Becoming Mud
A memoir on hiking & nature
Does adding ‘planet walker’ to your social media bio make it more interesting? I don’t really care, because nature doesn’t read. It only feels the sunshine. The rain pattering on leaves. Animals munching and fertilizing. And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you go forth into nature to take something from it, it takes a bit out of you, too. In my case, it’s taken a lot more these days.
A good way to know you’re not young anymore is falling into a muddy gorge and hurting your shoulder in the process. The sneakers you’ve worn to hell had no traction. The best they could do was slide deeper into the mud. Immediately, once you’re down and out, the bugs swarm you. Mosquitos, flies, other dastardly beings as your hands slide in the embankment, trying to pull yourself up. Your bag has mud caked on it already, like multiple birthmarks straight out of the factory. You finally stand up, noting your ruined shoes. You stomp around, knocking off whatever you can, letting nature peel away the rest as you renavigate the 2 miles or so back to your car. Anger in defeat, it’s fine. Try again next weekend.
Next weekend comes around, and the sneakers still have some life in them. So you go back to the trail. Your shoulder is still stiff and you swore there was no rain for the last week. But when you get back to the path you were previously on, you see just how bad it’s gotten. You really think horses are neat creatures, but at this moment, you hate them for what they’ve done. Yards feet of untraversable, thick mud. You can’t even see where the trail goes, it’s that bad. You do your best to navigate the incongruent divots as guides. But they are fickle and deceiving, and you watch your foot sink into a chocolate-brownie-batter-looking void. And just like that, the mud vacuum seals around your left foot. You strain your quad to lift it out and all you get is a sock. The trail is hungry today. You end up retrieving the sneaker, hovering as low as you can but lose the other shoe in the process. A couple from the trail sees you struggling off the beaten path. Unable to assist, they wish you ‘good luck and just keep moving. Oh, and the temperature is climbing, and you nearly lost your water bottle to the pit.
Rage is coursing through your veins as you curse under your breath, plodding back with multi-mud-layered sneakers and socks. You don’t realize how many pints of sweat you perspire until you veer right and find the road. The blistering hot road radiating the late-morning heat around you, cooking your brownie shoes. You keep on walking, hoping for salvation in the parking lot. A few horses and their owners are up on the ridge, laughing and having a great morning. You want to accost them for what they and their kin have done, but what’s the point? Is the sun going to go behind a cloud and a rainstorm will wash away your problems? It could, but not at this instance. And the horses would probably like it more than you.
I guess when I got back to my car, it was a bargain still. Nature tried its best to take a lot from me, and it did. I still got to take a bit of exercise and a reason to buy legitimate hiking sneakers. Funny how I climbed a mountain in West Virginia and countless miles of paved walking paths, just to get muddy as all hell and surrender to the depths of horse-smashed earth.
I finally got my hiking sneakers and went back out yesterday. I went to the other side of the loop. They feel great, stable. Couldn’t feel any roots or rocks that scuffed on by. Did get a little bit of mud on them. That’s to be expected. My shoulder ached near the end. Guess we’re back on level ground. For now.