keep moving!
by danny (danielle) bernstein

Keep Moving?

Faced with a waterhole bordered by rocky ledges, I contemplate my next step. Do I try to hold on to the edge or do I plow right through the water? Most of the group is ahead of me. They climb up the sides, hug rocks, pass daypacks and grasp a helping hand. I console myself with the thought that the rest of the hikers are New Zealanders, known for their love of adrenaline adventures. We are all wet on this fine March day at the end of the summer. The goal is not to stay dry but to climb up the gorge the most challenging way. But I am not confident enough to balance on a thin ledge and hang on to the sides.

The hike was described as an easy gorge walk up the stream in the Waitakeres, a rainforest preserve less than 45 minutes west of the Auckland city center. The densely covered hills, which come right down to the sea, were used as the background for the movie, The Piano. The day started as a cultural walk.

“Remember the beginning scene where they landed on the beach?” our leader, asked. “This is where they filmed it.” We then went back into the bushes, under a large tree.” The piddle scene, where the women surrounded themselves with blankets, was right here”, he continues. Piddle, eh?… Got to add that word to my New Zealand-American dictionary.”

“Eh, Danny”, someone yells out, “where is your sense of adventure?"

“My sense of adventure is being here in the first place!”

Keep moving and shut up, I tell myself. Save the clever lines for the parking lot. I plunge in the water, swimming with my pack on my back, since it appears to be the safest route, muttering, The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, as the group cheers me on. I reach the other side with a smile and thumbs up where the trail continues on solid ground.

But not for long. The afternoon alternates between swimming with my pack and boots and wading through the water. If it is too steep to jump in the stream, I bushwhack around the sections of the gorge with no ledge at all. Though my pack displays the patches that make up my substantial hiking resume, now I work hard to keep up until we get back to the cars. [I recall The Piano scene where Holly Hunter follows the Maori guides into the bush to meet her new husband. She was tramping through mud wearing a hoop skirt with a tight bodice and the wrong shoes.]

Keep Moving!

The New Zealanders love their adrenaline rush. Me, I am a plodder. On a trail, I feel I can climb and hike forever. My body is happiest when upright, moving one foot in front of the other. The legs stride out in a rhythm, swing over a log blocking the trail or step on rocks without slipping – or thinking. Sometimes the rest of the body gets involved; bending under a low branch or holding on to a tree trunk. The heart may pump a little harder when going steadily uphill for a while. But I am not breathing hard the whole day; I am not on a treadmill.

I have tried many ways of being outdoors besides hiking. I love cross-country skiing and snow shoeing but I consider those sports just hiking on snow. For years, I cycled, mostly around the neighborhood where I used to live in New Jersey. But the roads became so crowded and the drivers so aggressive that it just was not any fun so I sold my bike. I went horseback riding a couple of times but my legs were far off the ground and I had to trust an unknown and overworked horse. I enjoy canoeing and rafting only when I put myself in the hands of an experienced guide. And I talked myself out of downhill skiing years ago when I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. She describes her one and only skiing experience with her boyfriend as going down a steep hill at fifty miles an hour only to break both legs at the bottom. That has remained my mental picture of downhill skiing.

I decided I was getting to be too set in my outdoor ways and signed up for a multi-adventure trip including rock climbing. The guide was very thorough in her safety procedures. We spent a long time learning how to rope up, give each other the right signals and know when to come down. She had fixed the rope at the top of a rock and we were to climb as high as we could. Since I was a good twenty years older than the rest of the group, I asked for the privilege of going first. I did not want to add to my anxiety by watching and waiting. I started climbing, looking for cracks and crevasses in the rock to help me up. I could not look down or across since I had to concentrate on finding the next crack. For me climbing was an exercise in nerves and not a real outdoor experience. I was so safe in my harness with two people belaying the ropes; I knew I could rappel down any time I wanted to, with no penalty except my pride. What was the point? I should have taken the trail up the backside of the rock; it was a humbling experience.

Four years ago, I started taking yoga, another exercise in humility. Even sitting cross-legged is a challenge in class. “Danny”, the instructor points out “your knees are not supposed to be higher than your hips.” I need to sit on several blankets. Decades of hiking has made me very tight in the hips, so I have been told. I work to bend, stretch and reach in the poses while still inhaling and exhaling at the right time in the right places. I have to think about all that I am doing; it does not come naturally. Nevertheless, I persevere, feeling in my puritanical way that the yoga effort must be good for me.

So I keep on moving. Age is not a factor; some of my role models are over eighty years old. Most serious, consistent hikers are solidly middle-aged or older; we may be over the hill, but we walked every step of the way.

Danny Bernstein, a retired college professor, hikes, leads hikes and writes about hiking. [hikertohiker.org; danny@hikertohiker.org]