5 Things to Avoid While Walking
Lessons Gleaned from Painful Failures and General Buffoonery
I love a good, long walk.
I’ve written before on how much I love walking and even made a few recommendations on things to make sure you take with you if you decide to go on a good, long walk of your own.
This time, however, I bring you the cautionary side of my tale. Let me begin by quoting my own disclaimer:
Some of these suggestions might seem obvious. Even amateurish. Well, let me address that right up front: Yes. They are. And each and every one is something I have had to learn the importance of the hard way. Because apparently I am a stubborn bastard that would rather bleed for myself than read about others.
Don’t be like me. I’m an idiot.
“Read before you bleed” is a much better policy.
So, here we go. These are the things best avoided, the five that have caused me the most anguish, suffering, and misery over the years. Profit by my folly and the next time you take off down the road, try and avoid…
1. GETTING WET: Adventuring is all about the unexpected challenges and sometimes that means just powering on through them… but not when it means getting wet.
Moisture can rot your tent, make your clothes and belongings heavier, and make you more prone to blisters and other unfortunate skin ailments. If you’re on a day walk and you have a nice hot shower to go home to, that’s one thing. You can power through rain and be fine. But if you’re planning to get up the next morning and walk another fifteen miles, when it starts to get moist your number one priority has to be staying dry. Take it from someone who walked twenty miles on soggy feet… any time you think you saved by pushing forward, you’ll lose the next day when you’re walking on battered and blistered feet.
I did manage to make it that 20 miles. Sure, I survived. But let me tell you, I wanted like a granny for the next week. If I had been on a multi-day trip… I’d have been calling the rescue car for sure.
2. EXHAUSTING YOURSELF: Your body knows when it has had enough and the wise adventurer knows when to listen when his/her body is saying, “If you make me go another mile I’m going to die.”
Pushing your limits is great and empowering, but you also have to be aware of what those limits are. As mentioned above, sometimes powering through ends up costing more than its worth and that can certainly be the case with exhaustion.
Remember an adventure is usually a marathon not a sprint and its better to have a moderate pace continually than spurts of speed followed by recovering time. “Slow and Steady Wins the Race” very much applies here.
I’ve personally found that a brisk walk for 50 minutes followed by a rest for 10 is a good balance. Numerous short breaks prevent exhaustion and keep the whole experience from becoming… Not Fun. And, really, if the adventure is not fun what is even the point?
3. TALKING TOO MUCH: Most people tend to adventure with a friend or partner. That is great! Group adventuring is the best adventuring (Except for Brian. Brian is the worst).
The point is don’t feel like you need to keep the conversation going the whole time you’re on the road. Silence is golden, and, from time to time, everybody needs it. On long walks, its not uncommon for a friend and I to go hours without speaking to each other. We listen to music or books on tape or just the quiet sounds of nature around us or, conversely, the frantic sounds of city life (which is a beautiful sort of mess in its own way). This is part of the experience. There will always be time to talk further on up the road.
Remember to take that quiet time and just soak up wherever you are. Let it last.
4. MEXICAN FOOD: Or any food that causes… gastrointestinal distress. I just picked Mexican food because it is a personal weakness both in terms of temptation and in terms of consequences.
In a city or town such emergencies can usually be addressed fairly easily… but in the forests and highways a bathroom emergency can cause some rather interesting problems.
I mean, sure, sooner or later everyone has to do some dirty business behind a tree, that’s no big deal. But how many of you have found yourself on a barren highway and had to do some business behind a tree in the for corner of a playground for children?
Not me, of course. That would be illegal and also a confession which I would never do (not by an legally-binding standard) but I’m just saying that it is a highly possible theoretical situation, officer.
Do yourself (and your companions) a favor and plot the more exotic meals where restrooms are readily available. Children everywhere will sleep better knowing you did.
5. CARS:
The trouble with walking highways (one of my favorite places to walk) is that you are always at the bottom of the food chain. Cars are torpedoes of destruction piloted at astonishing speeds by anyone who can crawl into an DOT office and scrawl their name for the government, no matter how illiterate, insane, or geriatric they happen to be.
So if you walk highways, you better become fairly well acquainted with the art of dodging traffic on narrow, curvy back-roads.
Cars represent the number one most dangerous aspect of traveling by foot along roads and should be treated with the kind of respect due to two tons of self-propelled fiberglass and steel that could squash you like the soft little meat-sack you are.
There are a couple tricks that I have found useful:
- In general, walk towards oncoming traffic so you can see the cars coming.
- On windy roads, always go to the outside of the corner to avoid getting creamed as a car comes around the inside.
- Listen before you leap.
- Look before you leap.
- Leap cautiously.
- Don’t be afraid to stomp through underbrush if the road looks dangerous. Better overly cautious than overly dead.
- Never, ever, ever walking along highway shoulders at night. The cars are moving fast and you never know what the can and can’t see at night.
- Better safe than sorry.
This list is not expansive. For the love of heaven walk cautiously if you walk along highways and if you can’t be cautious please clear this article off your web history before you go.
For liability reasons.
