Tag: hiking

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Walking Montaño de Oro, Point Buchon

I’ve been hoping for a lot of things lately. Hoping to make plans that don’t need constant revision. Hoping for new places to go. Hoping for more walks that take me long into the hills or along the beach through the dunes. Longer walks that stretch my calves and work my lungs and teach me to breathe. I like stability and routine, but sometimes a little change helps everything in life.

Just around the corner is a place that gives the possibility of a longer walk. Montaño De Oro State Park lets everyone ramble however they want. There are crushed granite trails, asphalt trails, trails along the edge of the ocean and ones straight up mountains. The path south along the coast toward Point Buchon, way in the distance, calls to me. I haven’t yet walked it.

The trail winds its way, out there beyond where I have ever been, a trail that runs up the hill, around the bluff, and disappears into that softly turquoise sky. In the spring, the long path is a warm earthen line between mint-colored grasses with occasional gold from poppies or goldenrod wild flowers. I see it from a distance. The path invites me like all those routes that wait impatiently to be walked, while I test out my footwork and the strength of my laces or the time until my next obligation or whatever else is keeping me from setting out for a long stroll.

It’s a good challenge. The curve of the pathway is so far off it disappears from view, marking the spot that is probably half-way to the point where I plan to turn around. Some walks that I’ve never taken, like this one, I think about and design a route and re-think and design again until I can put foot to path. The road will be similar to others I have taken but not exactly the same. I know the trail will be a worthy one, if only for the freshness of the air.

Our lungs know what is good for them, and this air is their dessert. Deep breaths are on the menu. Replenish your lungs, relax your mind, calm your heart with those long measured breaths. Good health waits for me on the long walk into the hillside along the Montaño De Oro ocean cliffs. Shorter walks around the area have taught me what I might expect on a longer hike. Seven miles, eight, maybe nine or ten by the time I take the return trip. What’s keeping me from this long walk?

I’ve been reaching for a more demanding work-out inside my walking self-therapy. We all get into times when we have too much sameness. The same wake-up time, the same breakfast, the same walk every day. All of that is good, but there is also goodness alongside a challenge. I have held onto this quest to take a long walk for quite a while. It’s a forever to-list that hasn’t been done. Is there a rush? Do I need the pressure of a mental reminder that I have a goal I haven’t reached?

One step after another – this philosophy makes my life simpler, and when I remember it, it makes my life better. But sometimes the simple way of looking at things needs a second look. Sometimes, life isn’t simple. Right now, as I plan that long, long walk, my heart says ‘go’, but my hip says ‘no’. That’s when I have to remember that even many small walks to long places will get me there, eventually.

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Walking USA

A walking lifestyle intrigues me. Twice I have lived where people walked as a way of life, where it is more common than driving a vehicle. For most Americans, it takes some getting used to. It certainly did for me.

In South America and Eastern Europe, when people shopped, they carried two empty bags and walked to the market. Those two empty bags remained a puzzle to me until the first day I went out to shop.

Like everyone, I walked. The grocery store looked like any modern store in the states, and the products, though the labels weren’t in English, were ones I recognized or could figure out. If the plastic tubes were new to me, and the letters confusing, the pictures of catsup pouring onto a burger helped me understand. I happily filled my cart with the things that people need when they move into new apartments. I wheeled it all to the check-out register, paid, watched as they put the items into bag after bag, filling to the top. I walked my cart out to the front of the store thinking I had done well.

Then I looked to the very small parking lot – few cars, and none belonged to me. How would I make it home with my overloaded bags? You can bet the next time I needed to shop, I took two empty bags with me and stopped shopping when they were filled.

That was just a simple lesson, one of many. It didn’t stop me from admiring places that accommodated walkers. And it hasn’t stopped me from rating my favorite vacations based on how much I can see by foot.

Recently, I began to plan a vacation from our home trying not to use a car. My idea was to start out from my front door, two bags in hand, like my neighbors in those other countries had done. But it would be a long walk, thirty days, 15 out and 15 back. Where would I go?

My plans took me twenty miles as the crow flies. The walk itself was much longer. I had to find routes around freeways, to hotel stops and campgrounds, along walking paths, and to bathrooms. That was just the planning stage, and it took me basically to Trader Joe’s and back. As much as I like Trader Joe’s, it wouldn’t be much of a vacation.

At times, I complain about our rugged American walking life. We have trail systems and back-country treks. We rate our outdoor adventures according to the inclines we mount, and we like to be challenged. There’s nothing wrong with all that, but it seems we miss out on half of the pleasures of simple walking, the part that comes from ease and comfort. That’s where our walking life leaves us in the dust. We normally hike in rustic places, not through our cities. We don’t have a system of walking paths. If we visit towns, we can venture out on our own to find walking spaces, or we may join a walking tour, but a walkable path from one town to the next city isn’t easy to find.

But I have found an organization of Americans who walk. They are called American Volkssport. They have mapped out and organized thousands of walks in our towns and cities and many places of interest in our country. I have taken a couple of their walks, and they are delightful, even if I have to drive to the start point.

In the next year, I plan on taking as many of these walks as time allows. You can join me by reading about them here in Estero Bay News. Or you can join me on the path, one step at a time.

Next up: Walking Los Olivos