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What’s on Your Mind While You Trek?

Reg Spittle Leave a comment

Whether I am doing a day hike or trekking to the top of Mount Whitney, there are times when I forget where I am for a time. My mind wanders to countless places, even if I am walking through some of the greatest scenery in the world.

What are three things I think (daydream) about when I am walking in my Altra Olympus trail runners?

  1. I replay places and events from previous distance treks.
  2. I take a musical journey with a favorite playlist on my AirPods (I only do this on day hikes.).
  3. I replay something else from my life, sometimes a regret. (I try not to do this.)

In an article on The Trek website, Emma Ramsey asked eight thru-hikers to list three things they think about on the trail.

Unwell (trail name), in photo, above, from Topeka, Kansas, listed these:

  1. Interesting things about the insects she sees on the trail. The ins and outs of butterfly lives.
  2. How crazy it is that trail angels are so willing to help when we are willingly homeless.
  3. Excitement for the future/replaying the past.

Click on the link to read the lists from the other seven trekkers.

What would be on your list?

Matt Haig: Does Extra Time Bring Happiness?

Reg Spittle 2 Comments

Do you ever wish you could slow your body clock? What if you would age just a year for every two years? Would it be even better if you would age just a year for every 15 years? Extra time also comes with a bonus: You would be immune from human illnesses.

Ready to sign up?

Wait a minute. How long before people around you proclaim, “You look so young! How do you do it?” After a few more years, what if people, fearing that you are not normal, pull away from you, even suspect that you are evil personified? Your parents, siblings, wife, children, grow old and die while you age just a few years.

You might enjoy being 18 for 15 years, but would you feel as good about being in your 80s for 150 years? What would happen if you told people the truth?

In Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time, Tom Hazard is a 41-year-old high school history teacher in England whose real life has spanned 439 years. He ages normally until he is 13, when it takes 15 years for him to age to 14. Born in 1581, he works with Shakespeare and sails with Captain Cook.

As much as he is enthralled with technological advances and opportunities to know famous historical figures, Tom harbors regrets and worries about his future, keeping him from enjoying the present most of the time.

Tom tells his story through travels to his past. He knows there are others like him, and they are protected by the Albatross Society, whose leader’s most important rule is to never fall in love. Tom had a wife and daughter many years before, but, now, he falls for a high school French teacher. He must decide whether to push her away or to let go of the restrictions, tell her his secrets, and live in the present. Have four centuries been enough time for him to learn how to be happy?

Haig has been forthcoming about his own mental health struggles. Mental health themes come through in this and two other of his novels I have read, Midnight Library, and The Humans. I recommend all three thought-provoking books.

Matt Haig’s literary fame was boosted when actor/producer Bernard Cumberbatch purchased the film rights to How to Stop Time. Cumberbatch plans to play the lead.