Hiking: Why I Hike, and Why You Should, Too

A city girl and never physically fit as a child, I didn't enjoy walking until we were invited to camp at Lake Tahoe with the family some years ago. More interested in the birds and scenery than in tourist traps, my mother and I hit the hiking trails. Being new to both walking and mountains, hiking even the "easy" trails in the area stretched our muscles... hiking hurt! But the truly grand discovery of the experience was that it was more than worth it. Stretching my legs outdoors, using them to take me to wild places I could never have visited otherwise, to see things I would never have seen, left me breathless in more ways than one. I was hooked. Even back in Michigan, where we have low hills instead of mountains and a great deal more cornfields, I found plenty of wild areas I'd never noticed before, and set out to explore them by foot.

Human beings have been walking in the outdoors since we first stood on two feet. Before agriculture, humans walked miles everyday in search of food. I personally believe simply walking in the wild is one of the behaviors most integral to being human, although one forgotten by much of civilized society. Everyday, though, thousands of Americans go for a hike, and the activity has seen a steady rise in popularity in recent decades.

Hiking has many benefits. Of course, it's a fitness activity, a great way to burn calories and build muscle. Depending on the grade and difficulty of a hike, it's easy to burn more calories hiking than you would on a treadmill or stairstepper. Much more important to most hikers, though, is the simple fact that they're not on a treadmill, nor even on a sidewalk, but walking among the amazing natural communities beyond our human-made cities and structures, experiencing and exploring places in a way that cannot be done by any other means.

Edward O. Wilson, biologist, author and Pulitzer prize-winner, coined the term "biophilia" and theorizes that all humans are born with this condition. Biophilia literally means "love of living things." Wilson suggests we have an innate attraction to nature and natural systems and are drawn to seek connections with them. If this doesn't strike you as immediately obvious, think of how even the most citified people seek nature in the form of parks, gardens, pets and house plants, and how nearly every conversation seems to begin with a discussion of the weather, whether it's relevant or not. These things may have no obvious benefit, and yet people spend time and money on them. Like a natural, species-wide obsession, we want to experience and be part of nature, that grand world beyond our concrete doorstep.

Perhaps we evolved to obsess with nature because our ancestors needed to be fascinated with the natural world in order to survive and be successful. I'm also willing to believe God instilled in us an innate love for Creation. For me, the cause is not so much of a consideration as is the simple experience of it. I love the wild world around me and there's no more natural way to explore it than to walk through it.