Trail Posturing: A Primer

The summer of 2003 found Peg and me hiking the trails of Acadia National Park quite frequently (i.e. all ten times it stopped raining for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch). While on the trails, my reflections often turned to the amount of time and energy that we hikers invest in our Presentation. Back-to-nature blather aside, it's clear that, for some of us all the time, and for all of us some of the time, hiking is a highly scripted activity. Most of the scripts--and their accompanying photos--are lifted straight from the pages of magazines with names like Consume, America! or Oh, I've Already Been There/Done That. Our behavior, my friends, is known as Trail Posturing.

In Acadia, Trail Posturing falls into two primary categories: 1) posturing about clothing and equipment, and 2) posturing about location. (A third posturing category I've often encountered elsewhere --Distance-and-Altitude Posturing-- doesn't happen so much here, because none of the individual hikes in the park is exactly bragging distance, and none of the peaks is exactly breathtaking. Folks inclined to posture in those ways are better off heading up to Baxter State, where they can hitch up with the Appalachian Trail on Mount Katahdin.)

In service to my fellow hikers, I offer the following brief (oh, believe me; I could go on!) compendium of Posturing Essentials.*

Clothing/Equipment Posturing:

Hiking may not be as high tech an activity as, say, downhill skiing or climbing, but it nevertheless remains an activity in which one can have--or be perceived to have--the Right or Wrong Gear. I wish I had a nickel for every time someone gave me the once-over as we passed them on the trail; I'd have enough to buy myself those new boots I saw at Cadillac Mountain Sports the other day....

So, just what is the right gear? Working up from the bottom, we come first to footwear: what do you have on your feet? Are you setting off on the trail in flip flops or decorative Birkenstocks? That's gonna net you a look of skepticism or concern from us; from other hikers, it'll get you unadulterated scorn. "Rookies. Newbies. Idiots," that look says.

But while too-casual footwear can net you one set of looks, too-serious footwear can net you another set. Peg and I always feel a bit sheepish about the fact that we're wearing real leather hiking boots as we set off on these five mile hikes. We're a bit, shall we say, overengineered--and we are reminded of it, every time some twenty-something bops by in her or (usually) his Teva sandals, water bottle dangling from their pinkie finger. I've started to cultivate a Counter Look to this one; a look that says "Listen here, kid who might have flunked my logic class. I'm 43. My partner here, while younger, is an aging tennis star with multiple sprained ankles to her credit. At least one of us was hiking before you were even BORN. Keep your 'tch tch tch-big-boots-erode-the-trails' mutterings to yourself. We are saving the environment in other ways. On this trail, we're saving our legs."

Talk of legs naturally and eventually zeroes in on knees. Knees are the inspiration for another piece of equipment that we carry, but that nets us more than our share of Looks, and even the occasional Comment--hiking poles. I must confess that the dynamics of Pole Posturing still have me a bit confused, and perhaps a bit defensive as well. On the face of it, hiking poles are the sort of equipment that should net you nothing but admiring glances ("Now THEY must be real HIKERS!") After all, they're sleek looking, efficient (telescoping down into short, easy-to-pack units), and lightweight--the hiker's dream equipment. Your knees say small prayers of thanks for each downward step you take using one. In short, they seem both Useful and Cool. But almost no one uses them; I've seen exactly one other hiker carrying a hiking pole in all the time I've hiked in Acadia. Oh, you see your fair share of family guys, out on their first-ever hike, puffing along using a stick they found alon g the side of a trail--or pried from some poor, unsuspecting tree when it wasn't looking. (Is that a Posture-y enough comment?) But you don't see hiking poles. And if an item is TOO unusual, TOO off the beaten path, no matter how high its cool potential is, it's gonna net looks of skepticism at best, withering disdain at worst ("YOU brought HIKING by buying every piece of equipment you could find at L.L. Bean when you drove through Freeport.")

The solution, for those of us with aging knees, is obviously the Counter Look.

Day packs and fanny packs carry high Posturing Potential as well. People starting up Cadillac Mountain (the highest peak in the park) at two in the afternoon carrying nothing but their eager smiles definitely net Looks--of concern, pity, or disdain, depending upon one's particular attitude toward people who seem unaware of the fact that the human body is 87% water. On the other hand, people hefting the equivalent of Mount Everest expedition packs (are you catching on to the subtleties of how to Posture in Print?) when they set out to climb the South Bubble also net Looks ("Are they planning to spend the night up there? Didn't anyone tell them there's no backcountry camping in Acadia? Did someone put a youth hostel up there when we weren't looking???") Our own strategy involves a modest-looking daypack, in which I store my water. (Peg uses one of those infernal backpacks-with-a-hose that delivers water in a manner and flavor not unlike the stuff that comes out of the nozzle in the garden.) Also stored in it, depending upon our degree of anxiety or caution, is some (fairly high) percentage of the Backpacker's Ten Essentials. We almost always carry: a knife, raincoats, food, at least one extra map, and (here comes the heavy item) a first aid kit, complete with one of those crushable ice packs. I always manage to assume a jaunty air while carrying the thing, in an effort to dissemble about its true weight, but let's face it; the puppy is heavy. If I allowed my (actual, physical) posture to reflect its weight, we'd get lots of Looks of pitying disdain. And I know; we're probably among the only people hiking in Acadia who actually schlep a first aid kit on the trail. And you know what? We also have a video recording of all our household goods stored in our bank safe deposit box, along with copies of all our valuable papers. AND we have a will. After several years of hiking these trails (and, incidentally, USING that first aid kit on mo re than one occasion), I guess I feel like I'm now in a position to deliver a Meta-Look. "You think you've got me pegged as a rookie, don' t you? Well, lissen here, little Miss Your Green-Horns-Are-Poking-Out-of-Your-Patagonia-Cap, I used to be cavelier about first aid kits too [Okay, I never was, really.] But then I went on two consecutive hikes onwhich we encountered people with sprained ankles and no resources other than their thirty-year-old Girl Scout merit badge in First Aid. Sneer if you want to; some day, if you're very, very lucky, you'll be 43 too."

Location Posturing:

It is my considered opinion that Location Posturing is related to Equipment Posturing, and that it, too, is a product of the evil consumerist society out of whose thrall I cannot seem to escape. But I can't quite figure out how, and since this isn't supposed to be a genealogy of Posturing, but a descriptive analysis, I won't sweat the matter.

When you encounter another group of hikers on the trail--either a group hiking in the opposite direction, or a group you're overtaking--there's always a split second during which both parties try to decide what sort of contact there will be: a grunt? A simple "hello?" A "thank you" "don't mention it" as one group steps aside for the other? Or something more elaborate or prolonged? Will, for instance, one member of the group going up the trail ask members of the group going down the trail how much further it is to the summit? And will the other members of her group immediately kill her, for revealing the fact that they don't know precisely how far they have left to go--for revealing that, in point of fact, no, they don't have this trail memorized, not having been hiking on it every year since the summer they turned eight?

A lot of group dynamics can change, with that single question. That's because, for the serious Location Posturer, revealing that one hasn't always already known all there is to know about this trail is tantamount to letting the other team win. (What? There are no teams in hiking, and there are no winners? You ARE a green horn, aren't you?) The most--the absolute most--that a Location Posturer will allow is a question like "have they fixed that spot that was so treacherous last year?" or maybe, maybe a nonchalant "This is the one hike I've never done in this park, for some odd reason--maybe because it's just too painful to think about the debilitating injury my great-great-uncle suffered when he was on the original trail crew that bushwhacked its way to the summit." Rule #1 of Location Posturing is this: never just flat out admit to not having been here before, to being new to the trail. Or, God forbid, new to the park. (If you want to go that route, fine. Then you might as well go all the way and just don the green mantle and ask everyone everything you ever wanted to know about hiking. Because there is no way both to admit you've never been here before and to climb to an altitude from which it is possible to posture.)

It goes without saying, I would hope, that posturing cannot happen when one is looking at a map. Posturing true confession time: I don't know if it's intentional or half-conscious, but Peg and I will NEVER pull out the map when other hikers are around--and if any come up while we're looking at it, we'll pretend that we're killing some time while we wait for the rest of our party to show up, by concocting elaborate orienteering puzzles for each other. ("Okay. You're on Cadillac Mountain, and you want to get to Dorr Mountain without ever going below X hundred feet, and without ever passing in the shadow of Y Mountain. How can you do it, without illegal bushwhacking?") Looking at a map to find out where you are and where you have to go means admitting you don't know where you are or where you have to go. And we wouldn't want to do that, now, would we?

*For heaven's sakes, don't confuse these with the more familiar--and far more useful--backpackers' Ten Essentials! Forget one of those and you could be wet, miserable, or even dead. Forget about these essentials and the worst you'll suffer is a little emotional frostbite from the cool appraising glances of the hikers you meet.