiot cubs weren’t paying any attention, but somehow they absorbed the lesson nonetheless." Eric had a habit of squaring up his shoulders and smoothing his shirt with his hands if he thought he had something heavy or profound to drop. So I waited for him to drop it on me. "That is the way of nature," he intoned, as if reading it from a stone tablet.
'What a dork, ' I remember thinking at the time. But weirdly, as a parent now, it gives me hope. Often.
“So, what’s up?” I asked Matthew.
“Jaxon was out looking for Barbie shirts that we can wear
first day of school and he found some pink camo t-shirts in the Goodwill store,
only they don’t say Barbie and they don't completely match. One
says ‘Powerful’ and the other says ‘Pudding’." (Jaxon is one of Matt’s buddies.)
“So who gets to be Powerful and who gets to be
Pudding?”
“Don’t know yet. We both wannabe Pudding.”
“Maybe you should bite each other’s ears and roll
around in the grass for Pudding,” I said.
“Uh huh,” Matt said, thumbs dancing again on his
phone.
“Like bear cubs,” I said.
“Uh huh.” He and Jaxon were busy texting at each other furiously, the way bear cubs would, I thought, if they had phones. Or thumbs. I left them to it and in my mind, walked off into the woods alone and left them to it.
Rick’s Days in England…… ……………………………. 55
Rick’s Days Hiking in England……………………….. 39
Days Rick was Rained on while Hiking in England… 38
People I met on the Salt Path:
Total……………………………………….. Hundreds
Intending to hike a section………. Dozens
*{I am in this group}
*{I am not in this group}
Distance Stats, in miles:
Length of Salt Path……… 630
Path parts I walked………… 497.8
Alternative Paths I walked, Intentionally 136.1
*{Don’t even ask, for Pete’s sake}
Total Miles Walked…………………… 698.6
Elevation Stats, hills climbed in feet:
Feet I climbed, Intentionally ….. 112,385
*{Just shut up, maps are hard.}
Feet I climbed, Total ……………… 122,170
I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail five years ago, it seemed
easier to do than the Southwest Coast Path.
This English trip just felt tougher somehow, and it beat me up
more. I wasn’t dizzy when I finished the
PCT trip, for instance. So I looked up
my old PCT stats. A comparison is below.
|
|
Pacific Crest Trail |
Southwest Coast Path |
|
Miles hiked |
2,580 |
699 |
|
Highest Elevation |
13,153 feet |
1,043 feet |
|
Days Spent Hiking |
123 |
39 |
|
Elevation gained (feet climbed) |
305,200 |
122,170 |
|
Body weight lost |
28 lbs |
9 lbs. |
So far, it looks like the Pacific Crest Trail was tougher. It was longer, it went higher and farther than the Southwest Coast Path, and I lost three times as much weight doing it. I've got to tell you, it’s pretty nice in England, having pubs with fish and chips and pints of beer each night before turning in.
But it sure as heck ain't easy or flat. To illustrate, take a look at these stats:
|
|
Boston Marathon |
Pacific Crest Trail |
Southwest Coast Path |
|
Average miles per day |
26.2 |
20.9 |
17.9 |
|
Ave. feet climbed per day |
891 |
2,481 |
3,132 |
|
Hills per mile hiked |
34 feet/ mile |
119 feet/ mile |
174 feet/ mile |
I haven’t done the Boston Marathon but if anyone ever
let me onto the course, I’d endeavor to get it done in a day and call it
good. I wouldn’t be looking to go much
farther for instance, and I’d be willing to bet that most people that have done
the marathon don’t either. So I’m
including it above for comparison’s sake.
Now, let’s make an index for trail ruggedness and use
the Pacific Crest Trail’s 119 feet/mile as the standard. The Southwest Coast Path’s 174 feet/mile is 1.47
times the PCT’s 119 feet/mile, and the
Boston Marathon’s 34 feet/mile is 0.29 times as much as the PCT’s. Let’s see how a typical day on each path
compares, once adjusted using their respective ‘ruggedness factors’.
|
|
Boston Marathon |
Pacific Crest Trail |
Southwest Coast Path |
|
Average miles per day |
26.2 |
20.9 |
17.9 |
|
Ave. feet climbed per day |
891 |
2,481 |
3,132 |
|
Feet climbed per mile hiked |
34 feet/ mile |
119 feet/ mile |
174 feet/ mile |
|
'Ruggedness Factor' |
0.29 |
1.00 |
1.47 |
|
Daily miles X ruggedness factor |
7.6 miles |
20.9 miles |
26.3 miles |
Look, I know there’s a lot of marathoners that will
bristle when their accomplishments are compared this way to what I did. And I wouldn’t argue vehemently that my crude
treatment of some selected stats accurately describes how much stress a person
puts on their body doing any of these various treks. I’m no marathoner, just a long-distance
hiker. And only an average one at that.
On the other hand though, an average marathoner takes
about four hours to get their day’s work is done; well before dinnertime. And they get to travel fast and light, and
don’t have to wear smelly clothes or carry a thirty-pound backpack along with them as
they do it. And they wouldn’t have to do
it again daily for the next month or six, either.
Unless they wanted to, of course.
So yeah, I’d argue a little that the comparison is fair enough.
That’s
what I’m telling myself right now anyway, and I’ll lounge around here a bit longer
before going back to work. I feel like I
need it. And thanks to GPS tracking and
mapping technology, I was able to manufacture some useful statistics to justify
my current laziness.
So there. If you're waiting for me, I'll see you next week. Promise.
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