The Red River Gorge or, thoughts on becoming a backpacker

I'd rather live on the side of a mountain
Than wander through canyons of concrete and steel.

--John Denver, Lady's Chains

We found it difficult to put together a backcountry route with significant mileage that led us to the things we wanted to see -- namely, the arches that make this place so special. Instead, we followed a short but lively six-mile trail and camped near the end on Saturday night. The lower-mileage trail was perfect for a first-time backpacking trip with the kids.

First days on backpacking trips are always, always the hardest. The pack is settling onto your frame, and your feet are appalled at the assault and wondering what your intentions are -- will you do this to them for another day, two or twelve? On first days, my knees go crunchety-crunch as I haul myself uphill, and some random toe -- usually my right pinkie -- becomes and remains stubbornly numb.

So it's tempting to think that first days can kill it for newbies. But I have a different theory. I think if you're going to love it, it's written in your DNA somewhere and it won't matter what that first time is like. My first trip twelve years ago was a disaster. A trail that was supposed to take me from Vermont to the Canadian border was completely blocked by blowdown from a hurricane the previous fall. It took us four hours to make it a single mile. My dog lay down on top of a hill and refused to move until fed two Power Bars. After we got off the trail, I had a harrowing ride with a lunatic cab driver that bore the strong possibility of ending with me dead in a ditch somewhere.

And yet, all I could do when I got home was stare at my boots in the corner and think I wanna do that some more. And so I did.

When I introduced my nephews to backpacking on a trip in the Adirondacks in upstate New York nine years ago, we had all manner of dire events -- I nearly fell off a cliff into a lake (but for the steadying hand of my 13-year old nephew). A bear made an elaborate display of looting another backpacker's food bag within thirty yards of our first campsite. A persnickety park ranger dogged our every step for three days, variously booting us out of certain camp sites protected by imperceptible "No Camping" signs and leaving us written messages about the inadequacy of our bear wires. I fell on a rock on the last day and relieved myself of several layers of skin on my leg and knee. I limped along anyway, lavishly dripping blood along the trail. Even my dog suffered, busting open his paw pad on the way up Mount Marcy, the highest peak in New York.

And yet, one of my nephews went home from that trip and inducted his father into the club immediately. For several years thereafter, they took an annual spring backpacking trip. At 26, he still stares out the window of his office and thinks about putting a pack on his back. My other nephew, however (the one who kept me from pitching pack-first over the cliff), still views backpacking from a distinctly I-don't-fucking-think-so lens.

Things broke down along the same lines on this trip. We awoke Sunday morning to a thunderstorm battering the tents that we'd pitched high on a ridge the evening before. The dog, huddled in the larger tent with the kids, was freaking out. The temperature had dropped. In a unusual lapse of good sense, we'd left a number of items outside the night before which were now completely soaked. We broke camp while being pelted with a chilly, driving rain.

"So, what did you think?" I asked The Boy on our way back to the car. He grinned. "I loved it! I want to do it again!" he exclaimed as he bounced down the trail as if powered by an invisible pogo stick. This was an improvement from the day before, when he'd sat down on a rock, looked up painfully, and blurted "I'm tired as shit!" But he'd recovered well. He clearly has the gene.

I'm still not sure what makes someone want to put their home on their back and meander about for days at a time. It's not merely a love of being outside -- The Girl is as much a hiker and climber as anyone, and yet she concluded, at the end, that she was just fine with keeping her camping and hiking separate in the future. Nor is it just a love of nature. I have many friends who are deeply in touch with the natural world, but feel no desire to sleep in it.

On my first night in the backcountry, I slept in a three-sided shelter. As I relaxed into the sleeping bag, I was almost humming with the awareness that I was abandoning myself to the noises that began just beyond the fire ring. I remember this as a source of both unease and delight. If pressed for an answer to these questions, I would have to resort to the one commonality I see in every avid backpacker -- we all feel at least a little bit constrained by the world of humans. Things like air conditioning and the sterility of concrete and steel produce not so much comfort as a low-level sense of discontent. The things that come along with the luxuries of civilization feel much more like limitations than amenities.

Most of the people I know are fine for awhile outside, until they are finished and want, quite reasonably, to get back indoors.

I think wanderers like me have the opposite problem -- we're fine inside for awhile, until we need to return to the comfort of our natural habitat. Tack onto that other fixations -- a constant need to see what's just around the next bend, perhaps, and a love of natural beauty, and you have a person who is willing -- even eager -- to strap the basics of existence to her back and sleep out in the rain.

Call it primitive, call it unevolved -- but call it me.