I didn’t always love to walk.

As a matter of fact, my first memories of long walks were kind of terrifying. For a while, as a child, I grew up on a small island in Florida and would spend my summers back in Georgia with my Grandparents. They lived on a large wooded plot of land that backed up to an even larger plot of land creating around sixty to seventy acres of forest. On warm summer nights, my grandpa would take me from the house, along with four or five coon dogs, and we’d head up the hill behind the house into the dark wood.

I would never describe myself as a brave child. The dogs didn’t help ease my mind, and neither did the old flashlight grandpa carried. It was a strange contraption; a rectangle battery back that clipped to your pants with a long cord learning the lamp. I knew monsters were behind every tree just outside that beam of light. Panic comes from the Latin Pan. Pan was a trickster god. He was often said to try and scare those out in the wild by filling them with a feeling of dread…panic. Out there in those woods, many times, I felt that. When the dogs would bolt into the trees after some unknown creature or the shriek of an owl broke the eerie nocturnal silence, my stomach dropped and my feet turned to lead.

Instilling in me a primal fear of the night was not my grandfather’s goal, even if I wasn’t sure of it at the time. There was always a destination for our nighttime walks. About two miles away from the safety of my grandparent’s home, way out in the woods, my grandpa took me to one of the coolest places a ten-year-old boy could go. A washed-out bridge. Years before a road ran through the area before it was bought by a pulpwood company to grow trees on. After a particularly bad storm, the bridge came loose from its cement mooring and crumbled into the creek.

In the moonlight it was magical.

The wood was twisted and bent but it had settled and was safe to walk out on. The moonbeams reflected off the water and the sandy creek banks. The red clay matched the last remnants of red pants still clinging to the wooden fossil. I climbed and explored from one side to the other. At one point a heron would fly out of the trees and scare me half to death; they aren’t the most graceful birds when taking off startled. Grandpa would watch, smoking his cigar, and laugh. Eventually, he would call the dogs to him and yell for me, “Hardhead,” he’d say, “let’s get back before your Grandma gets worried.” 

Side by side we would retrace our steps back up the steep hill and along the densely wooded path. Through the meadow and across the stretch of land where pumpkins used to go we’d hurry back, dogs playing and jumping at our heels. I’d stumble over an aboveground root and catch myself just in time to see the lights of my grandparent’s house over the hill. It was normally then, if at all, that I realized the entire walk back, that I wasn’t afraid. Something about finding the old bridge turned the walk from a horror movie into an adventure.

So, what does that have to do with why I hike today?

It reminds me that life is just like any walk. It can be difficult, painful, and even really scary but we have two choices. We can either sit down and focus on the pain and hardships or we can keep moving and find out what’s around the next corner. When I find myself in a situation where fear is clouding my judgment I remember that bridge and all the cool things that are out there just waiting for us to walk up to them. It’s a step-by-step process and I plan to keep walking. Join me!