How to Take up Hiking When You’re Almost Dead

If all you did was to listen to the news you would think that society was in such a divided state and so fraught with evil and violence that you couldn’t leave the house without risking peril. However, if you defy all that seems to be right in front of your nose and allow yourself to walk out the door and over the hills beyond the world of the familiar, you will be surelysurprised by the amount of kindness, compassion, and generosity that exists between common people who encounter each other in course of an average day. I have just flown from New York to France where I spent the night in Paris walking the streets until dark never feeling a moment of threat or danger. There were no terrorist attacks. There weren't people fist fighting on street corners over who is best to lead the country: LePen or Macron. It was in fact the same Paris that I visited on other occasions. Parisians have a reputation for being unfriendly, curt, petulant, and unhelpful. I have not found this to b

The Wild Road to  Everest Base Camp October 2018 Kathmandu is an assault to the senses. It rivals cities in India for nihilistic traffic, pollution, dust- borne pathogens, impossible crosswalks, and crowded store fronts - always with the obligatory guy sitting on the steps in front urging you to come in and buy his counterfeit stuff. In theory, traffic is supposed to keep to the left, as it does in England or Japan. In practice: any open space is fair game. Traffic is ostensibly controlled by ineffectual men in uniform that spend most of their time cowering in small wooden booths but do sometimes immerge to waive long red wands in the air until they are tired of being ignored. Almost immediately upon exiting the hotel I met the universal young man who approaches: “Hello sir. How are you? Where are you from? What are you looking for today?  “ These guys are everywhere: Istanbul, Dar es Salaam, Delhi, and Buenos Aires. I have learned how to politely decline their advance

                                            In the spring of 2012, I read Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild: a memoir of her 3-month hiking journey on the Pacific Crest Trail. Many people have hiked the PCT, but few of them have described the experience in such an intimate and compelling way. She successfully juxtaposed the challenges and obstacles of her personal life with those encountered on the long dusty trail. My first thought was to get out there before the mobs of people who learn about this story from Oprah’s Book Club to lace up their boots. There is a mountain out there waiting for all of us. To be alive is to struggle. Sooner or later everybody has to walk uphill: fight the powers that be and overcome the obstacles. In the high Sierra, you zigzag up steep switchbacks over loose gravel and talus at altitudes of 10, 12 or even 14,000 feet. The blazing, unobstructed California, summer sun will dry the throat and cloud the mind. The air is thin: containing sometimes as