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4/7/04 backpacking: sport of appreciation Barbara Frank
WHERE AM I?!
Someone please tell me I’m not the only one who gets lost driving around her hometown. As familiar green spaces get slabbed over with concrete and empty store fronts, the lay of the land can change in a Johnson County minute. Maybe that’s the best argument of all for the outdoor life, for spending time with natural beauty before it dwindles away.
Scott Hoober, 60-plus Prairie Villager, has been backpacking close to a quarter of a century. A real appreciation for learning “values in an outdoor setting” developed when he was assistant Scoutmaster for his son’s troop. “The wilderness ethic is just a variation on the way we should be treating each other anyway, kind of a microcosm of life itself,” he says.
Backpacking, a hybrid sport, links together hiking and camping. Quite possibly it has primitive origins: children who didn’t want to stop playing and go home when it was dark. Why, though, would grown, sane people want to do it? Scott has a deep understanding of those intent on “getting out there under their own steam.”
First and foremost, “It’s a lot of fun,” he says--chasing down history in carvings at a Flint Hills ranch, names and dates from the 1950s and the 1850s; framing with a camera lens the beauty of mist rising or dripping ferns; discovering prickly pear cactus and horned toads are native to Kansas; sharing the trail with martens and marmots, whooping cranes and adolescent moose, or an inhospitable hissing badger who flattens himself out in the shape of an unwelcome mat.
There’s the solitude. “You walk in the woods. You have a lot of time [to do] whatever you want--let your mind go blank, think.” It takes time to lose track of time. At some point, you realize: you haven’t looked at your watch all day. And what day is it anyway? Wilderness immersion proves the perfect antidote to the downside of civilization.
It’s a “contest,” a problem to be solved, drawing forth a sophisticated blend of improvisation skills you were pretty sure you possessed. You’ve thought, You’ve planned. You’ve packed, maybe repacked, striving for that tightwire balance between keeping the weight down (Scott’s pack for a week usually weighs around 45 pounds) and leaving behind an essential. You can read a map, use a compass. Game on!
It’s good to connect. Travel is no longer filtered through auto glass--you’re derailed from the interstate, immersed in the landscape, scuba diving the terrain.
Scott values connecting with the past. “I don’t have any illusion that I’m Lewis or Clark. I know I’m driving there and carrying a pack made of nylon and aluminum. At the same time, I’m going out to see the world as it is, or maybe as it was.”
Don’t forget group dynamics. Camaraderie in isolated circumstances can teach you lessons worth taking home. Scott observes, “When it’s done right, backpacking is a cross between independence and interdependence. I’m out there because I’ve got some skills, but I’m also depending on my friends and they’re depending on me.”
Did we mention the toys? There is just so much “cool stuff” out there. Scott compares the drastic changes in camping technology with what’s going on in computers or electronics. Jason Allemang at the Stoll Park Backwoods shop agrees: they’re making packs, tents, sleeping bags unbelievably light. Pick up an REI catalogue or an issue of BACKPACKER magazine and prepare to be tempted.
Last and utmost, we come to the real raison d’etre for fresh air and exercise: FOOD. “You can eat really well on the trail if you want to,” Scott insists. “A lot of people seem to think it’s like being in a monastery: you have to be ascetic.”
He has become quite the rustic gourmet, toting in steaks or pork chops, foil-wrapped potatoes for campfire roasting. He’s sampled his share of the packaged freeze-dried meals, delights over the flavor improvements through the years. Best meal ever: breakfast in the Boundary Waters featuring self-picked wild blueberries folded into pecan-laden buckwheat pancakes, mashed into and purpling the warm, reconstituted maple syrup.
Yes….but why backpack? Why not just leave it at day hiking, go back to a cozy human burrow to sleep, eat, shower?
No glutton for punishment, Scott Hoober appreciates home base as much as the next trekker. But he shares a scenario. Picture a popular western tourist spot--camper hookups, lake big enough for power and fishing boats, trailhead into the backcountry. All day, hikers have been passing him on the trail. “But toward the end of the day, they’ve got to get back to camp, whereas I’m continuing on into the wilderness. And at that moment, that night, I’m in the woods. In the morning, when they’re still watching the Today Show in their camper, I’m on down the way.”
And there’s not a hint of a doubt: Scott knows he’s chosen the better part. © University of Kansas Medical Center, Center on Aging, April, 2004.
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