Bear the Great – Chapter Fifteen.
There was an online group called Walk2Connect he’d once been a part of. They had a hashtag he particularly liked – #Life@3mph – emblazoned on hats and t-shirts. As you might expect with a name like that, the group promoted the social and health benefits of walking at a relatively brisk pace. After the main organizer wrote a book on the subject, interest waned and the group went kaput.
Actually that’s not quite right: It didn’t go completely defunct so much as it was re-branded as AmericaWalks. But the mission shifted from organized group walking activities to political advocacy for public trails and pedestrian safety. Nothing wrong with that, but it had always been the walking itself that attracted him. The political action stuff he could take or leave.
The fact of the matter was that – other than chocolate (definitely) and sex (maybe) – he loved hiking best among all possible earthly delights. When he had the diabetic ulcer on his big toe and had to lay off trail life for a while, it had nearly killed him. He put on ten pounds before he even knew what was happening. It took almost a year of Dr. Brown’s podiatric ministrations before he was fully recovered. In the meantime, he’d had cellulitis spread like wildfire up his leg. He’d even been threatened with amputation of the offending digit. In the end he recovered and was grateful for the chance to get all ten toes back out on the trail as often as humanly possible. Short of the Apocalypse, that meant pretty much every single day, rain or shine.
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He’d given a fair amount of thought to the question of how to monetize his love of walking. Since he wasn’t about to write a book, that left only a couple of other possibilities. Trail guide was one. Professional dog walker was another. Managing an REI was yet another. But when his old college roomie came for a visit and they headed out together up South Rim Trail early one morning, he figured this was as good a time as any to spitball his ideas about @RoxHikes.
“So the idea is to combine psychotherapy with exercise in a setting that doesn’t involve an office or a gym. You know, kinda like this trail we’re on right now.” They were high-stepping up a steep incline that left them both breathing hard. Since they had a shared background as mental health professionals, this was not as looney of an idea as it might at first sound to the uninitiated.
“Go on. I’m listening.”
“Right. So, as you know, resistance to theraputic aims is relatively high at the outset. So why not cut through some of that by getting clients out on the trail to lower their defenses. At a minimum it might help them drop a few pounds over the course of a couple of weeks or months. And as a side benefit, it wouldn’t do us any harm either. Oh, and it would be fully reimbursable under most health insurance plans.”
“Getting paid by the insurance companies to do something we love while doing some good for the psychiatrically unwashed masses sure sounds like a win-win to me. As long as nobody falls over dead of a heart attack in the process. Better have an ironclad waiver signed before trying this out on anybody. How much further to the top by the way?”
“You lightweight. We’re almost there.”
“Just remember that positive reinforcement trumps body-shaming every single time. But I think you may be onto something here.”
“Ha.”
As a treatment modality, nothing ever came of @RoxHikes. But #RoxHikes did turn out to be his favorite hashtag once he started blogging. Maybe one day monetization would become a possibility. But in the meantime? Trail life was definitely its own reward.
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His vision for a retirement party was to invite everybody he knew to come visit, put them all up at LaQuinta Inn & Suites for a week to let them acclimate to the altitude, then set off together across the Colorado Trail from the Waterton terminus right behind his house. Not that they’d do all 487 miles to Durango, of course. But a 6 or 7 day hike would take them as far as Kenosha Pass, and that would be plenty. Maybe his friend Moe could park his RV up there at the Kenosha campground and they could all have a big BBQ-burgers-brats-and-beer blowout before shuttling everybody back down the hill to showers, clean sheets, and civilization. Wouldn’t that be a gas?
Alas, the obstacles to making it happen were many, not least of which was the fact that a lot of folks nearing retirement age were far too fat and feeble to even attempt such a trek. His cohort was by and large in no shape to be hiking 72 miles with a 5000′ elevation gain carrying a 30 lb. pack over the course of a week in the wilderness. But even beyond that, you’d need to cache food and water for those stretches where streambeds were dry come summertime, and where bears were sure to sniff out any supplies left more than a few days.
Ah well. As an alternative, maybe they could all go to Coors Field and watch the Rockies lose? Hey, you never know, there might be fireworks. But the bottom line was this: “Triple-A baseball is better than no baseball.” That was his motto and he was sticking with it.
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For his daily walk, there was a certain pre-game ritual that rarely varied. Shower-shit-and-shave, of course, that goes without saying. The t-shirt was whatever was clean in his top dresser drawer. But choosing the right hat? That was the wild card.
CPW volunteer hat? Nah, gotta save that for trail maintenance days @RoxStatePark with Aylin and Janae. Iowa Hawkeyes hat from his daughter’s alma mater? Nah, wore that one yesterday. Future Problem Solving hat from his wife-the-teacher’s academic competition team? Nah, too many salt stains, needs to go in the laundry. VanPort Jazz Ensemble hat from his son the musician? A good choice, but he didn’t really feel like jazz today. How about the bright red St. Louis Cards hat inherited from his late father-in-law? Another worthy choice. But it still pained him every single time he thought about the Nolan Arenado trade. Criminy. What was Charlie Monfort thinking?
Ah, here’s the one: “Geezers Rule.” An all-black hat with white lettering honoring the 2014 San Antonio Spurs’ last championship with the famous “geezer” trio of Tony Parker (age 32), Manu Ginobili (age 37), and The Big Fundamental himself, Tim Duncan (age 38). Nothing like a hat like that any day you’re feeling every bit of your age: Geezers Rule. Just. Perfect. Go Spurs.
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What was that Walk2Connect guy’s name? Jonothan Something-or-other. Stallings? Stallworth? Stahl? For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. The guy wasn’t much of a writer though, or at least not that he could recall anyway. What he could remember was the author’s photo from the book jacket: A well-toned physique with a flowing blonde mane that made him look like the artists’ rendering on the cover of one of those bodice-ripper paperbacks his wife was always reading. If Jonothan Whoever wasn’t going to make it as a writer, at least maybe he had potential as a male model. Some skill sets, after all, are more easily monetized than others.