"Not today."

“I don’t want to. Not today, at least.”

Very rarely do I feel and think that. But it has happened. Halfway up a mountain, even.

In the past, I’ve ignored it. Pushed onward, upward.

But I recently learned that heeding this impulse can be wise and rewarding.

Wishing my companions strength and success, describing to them my new, alternate plan, I peeled away from the group and began traversing rather than ascending.

Suddenly, it felt like a dance instead of a chore. Creative rather than submissive. More energizing, less depleting.

I began an unanxious traverse, following my bliss, ultimately looping back to the trailhead having discovered a new cross-country route.

Walking the Earth, I was reminded, should be impulsive. An act of inspiration. Not a colour-strictly-within-the-lines duty.

Turn-around points. Veer-off points. I watch for them with more awareness now, just as I do cairns.

– Craig

Put more mileage on your boots this summer. Become a more efficient hiker.

Our friends at Explore Magazine recently asked us for suggestions on “how to hike more efficiently.” They published several of our tips in the most recent issue of the magazine. But we thought you might want to read the entire list. Here you go:

efficient hiking = actually going hiking

The more you hike, the more efficient a hiker you’ll become.

Many people don’t go hiking because preparation for a hike seems like a pain. So reduce prep time. Keep your daypack packed at home. Have a drawer full of hiking food, so you can just grab and go. After a trip, once you’ve washed your clothes, re-pack your pack, so you’re always ready in advance.

Think “fuel” not “meal.” Rely on nutritional science when you’re out there. Honey Stinger Bars, Clif Builders Bars, Larabars, Genisoy bars, Power Bars, etc. You don’t need to make sandwiches or cook meals. Make your hiking-trip prep simpler, quicker. And don’t waste backpacking time cooking. You can eat great meals at home, before and after your backpack trips. When backpacking, we often hike until dark. In summer, in Canada, daylight is so long you can get nearly two hiking days in one.

Never plan a dinner party for the night you’ll return from a hike. Efficient hiking means seeing and doing as much out there as you can fit into a day. So make sure you—and your hiking compadres—have nothing planned for the evening after a hiking trip. You want to go as far and see as much as possible. A 6 p.m. obligation essentially cuts a dayhike down to a half dayhike

Look ahead into the summer. Warn friends and relatives that summer in Canada is short, hiking season is precious, and you won’t necessarily be available for weddings, family get-togethers, and holiday events, because you’ll be hiking.

Stay focused. Don’t sacrifice hiking opportunities for propriety. Lots of people who love hiking don’t hike nearly as much as they want because they submit to all kinds of frivolous, social obligations.

Men… Find a woman whose desire to hike matches yours. We know lots of men who are essentially emasculated because their partners don’t share their athleticism or adventurous spirit.

Don’t invite just anyone to hike with you. Find people whose fitness level matches yours. Sure, hiking can be social, but it can be social with people who won’t slow you down and limit your range of opportunity on the few precious days you go hiking

Fitness = efficiency in the backcountry. You want to comfortably cover a lot of ground out there, so you can have big, exciting experiences. So get fit, and stay fit.

Sell your older, heavier, less comfortable gear. Buy new gear that will help you hike farther, faster, in greater comfort. Don’t cling to the old stuff. The MEC.ca online Gear Swap offers an easy way to recycle gear.

Trekking poles. Use them. Not just one, but two. And not cheap ones. Certainly not old ski poles. Or a ridiculous Gandalf staff. Get a pair of high-quality trekking poles. They’ll help you hike faster, go farther, more comfortably, with a greater sense of security on rough terrain, and with far less chance of injury.

Carry only backpacking food that requires no cooking. Pack-It Gourmet (www.packitgourmet.com) makes excellent meals that will allow you to eliminate the weight of a backpacking stove, fuel, pots, etc.

No Teva sandals! Strapping them onto your backpack so you can use them as camp shoes is nuts. They’re insanely heavy. Try racing flats, which weigh only a couple ounces.

Don’t carry a heavy, bulky water filter. Use Pristine purification droplets, which are lighter and more compact.

Plan your hike in advance (not in the car, not at the trailhead). Get the right guidebook that doesn’t waste your time — an opinionated guidebook that ensures you enjoy the greatest possible scenic experience.

Thanks for visiting hikingcamping.com.

Through the summer, we’ve done our best to blog weekly. But we’ll be unable to do so for the next two months. We’ll be climbing the via ferrata in the Italian Dolomiti, then trekking the Grande Randonnée 20 on the French island of Corsica.

Many peaks in the Dolomites have fixed cables, ladders and bridges, allowing otherwise isolated climbing routes to be joined to create longer routes and making them accessible to climbers who, like us, are not exceptionally skilled. “Via ferrata” means “iron way.” The first via ferratas were built in the Dolomite region of northern Italy during the First World War to aid the movement of mountain infantry.

The GR 20 follows the mountainous spine of Corsica. From Calenzana in the north, to Conca in the south, it’s about 180 km (112 mi) long, entails more than 10,000 m (32,800 ft) of elevation gain, and takes about two weeks to complete. It’s widely considered the most demanding long-distance trek in Europe.

We’ll resume blogging in late November. Please check back with us then. We’ll have lots of practical advice and inspiring photos to offer anyone interested in the via ferrata and/or the GR 20.

If you’re contacting us about business—specifically, the titles published by hikingcamping.com—not to worry. Our distribution manager, Theresa, will be here handling our publishing company’s daily operations while we’re away. She’ll promptly ship your book order and gladly respond to any questions or concerns.

Please check our blog again in late November. Shortly thereafter, our new book — Heading Outdoors Eventually Leads Within, Thoughts Inspired by 30,000 Miles on the Trail—will be available. Keep it in mind as a Christmas gift for friends and family who have an affinity for nature. We know they and you will find it unique, meaningful, and beautiful.

Until then…   Walk on.

– Kathy & Craig

Kathy and I were recently interviewed by Allan Buckingham, for his “Alpine Authors” program on Banff Park Radio. You can listen to the podcast on the Authors page of our website: http://www.hikingcamping.com/authors.php

Last night we had a wonderful experience in Canmore, at the Alpine Club of Canada, where we talked with a group of enthusiastic hikers. Meeting so many fellow hikers at once was a rare and touching opportunity for us. Though their backgrounds were diverse, all openly expressed their passion for the outdoors, and—what most impressed us—all were genuine, direct, humble, sensitive, compassionate, and supportive of us and each other. No doubt they nurtured these qualities in themselves before their interest in hiking developed. But it seems the time they’ve spent in nature has strengthened their admirable attributes. Even if hiking isn’t entirely responsible for what we felt and witnessed last night, it clearly draws such people together. We’re grateful to be part of this tribe.

Click on “comments” (below) to see what others are saying, then join the discussion.

After several weeks at home in Canmore—working long days, getting minimal exercise, chafed by the reality that little hiking is available in the Canadian Rockies until June—we felt strange, unsettled. The nomadic life is strong in us. So after taking care of essential business and stacking the rest onto our laptops, we migrated south. Early spring is ideal hiking time in southern Utah.

Leaving the icy mountains behind, we headed to the land of sun-pounded slickrock domes and sandy-floored, sinuous canyons. We traded a palette of grey and straw, for red, orange and yellow. We pitched our tent under grand cottonwoods, sat out late beneath the starry, cobalt sky, woke up to temperatures that invite hiking in shorts.

We hope you can take time this year to visit Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, or Zion national parks, or the vast, high-desert regions surrounding Moab, Torrey, Boulder, or Escalante. Bring our book Hiking from Here to WOW: Utah Canyon Country. It will ensure you make the most out of each day. You live in western Canada? A 20-hour drive is all that stands between you and another planet: southern Utah. If your home is in the northwest U.S., you’re close enough that four or five days is all you need for a quick but fulfilling canyon-country adventure.

While driving through the outskirts of Calgary, we passed a housing development with a huge sign: FINAL PHASE! Our interpretation was, yes, this is indeed the historic, final phase for these absurdly huge, utterly unsustainable, hilariously boxy, anti-architecture mansions. Even a dim awareness of reality (peak oil, climate change, global economic decline) is sufficient to recognize that these trophy homes are monuments to excess and will soon be unwanted embarrassments. Besides, homes and mortgages of that magnitude have always been anchors that severely curtail one’s independence. They represent the final phase of whatever liberty their owners previously enjoyed.

Continuing our drive south of Calgary, we saw other housing developments spilling across the prairie. All the homes are boxes. All are “detached” but none is more than a couple meters from the nearly identical box next door. All are drab shades of the drabbest colours: taupe and grey. We could not live there. Such pervasive monotony would quash our creativity. The comforts those boxes provide would not compensate us for the soul-deadening affects of uniformity, repetition, and predictability.

We’d rather be in a downtown Calgary condo, where we’d have the Bow River and several big parks nearby, and where we could participate in stimulating city life.

Approaching Lethbridge, we could see the weather was worse on the southern horizon. We stopped for gas and discovered the approaching snow storm had already knocked out the city’s electricity. Without electricity, gas pumps are inoperable. Plus the Coutts border crossing was closed, as was the highway in northern Montana. “Don’t try it,” someone told us. “Cars in the ditch everywhere.”

It seemed the snow had defeated us. Our four-hour drive south was wasted. We turned back north. But nomad determination kicked in. “I bet we can outflank this storm,” Kath said. “We’ll drive west over Crowsnest Pass into B.C., then probe south.”

It was longer by four hours, but it worked. It was a more interesting drive, too. And it allowed us to keep moving. That’s the nomad philosophy: Keep moving.

Kaaterskill Falls, Catskill Mountains, near Palenville, NY

We’re celebrating our 20th anniversary as Canadians by visiting the eastern half of our adopted country. We’ll tell you how we feel about hiking in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland compared to hiking here in the Canadian Rockies. We’ll also drop south of the border into New York and New Hampshire, where we’ll hike in the Catskills and the White Mountains.

Hiking is a political act. It’s a statement: “The hills are ours. The land is ours. We are free. We can walk when and where we please.”

Few of us think of it this way, because most of us live in countries where swaths of wild or at least undeveloped land are held in public trust as “national forest,” “national park,” “state park,” “crown land,” or “provincial park.” We assume hiking is, and will remain, our right.

But will it?

It’s easy to imagine circumstances in which the sanctity of public lands is undermined, the integrity of wildlife habitat is increasingly violated, and our freedom to hike is curtailed.

Consider that peak oil and climate change are colliding. What scarcities will result? How will society withstand them? Will we maintain the collective will not to plunder every resource-rich crevice on Earth?

We do know this: The freedoms we exercise are the ones we’re least likely to lose.

So it’s in our shared interest to remember that hiking, like voting, is a political act; to remind others of this; and to inspire them to come hiking with us.