Hiking: A Vital Part of Camp and a Vital Part of Our Lives

It would be impossible for me to recall camp, let alone recreate it, without thinking about hiking as a significant part of my personal summer camp experience. Here’s why: Camp Redwood was held at Redwood Park which is a large, natural field surrounded by redwood trees. Redwood forests often have fields that are sort of bowls in the landscape, these natural spots of openness. The city where I lived had made use of this one, installing a playground, several picnic areas, a small outdoor theater, and two small buildings while also leaving a lot of the field as open space. It made for the perfect spot to have a daily summer camp; especially because the area was surrounded, 360 degrees all around, by redwood forest. This included the community trail system. Miles of trails winding through the redwoods were literally steps away from where we did our arts and crafts, sang camp songs, and played field games. Except for rare exceptions most groups did at least one dedicated hike each week. On top of that, we had to walk out through the forest to get to our field trips! Even the ones where we rode a bus, the roads into the parking areas at Redwood Park were too narrow. We’d have to hike out to the road and to a bus stop. If the field trip was in walking distance, we hiked all the way out of the forest and then into town (small town so this wasn’t exceedingly far – although the kids often complained on the hikes back up hill through the forest to get back to camp!).

I remember hiking these trails as a camper. I remember helping the kids hike as a Leader-In-Training (LIT). I remember planning hikes, leading them, and being the caboose on them, as a Leader. I remember training staff about them and waving them off as a Director. Hikes were a vital part of the identity of Camp Redwood and therefore, in recreating camp for my son, it was inevitable hiking would become a part of our practice. I just didn’t expect it so soon.

I started hiking with my son last July, when he was just a little more than two years old. It sounds kind of wild when I watch myself typing the words. I take my two year old son on hikes. You can read a little about the wonderful experiences we’ve had on the Kingston Downs blog. But the decision was actually an easy one. I missed hiking. He loves nature. He has boundless energy. I wanted to get to know our new region (we’d lived here a year when we started hiking) better. I wanted to become a group leader for Wild+Free and knew many groups start out as, and stay, hiking groups. Hiking easily met criteria and checked boxes. But it was actually more than that.

I felt really comfortable and confident with the idea. 

I have to pause here because I think it’s actually a profound moment in my parenting. As someone who became a mom in March 2020 much of my parenting had been from a posture of fear, worry, and a very severe bout of postpartum anxiety. To have a moment where I realized I felt like I was equipped was a sort of new feeling and one I wanted to capitalize on. I wrote about how important it is to seize these opportunities for The Parent Empowerment Movement’s October newsletter. I want to add on to what I wrote there to emphasize parenting currently takes place in an environment full of messages designed to make parents doubt their abilities. As a mom I’m bombarded with both subtle and blunt messages telling me I’m not qualified (as an expert) to make health, education, development, lifestyle, food, and play decisions for my child. I need to defer to people who have never met him, or me, or seen where we live, to tell me how to do these things. There are constant comparisons against other parents and their children; there are tribes to belong to and align with and those to judge. It’s a challenging and honestly nasty environment. It’s so easy to feel less than good enough for your own kid, who you love with everything you have. You spend excessive mental energy researching and getting infowhelmed, doubting your choices, doubting your qualifications. No wonder our society has some of the most extreme maternal mental health problems in the world. 

So when hiking made me feel confident, I grabbed it and literally ran onto the trail with it. I’m so glad I did it too. Hiking with my son was just what I needed to really light this recreating camp-fire and realize: I am the expert on my son, our path, and our choices. I’m going to keep talking about hiking in just a few sentences but before I do let me say this: I’m sharing this with you not so you’ll go hike with your kids (unless you want to – I love it and I hope you do too because it’s great but it’s not for everyone and I get that). I’m sharing this in hopes you’ll tap into something you feel so comfortable and confident in doing, you ignore what anyone else might say (like, “your kid is too young to go hiking!”) and you’ll take your kids and go do it. I want you to feel what it’s like to gain the confidence and accountability to own your own expertise and know, you get to do this whole parenting journey the way that’s best for your kids and you. Forge your own path.

So, why did I feel confident hiking with a two year old in an ecosystem unlike the one I grew up in? Years of doing it, at various ages and stages of life, coupled with great training. When I was a camper, probably seven or eight, we did have an incident on a hike. This was the early 90’s, no cell phones; no one but the Leaders there to handle it. I won’t go into details because I don’t want to scare people or share other individuals’ stories, but a camper was grabbed by a man who was illegally camping in the woods. The incident was over in 30 seconds. One Leader grabbed the camper, the other fought the man. They quickly got us out of the woods, and we worked as a unit to show that camper compassion. But here’s the really important takeaway: we didn’t stop hiking. Five or six years later, when I started my training as a LIT, this scenario was part of the dialogue when we were trained on hiking safety. Along with excellent first aid training and great guidelines about communicating where we were taking kids and when we expected to be back, we were trained to have awareness of our surroundings and each of our kids. It built a sturdy confidence in me I didn’t even know I had until I ventured out to take my son. 

I find myself using all those skills on the trails with him. 

He loves hiking. He asks to “go on hike” sometimes before he even says, “good morning.” We hike at least once a week. Sometimes it’s just on the paved trail through our city park. Other times we brave more rugged trails. He doesn’t care where the hike is, he just likes going and being out there. He likes the freedom and to explore things he sees. He likes to collect things like sticks, rocks, pine cones, sweet gum balls, and leaves. He loves to interact with other people we see on the trails.  Rain or shine he’s into it.

I love it too. I get to let him have some autonomy while also working on really important practical skills with him: listening, slowing down, waiting, stopping. I feel like some of my best parenting comes out on the trail because I’m letting him be wild and I’m able to hone in on what’s important without distractions. He’s also taught me a lot. He’s reminded me, as cliché as it sounds, it’s about the journey and not the destination. He’s reminded me to slow down and activate my senses and stand in awe of the outdoors. 

After a hike recently he told me, “Mama, this was great day!” 

I won’t tell you it’s all magical. We had a hike just last week where everything was a struggle. He wouldn’t listen or keep his feet out of gross things (goose poop) or stay with me and we ended up cutting it short and having a conversation about listening on the car ride home. But the next hike we took – which was actually today – he was listening better and more engaged than he’d been in a long time. I’m convinced we do some of our best relating on those trails.

We also hike a little with our Wild+Free group and doing that made me realize something: as confident as I am, I have a lot to learn about where we’re hiking. Inviting other families to hike with us made me realize I don’t know the plant life or animal life of this region as well as the one where I hiked for summers on end and I haven’t stayed up to date on my first aid and CPR certifications – it’s been 20 years!

So not only is hiking granting me confidence and incredible relational experiences with my son, it’s offering me growth. I’m currently doing a 21-day wilderness first aid and CPR course through the Institute for WildMed (10/10 recommend it!) and I’ve joined several groups on Facebook to learn about snakes. I added an app to my phone called PictureThis after an outing with my son in which I wasn’t sure if he’d touched poison ivy. 

As we both grow – him in age, me in hiking acuity – I hope we’ll continue to hike together. I hope one day, when he’s a teenager or young man, we’ll reminisce on some challenging trail about how he’s been doing this since he was two. But he may not love it forever, and that’s okay. For now, it serves him so well. It will also always be the thing I feel like finally, finally, pulled me out of the depths of my postpartum anxiety and into empowered motherhood. 

Photo Credit: Lisa Frank

Originally posted 2/15/23 on old website