Ain’t No Mountain High Enough

How Hiking Got Me Through

Post #6 of #20: I’m reflecting on twenty years of personal and professional experiences in Birmingham and beyond. Visit www.medium.com/HonestlyEd to read the full #20For20 series.

My introduction to hiking was dark and scary.

I was a 12-year-old Boy Scout (Troop #250) when my Scoutmaster, Cid Duncan, took me and my fellow scouts — North Milwaukee neighborhood kids — on occasional camping trips upstate at Wisconsin’s Indian Mounds Park. Our camping trips were traditional. We enjoyed swimming, fishing and other traditional boy scout activities.

But, the final night of the camping trip always ended with the “midnight hike.” It probably sounds pretty cool to you, but it was downright scary for us.

After all, the midnight hike was preceded by campfire horror stories of serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, demented white men with an irresistible urge to rape, torture and kill. I especially remember the stories about John Wayne Gacy because all of his 33 victims were men and boys. He murdered them after he performed at family-oriented parties as a clown. Cid was an excruciating storyteller with a penchant for details, using his fingers to illustrate how the skin was pulled off here, or limbs cut off there.

(Interestingly, our camping trips occurred in the late 1980s when Jeffrey Dahmer was killing and dismembering young black men in the city of Milwaukee, mere blocks from where some of us lived. In fact, the 14-year-old boy that briefly escaped from Dahmer drugged with a hole drilled in his head and bleeding from the rectum, was my elementary school classmate.)

According to Cid — and most inconvenient for us — Gacy had recently escaped from a remote, upper Wisconsin asylum within two miles of our campground. Yeah, right. We knew Cid was just trying to scare us. He would patiently answer our probing questions as we attempted to sort fact from fiction. Cid already had our trust as the father figure authority figure who had never steered us wrong. Still, he always kept a sly smile that hinted he was toying with us, even as he described what was likely improbable. We were entangled in a clever web of skepticism and intrigue.

The next thing we knew Cid — short but burly — was on his feet and headed into the woods for the fated midnight hike.

Cid could make the older boys “man up” to join the hike by pricking their egos. “C’mon ladies!”, he chided. As the older boys started to follow him into the woods, the younger boys fell in right behind them. No one wanted to be left at the campfire; warm yet chilled by the threat that loomed beyond the crackling, fading light.

Cid was always in the front of the line, marching us through Wisconsin woodlands on those crisp, black Wisconsin nights.

We would walk through the well-worn paths and then, suddenly, step off the path and walk through brush, broken limbs, and fallen leaves with no moonlight. We couldn’t even see our own hands, trembling terminals at the end of interlocked arms. Our heads swiveling and shaking, on the lookout for an oversized serial killer seeking to desecrate sacred indigenous land with the blood of boy scouts.

Eventually, we made our way back to camp. Relieved, exhilarated, and recounting who among us was the most scared.

This was my introduction to hiking.

I don’t know if I was scarred from this experience or if the paths of my busy life kept me away from nature, but it would be 25 years before I stepped on another hiking trail.

My life unfolded over the years, introducing me to newer versions of myself. Major life transitions — career, marriage, tragedies and triumphs — delivered me to the trailhead at Red Mountain Park in Birmingham, Alabama. That particular hike wasn’t intended to be anything more than a walk with a friend, creating space for a wide-ranging discussion that didn’t require constant eye contact, but instead, the constant pursuit of our truths. We found breadcrumbs of those truths discovered along the dirt paths we explored.

What I enjoyed most was the juxtaposition of being intimately invisible within the vast foliage of a small forest, yet exposed at the same time. No walls or secrets. My private thoughts on stage in the public theatre of wilderness. It was freeing in more ways than one.

I needed this years ago! Why wasn’t I doing this more often?

Soon thereafter, I explored hiking trails throughout Birmingham, eventually making my way to Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Michigan.

My hours on the trail are always different. Occasionally, melancholy. Usually, serene and calming. Sometimes inspiring and enlivening, propelling me to move at a slight jog. Frequently, I listen to podcasts, books, or music. Rarely, talking to a loved one on the phone.

I enjoy exploring the music of my favorite artists on the trails. Opting for lesser-known songs and albums I can listen more attentively, especially great lyricists. For example, one of my favorite artists to listen to while hiking (and, in general), is Sleeping At Last. Listening to his music while hiking is cathartic, uplifting and grounding all at once. For a person seeking to step away from the humdrum of life and just regain her footing or to pivot to something different, check out his song titled, “Intermission.”

Despite a strong, loving family I have always been a bit of a loner with a constant need “alone time” to recharge. I have always been that way. As an enneagram Type 5, hiking offers the sort of intense solitude and freedom to be in my head, drilling down on whatever topic, idea or issue that I choose.

Alternatively, hiking is the place I practice the discipline of not living in my head. Instead, being as present as possible, focusing on my breathing and simply putting one foot in front of the other. That is easier said than done, but easier done walking up a mountain than anywhere else.

Every time, I leave better than I arrive. Better connected to my God-self and to the universe. Walking prayer. Walking meditation. I am not the first man to find God on a mountaintop.

God is not the only presence on the mountaintop. There are critters, other people and, sometimes, the unexpected feeling that there is something lurking around me.

The scariest moment I have experienced involved an unplanned excursion to a Mississippi hiking trail, a ridiculously thin barb-wired fence and a stare-down with a bull of significant stature.

My loved ones who are unfamiliar with hiking often admonish me to be safe and careful on the trails. For them, hiking conjures visions of people mauled by black bears or wild cats. Hardly a concern on the urban trails I travail. Maybe they sat around too many campfires listening to horror stories. But, the bull was real. I was in unfamiliar territory, hiking for about an hour before I looked up and realized the remote Mississippi trail abutted someone's farm or ranch. No human beings in sight I looked up and saw a massive bull that saw me before I saw him.

I thought the bull was passive or at least stoic. I changed my angle and looped around it to take a photo from behind. He turned his head. He stared and then his demeanor changed. That’s when I realized how alone I was and just how thin the barbed wire that separated us was. So, I took a picture and slowly backed away, fading back into the trail. Happily invisible amongst the foliage.

I prefer to hike alone, but lately, I have been fulfilled by family hikes with my wife and my sons. No digital distractions or trips to the refrigerator. Just quiet, quiet chats and discovery. I love it.

Here are a few images of my favorite hikes, alone and with family and friends.

My love for hiking has expanded in several ways over the past few years. First, I have been inspired to share some of my lessons learned in business and in life with my network in my video series dubbed Wander & Wonder on Instagram TV. It has been a good way to blend my hobby with my craft.

Also, I’ve been reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. A delightfully humorous, informative and personal take on the journey to hike the AT (Appalachian Trail.) I have flirted with the thought of hiking the AT — a non-stop journey of 4 to 6 months — to my bucket list. But, it is a mere flirtation. I’m so terribly committed to concrete at this point in my life! More than anything else, Bryson’s book is an impressive exercise in how to really use words to describe a scene. At one point in the book I realized just how many different ways he was effectively describing the same things over and over — trees, dirt, rocks, pretty views and bad weather. That’s basically the whole book interspersed with stories of interloping tourists and rude hikers, rickety lodges, and little-known history about the many mountains and their dubious caretakers at the National Park Service.

Hiking has been an important part of my journey for several years now. I pray that it always will be. With it, I have the confidence and strength to conquer any mountain in my life!

I am celebrating 20 years in Birmingham with #20For20 — a series of reflections, insights and homages to my journey. All posts will be featured on my personal blog: www.medium.com/HonestlyEd. Follow me on Medium, LinkedIn and Twitter to be notified of new posts.