A Disastrous Hike Proves I Was Created For The Indoors
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(OPINION) I hate the outdoors.
There, I said it.
Sling all the mud my way you want, you hikers, rock climbers and campers. Your mud will not stick to me, because I’ll be happily ensconced behind the brick walls of my climate-controlled, preternaturally comfortable house, binging on Netflix shows and living my own best life.
I come by my feelings honestly, having inherited them from my parents, both of whom grew up toiling under sweltering suns.
For the rest of their days, they despised chiggers, copperheads and poison ivy.
My mother claimed her idea of roughing it was a Holiday Inn with a mattress that was a tad too firm.
My dad said, “If I ever wake up in a tent, I’ll know I’ve died and gone to hell.”
Well, my wife Liz recently lured me into an actual forest to stay a few days in a cabin. I went because — the things we do for love, right?
Liz loves the outdoors. She walks four miles a day in all kinds of weather. For fun she pushes wheelbarrows and totes huge bags of mulch and digs holes to nowhere.
It won’t be bad, I told myself. It’s a cabin with four walls and a roof, not a lean-to with a camp fire. But then we got there, and I discovered it didn’t even have Wi-Fi.
No Wi-Fi? “Who are we?” I thought. “Lewis and Clark?”
A day or two in, Liz decided we ought to go for a hike. The area was abundant with trails.
“It’ll be great!” she said. “We’ll commune with nature! We’ll breathe fresh air!”
“Prathers don’t commune with nature,” I said.
She wore me down.
“OK,” I said. “Pick the easiest trail.”
So it came to pass that we set off into the woods on the bunny trail. And behold, it wasn’t that bad — until we reached its end.
Then we had a choice. We could double back the way we came, or we could branch off on another short trail that Liz’s map said also returned to where we’d started.
Feeling suddenly giddy, I said, “Let’s take that other trail.”
I should have known. Multiple trails crisscrossed the bunny trail. And of course, we accidentally stepped onto the wrong one.
Shortly, we found ourselves climbing something resembling Devil’s Tower, but with more foliage. The path was vertical, narrow, overgrown with roots, pocked with stones.
I’m 67. And pleasantly plump. And diabetic. I have a bum knee from my football playing days. I’m not in awful shape, but I’m beat up.
Oh — and I suffer from vertigo that comes and goes.
Scaling that mountainside, the vertigo came. I found myself wobbling like a bowling pin over drop-offs into jagged rocks 30 feet below.
Meanwhile, Liz was chatting and singing and practically skipping — which kind of made me want to murder her, if I’d only had the energy and a bit of balance.
I gasped for air.
My blood sugar crashed. I started chugging glucose pills.
“You can do this,” I told myself. “We’re surely almost back. Just put one foot in front of the other, don’t fall off the cliff, and don’t mistake a snake for a tree root.”
That was the precise moment when Liz discovered we weren’t even headed toward our starting point. We were on some godforsaken trail designed by Satan, miles long, taking us directly away from where we needed to be.
“We have to backtrack,” she said.
We doubled back. And back. Forever. Going downhill at first, then uphill. My knee throbbed like an abscessed tooth.
Then I slipped and fell. I couldn’t get to my feet due to my combination of low-blood-sugar weakness and vertigo.
I looked for Liz, who was far ahead — in time to see her disappear over the next ridge.
“She’s left me for the bears,” I said.
Actually, that was all right. By then, I welcomed bears. They’d be coming out of hibernation, ravenous. A few big bear gulps of this plum dumpling andn—nsweet relief.
But Liz hadn’t abandoned me. Like John C. Fremont, she’d gone looking for a better path. Or else for the rescue squad.
Thank the Lord, she found our old bunny trail. Eventually we got out. We returned to our cabin. I’ve never been so grateful to see a place with no Wi-Fi.
This escapade epitomized all my experiences in nature.
I posted a shorter rendition of this tale on social media. Some commenters were sympathetic. Others were funny.
But some tried to motivate me. “That’s the way I felt the first time I hiked!” they wrote. “It’ll be easier next time!”
Next time? There’s no next time.
I’m done and done. This wasn’t my first outing. I’ve hiked before. I’ve camped. I’ve kayaked. Hated them all. Taking me along on your outdoor adventure is sort of like inviting Jonah on your fishing trip: bad things will happen.
God’s telling me something, friends. He’s saying, “The creation and you don’t mix, dummy. It’s genetic.”
Yes, I understand the value of exercise. I try to do some of it. But I prefer to exercise the way I prefer everything — indoors, in an air-conditioned building. I want a bank of plasma TVs above my treadmill and no gnats circling my eyes.
You all can hike and camp until you turn into a pine cone. More power to you. God willing, and I think God is, I’ll stick to my recliner and Netflix.
To each his own bliss.
Paul Prather has been a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky for more than 40 years. Also a journalist, he was The Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff religion writer in the 1990s, before leaving to devote his full time to the ministry. He now writes a regular column about faith and religion for the Herald-Leader, where this column first appeared. Prather’s written four books. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.