PLAYING THE AGE CARD WHILE HIKING

First view from Killing Time
mountain bike trail

Sometimes we make assumptions, we jump to conclusions, we are triggered over what may be innocuous. This happens more frequently when a comment or action seems to touch on our identity. I’ve had many occasions where, rightfully or wrongfully, I’ve taken a perceived shunning as homophobia when, well, maybe I just forgot to put on deodorant. 

 

Did I forget?! I can see myself applying the stick to my underarms but perhaps that was yesterday. Time blurs. Routines sometimes come with blips. As I get older, I’m not as sure of my memory, even regarding what I did five minutes ago. 

 

And, yes, age is the subject of yesterday’s incident that had me feeling too sensitive…and humored at the same time.

 

I consider myself a hiker, but I’ve only done a handful of outings during the past six months. Most of my hiking is in the mountains and I hike far less when trails are covered in snow and ice. It’s not so much the snow and ice—adding crampons to my hiking boots produces miraculous results—it’s the fact the trails are covered. On the hikes I did, the route was less clear in patches where there was only one person’s tracks to follow or, in a couple of cases, the tracks veered onto a trail I wasn’t taking and I had nothing to give me an assured sense I was still on a trail. 

 

My favourite hikes are still snow-covered for at least the next month, but I am now finding trail reports that there are options—no snow; just water and mud. (Hiking boots are themselves amazing… bring on the muck!) 

 

Yesterday, I ventured to Sumas Mountain Regional Park, about an hour from home to do what was supposed to be a 2.5-hour hike, a little bit on the short end in terms of what I like but, hey, I needed to recognize that my hiking legs were out of the habit of being just that. Start small, build up. How responsible of me. 

 

I pulled into the trailhead’s gravel parking lot just before ten in the morning. It was otherwise empty. I’d literally have the mountain to myself. Hurrah. No one’s music, no drones, hopefully no gunshots. (On a hike I did a couple of years ago in the area, there happened to be a shooting range at the base of the mountain. I was especially motivated to do the ascent!) 

 

I did the responsible things prior to taking to the trail. I took a photo of the trail map at the parking lot and texted Evan with a selfie that included what I was wearing and my license plate along with indicating what time I expected to return to the car. Please, let there be no cause for search parties. Or camera crews zooming in on a bug-bitten hiker with a sprained ankle, hauled out on a stretcher.

 

I can be dramatic.

 

My destination: Chadsey Lake and a loop hike taking me past Baker Rock. There was no Baker Rock on the trailhead map but I figured I’d come across a disproportionately enormous boulder and exchange greetings (“Hello, Baker!”), with the noteworthy rock staring back stone-faced.

 

As it turns out, I missed the Chadsey Lake turnoff, a tiny white sign at knee height two minutes from the parking lot. Instead, I found myself on Killing Time, a mountain biking trail that had me going downhill, not uphill. Checking my map photo, I would connect with a Centennial Trail and still reach the lake. No problem. 

 

Somehow, despite a considerable descent, I blocked out any notion that I’d have a considerable ascent as well. Stay in the moment, they say, when hiking. Mindfulness in motion, I call it. Yes, behold the ferns! Wonder how many mountain bikers have broken limbs—and how many per person—after going airborne on the many wooden ramps built on the trail. Er… maybe just focus on ferns.

 

Chadsey Lake

It took two hours to reach the lake. I texted Evan, surprised to have phone reception. It was looking like my 2.5-hour hike would be 4 hours. No problem. This was more in line with the length of hike I like to do. After I sat on a log and viewed Chadsey, I began my return trek, deciding to take a trail marked as “Parking Lot,” most likely the trail I’d missed in the first place. Maybe I’d cut off a bit of time, avoiding another prolonged descent-ascent sequence and coming upon some sprawled-out biker with an arm extended at an impossible angle. (Being squeamish, I’d be no help at all, just fainting at the scene. Sorry, biker dude.)

 

I was suddenly picking up signs easily. In addition to “Parking Lot,” another sign indicated the “East Lookout” was farther past the lake. I had no idea what I’d be looking out at but, figuring I wouldn’t be repeating this hike anytime soon, I decided to seize the day and hike onward. 

 

Much more muck. (Another shoutout to hiking boots!) Much more ascent. 

 

As a hiker or, more broadly, a human being, I’m not a fan of sweating. Ascents mean lots of brow wiping and shirt fanning. I would get used to this as hiking season picked up, but I will never embrace it. (I contend spin class and hot yoga enthusiasts are masochists.)

 

The problem with the trail signage was it failed to provide distances. Was the East Lookout half a kilometre ahead or was it in New Brunswick? The park map also failed to have a scale and the route to East Lookout included many wiggly lines which would make any scale (had there been one) challenging to use to create a distance and time estimate.

 

I’d gone over an hour, still ascending, sweating profusely, hoping I was still on the path to East Lookout but unsure. Knowing I’d taken the long route to Chadsey Lake in the morning didn’t boost my confidence about being on track. I simply kept following little orange squares intermittently nailed onto trees to mark a trail presumably to somewhere. 

 

I heard voices coming toward me and suddenly two labradors were sniffing my legs. Presumably they were piddled out with so many red cedars on offer and the ferns had taken on a redundancy. I was a new find. Very exciting!

 

Two young women (Late twenties? Early thirties?) hollered the standard apology given when off-leash dogs oblivious to personal bubbles offer hearty greetings and close-up knee exams. 

 

No problem. Much better than a bear encounter. Much, much better.

 

“Did you go to East Lookout?” I asked. “How far is it?”

 

“Yes,” one woman said. She looked at her hiking companion. “How long do you think?”

 

“Twenty minutes.”

 

Ah, well. Good. I was hoping for a number less than five, but I wasn’t going to turn back now. So close! The trek up continued. I would not be hiking to New Brunswick, after all. Whew!

 

At the twelve minute-mark, post knee-sniff, I observed a clear trail going straight up on my left. East Lookout? (Please.) No sign. No orange markers. Instead, a trail continued meandering to the right, orange markers aplenty. As I often do on hikes, I hesitated. I pondered. I wanted to take the unmarked path. I sensed it led to East Lookout. But I’m directionally challenged in the best of times. My senses regarding which way to go consistently fail me. Stick to the marked path. Let there be no search parties. 

 

My final piece of logic that kept me on-trail was the fact I wasn’t at the twenty minute-mark. Not even close. Forty percent more time on trail. Keep going!

 

About eight minutes later, I came upon three BC Hydro towers up one final hill. Yes! The towers marked the lookout. Made sense if not something especially scenic. There would be a clearing. I’d have my back to the fenced-in towers and the posted signs warning of possible electrocution. Whatever the view from East Lookout, I would take a few pics, dammit. I’d ooh and aah even if it were strictly performative. “You have reached your destination.”

 

But, no. All around the towers were trees. Just like all the trees along the trail. Nothing distinct. Not even a rock I could call Baker. (That thing was still in hiding, too.)

 

Okay, I know I began this post mentioning that my age may have made me sensitive, presumably on this hike. ’Tis true. Let’s get back to that.

 

The fact is that access to East Lookout was at the twelve minute-mark from when my knees went through doggy inspection. Due to all the looking around I did at the twenty minute-mark—no, I did not climb fences and risk electrocution—I didn’t actually arrive at the lookout until almost an hour after asking how much farther. I’d checked out yet another mountain bike trail (and scored a peekaboo view). I’d circled all around the towers, a couple of times inadvertently. Yes, very directionally challenged.   

 

Here’s where my being sixty and sporting a clearly white beard (finally) comes into play. I wondered if age was a factor when I was told it was another twenty minute-schlep to the lookout. Maybe they looked at me, some guy decidedly in the “sir” range from their assessment. Older guy. Sweating profusely. Gosh, yes, another twenty minutes. For him. 

 

Now, I know that’s ridiculous thinking entering my brain. Blame it on excess perspiration and not enough hydration. I’m the worst at hydrating. If I Google dehydration, one side effect must surely be paranoid thinking that one is too old for whatever activity is contributing to dehydration. 

 

Objectively, twelve minutes and twenty minutes are not far apart. It’s entirely possible that the woman who went with twenty gave that as a valid estimate of the time it had taken them to walk back from the lookout until they came upon me. Maybe she’s bad with time. Maybe they’d truly lost track of time, talking about the dynamics at work, relationship issues or the hot yoga class they were taking that evening. Yes, mascochists. 

 

Maybe there were doggy delays on account of the whole off-leash nature of their hike. Maybe the dogs continued marking red cedars even though the pee stream was running on empty. Maybe they sniffed and tried to track a mole or squirrel. I neither saw nor heard small animals the entire day, but I don’t have a dog’s sense of smell. Maybe an entire warren of bunnies existed between the lookout and the point where we came into contact. 

 

So many maybes. Why did I even entertain that they’d added on extra time for a sweaty, grey-bearded oldster to reach East Lookout? 

 

Why hadn’t I just followed my gut and gone up the unmarked trail in the first place. I’d have just been pleased to arrive early and would have applauded my fitness. I’d never have gone down the I look old tunnel because there wouldn’t have been a setback. 

 

Good grief—clearly an oldster’s expression—sometimes hiking isn’t mindful at all. Sometimes it offers too much time for obsessive thought.

 

View from East Lookout

My 2.5-hour hike turned out to be a 6-hour endurance test. Oh. My. Quads. I took a few Advil when I got home. And belatedly hydrated. But way to go, old guy. I’m readier for hiking season now. Let the muscles ache less next time.

 

Was East Lookout worth it? Absolutely! See for yourself.

 

 

  

AGING GRACELESSLY

I struggle with the fact I’m getting older. We all do, I know. A newborn at five days is older than it was at birth. Obviously. To be more precise, I’m at least at the trailhead of the path marked with the sign Growing Old. I cringe just typing that. I’m an anxious person and the thought of aging has always been an issue. Sure, I couldn’t wait until I reached sixteen. I can drive a car! (Actually, in Texas, you can get a “hardship” license that allows you to drive to work and school at fifteen. No open beer or unregistered gun though. Even the Lone Star State has a few limits.) Twenty-one was kinda cool, too. I could drink without my are-you-kidding-me fake ID. It’s not that I was a lush—getting drunk has never had any appeal, much less been a Friday night (AND Saturday night) goal; it’s just that I happened to be two years younger than my peers and didn’t want to have youth highlighted by the possibility of a server denying me my amaretto sour. Youth. If only.

 

I took hitting thirty hard. It was my premature midlife crisis, prompting me to walk away from my career as a lawyer (after a whopping two and a half years), and move from Los Angeles back to Canada, not to the area where I grew up, pre-Texas, but to Vancouver where I knew only one person.

 

After that, deep funks over getting older didn’t wait until I hit a new decade. Instead, every single birthday was cause for sorrow instead of celebration. Another year older…why the woo-hoo? As my mother is fond of saying, “Beats the alternative.” Sure. Technically so, but is that cause for cake? I’m not a cake fan even in general terms. I don’t tell people when my birthday is and I certainly don’t want parties or gifts. Let it pass. Don’t remind me. 

I don't want to board airplanes before everybody else.

 

Does it feel worse because I’m gay? I’ve long passed the threshold for being dead in gay years. I’m supposed to be settled down, out of sight, shopping for antique hutches with a partner, or I must submit to buying a one-way ticket for an aimless trip on an ice floe, waiting for a polar bear to scramble up after a swim and have breakfast. It would be easy to blame gay culture but, if anything, that’s only reinforced a mindset that was already there.

 

When I dated a guy last year, my running joke—which wasn’t funny at all—was that I was thirty-four, as if I’d undergone that cryonic frozen-in-time procedure without any of the problematic side effects like being in a block of ice. For a number of years now, I have truly felt like I was thirty-four in mind and body. Frozen in time, figuratively anyway. I’m more hyper than I’ve ever been, always rarin’ to go. My daily tasks are all punctuated with urgent exclamation marks. Jog! Bike! Write! Hike! Read! Work out! Thirty minutes after I finish a run, I’ll step outside, see someone else jogging and my mind automatically thinks, I should do another run. Now! I don’t but I really, really want to. 

 

I see the difference in my friends. My closest friend talks about his body turning pear-shaped (“like my [eighty-nine-year-old] father”) and spoke with pride this past weekend about how he likes to just sit and watch the morning show with Gayle King and her colleagues for three hours straight. While younger gay men send butt and dick pics to strangers, I send my friend pie pics (and, lately, croissant shots). He’s overjoyed. Another good friend has spent the past three years recovering from foot surgeries and considers an annual chat a significant investment. I hear lots about people’s aches and pains, frequent references to the way things used to be and all that talk about stocks, mortgages and pensions that made me cringe thinking about in my twenties, a sentiment that hasn’t changed. They aren’t willing to try oat milk, wonder out loud if they should get an e-bike (“It’d probably just sit in the garage”) and don’t believe meat-eating younger people would actually choose to eat at a vegan spot sometimes—just another option like Thai or Lebanese. 

 

What happened to fun? What about spontaneity? What happened to being open to new things, someday at least, if no longer with that sense of right away? It should be no surprise that the person I hang out the most with now is—you guessed it—thirty-four. This morning she sent me a TikTok video. I couldn’t figure out how to get it to play, but she filled me in after a couple follow-up texts. I’m (sorta) in the loop with the cool kids. On the weekend, I met her and her boyfriend to do a canopy walk in the forest. They drove there; I biked it. Afterwards, we sat on the grass and chatted. Friends my age look for benches. (“It’s too hard to get up,” one said recently.)

 

Ah, yes. Growing old takes some getting used to. My TV-watching friend talks about it with his own exclamation marks. Mushroom videos on YouTube! Pie! TV news! Horror movie marathons! I’m neither exaggerating nor making fun of him. I’m even partially in awe. He fully embraces the slower pace and, as he says, “doing nothing.” I was aghast this weekend on our “hike”—his term; I called it a walk—when he said, “What’s so great about our virtual world now is that I don’t have to travel anymore. I can just watch it all on my screen.” Sometimes you just know when not to argue a point. Sometimes people’s views are just too far apart. 

 

I do realize being sedentary isn’t solely for people growing older—there are plenty of twenty-something couch potatoes and nonstop gamers—but this friend of mind used to be on volleyball, softball and curling teams. He was my tennis bud. He backpacked across Europe and climbed Kilimanjaro. He’s three years younger than me but has a much older mindset. 

 

It used to be that my fear of growing old was about being alone. I didn’t want to be single and die alone. I’ve let most of that angst go. I still don’t want to die and go three weeks in my condo, body decomposing, only to be discovered because neighbors wondered about the bad smell in the hallway. Of course, I won’t be around to face them or be duly mortified, but it still seems more than a tad undignified for a final exit. I think I’ve solved this by deciding that, at some point, I’ll get my pastry pal to agree that we’ll text each other hello every morning. No text by noon requires investigation. Problem solved.

 

I’ve also worried aplenty about becoming invisible. I’ve observed many times how an elderly person walking with a cane has to stop at the edge of a sidewalk as a chatty couple or a group of younger folk (at that point, they’re all younger folk) pass by, oblivious to the gentleman’s need for space and constant concern about the possibility of falling and breaking a hip. I’m already getting a taste for being unnoticed and irrelevant. It’s one part freeing and two parts depressing. I’m learning to deal with it.

 

I may feel thirty-four, but that’s not what passersby see. I get called “sir” a lot and, while it’s supposed to convey respect, I hate it. The checkout person, the barista, the computer tech guy who has to show me how to download photos…to all of them I’m a sir. The only way I’ve “earned” the reference is in a “respect your elders” kind of way.

 

For all my denial about aging, the signs are surfacing. Six years ago, I got my first pair of glasses and now I can’t read anything without them. If I take a selfie, I’ll glance at it and think the crow’s feet and deep, saggy crevices under my eyes are an indicator of the low-quality camera on my cell phone. (I should get a newer version, but I can’t bear to hear all that gobbledygook about giga-somethings and some sort of cloud in the sky that stores my stuff. (What happens on a sunny day?) Even more telling, I can be as sour as those two old Muppets, Statler and Waldorf. Early onset of “cranky old man.”

 

Every time I forget something (What was that brilliant writing idea? Why did I open the fridge? Why am I holding this whisk?) I immediately attribute it to aging and fret that maybe I’m in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Did I forget things when I was twenty-three? No, never. Of course not!

 

Worst of all, I’ve had to ease up a bit on my hiking for the last six weeks because my left knee has a persistent pain. Running is totally on hold. This is the beginning…