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Community Corner

Walk About Martinez -- Thanksgiving

Plan your own Turkey Trot, how to live 14 years longer than you might, and a walk with America's preeminent long distance hikers, Ken and Marcia Powers, this week in Walk About Martinez

 

Thanksgiving is a few days away.  It’s a day for expressing gratitude no matter what religious background you come from, and probably the closest thing we have to an American sacred holiday.  It’s also a national meal and one of the biggest pig outs most of us encounter on a yearly basis.  

At this meal of meals, no matter how much you plan to eat, or how much you actually do, you can do your body a big favor beforehand by planning your own “Turkey Trot.”  All across the country, Turkey Trots have become a popular antidote to the feast, but it doesn’t have to be a run.  It can be as simple as a 30 minute stroll with your family around the neighborhood beforehand to get the blood moving.  Or it could be a blast up one of our lovely Martinez hill trails if you want to get a workout and decrease your appetite in the process.  Vigorous exercise will do that without a diet pill.  If you’re really ambitious, you could count this as day one in an easy, but powerful life changing new pattern for yourself, daily exercise.  

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It doesn’t have to be much to make a big difference in how you feel, and how your body works.  Exercise has been found to be effective in combating depression, and the cumulative benefits to your body are enormous.  

Two cases in point, both friends in their mid 60’s.  Brad started hiking off and on with me about two years ago.  He loves the outdoors, and would make it to as many walks as he could, but that was just a few per month, and he’d always turn around at some point on my hikes to the top of Mt. Diablo when he’d reached his limit.  For many months during those two years, I’ve been out of town hiking my thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, and other trails, but Brad continued walking with his wife Linda in and around their Reliez Valley home.  

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Several weeks ago he read that physically stressing his body could be good for him, and he decided to join me on a hike up the Burma Road to the top of Diablo, the hardest hike I do on that mountain, and probably the steepest trail in the Bay Area.  

To his surprise and delight, he made it with no trouble, and thereupon said that I oversold the difficulty of the trail.  But I didn’t exaggerate anything, (as those of you who know me can attest).  He was that much stronger!  Hiking sporadically, not everyday by any means, was all it took. 

Second case.  Dan came to me last winter because he was planning a wonderful trip with his college age daughter, Jenny.  They were going to travel all over South America in the spring and wanted to live out of backpacks and do some serious hiking, including Machu Picchu.  We did several good hikes, including one storm hike on Diablo where we had to wade through a waist deep snow melt lake that blocked our path on the Deer Flat Road.  That was a completely new experience for Dan, but the body knowledge he gained was priceless.  Not only can you survive the pain of a deep ice water wade, but you can hike with wet shoes just fine for hours after and be kept warm through exertion.  

Dan also only hiked occasionally with me, but kept coming out.  He ended up having a great time with Jenny on all kinds of adventures in South America that a mid 60’s geezer just shouldn’t have.  The telling point for me, however, was a few weeks ago when he accompanied me on the eleven mile hike from Clayton to ,  and not only kept up at a fast pace, but tried some trail running for the first time on the way back down.  He’s amazing!  All this improvement through occasional walking, and a few good stiff hikes over the past seven months.

The message was really brought home last night when my sister Sharon came in, excited to share what she’d just learned at a free class sponsored by the John Muir Health, Senior Center, called, Seven Steps to Wellness, taught by nutritionist, Kathy Napoli.  Most of these John Muir classes are free to the public, or at a nominal fee, but do require prior registration.

Some of what Ms. Napoli taught came from a 2009 German study of 23,513 people ages 35 to 65 that found four things that gave people an average of 14 more years of life.  The factors were:  

1.  Not smoking.  

2.  Eating five or more servings of Fruit and vegetables per day, whole grains and limited meat, especially red meat.  

3.  Exercising 30 minutes per day, every day.  

4.  Having a good body mass index of under 30.  For men this often means a waist of less than 37” and for women, 34”

All of these are lifestyle choices, and the one closest to this old hikers heart is just getting out everyday for a bit of exercise, as simple as walking around the block, or as wonderful as hiking across a continent.  It’s all part of a continuum, and the biggest bang for your buck comes right off the bat from even occasional exercise if your life has been sedentary.  The improvement I saw in both Brad and Dan was amazing, and didn’t require more than an intermittant, fun hike.  

We’re animals, on an animal planet, and our bodies need exercise, just like our stomachs need food, our lungs air, our emotions love, and our minds new ideas.  So this Thanksgiving, give a little to your body.  It gets you out of bed every morning and it needs to be kept in shape to keep doing that.   

A few suggestions for your own family “Turkey Trot” from our prior columns on paved or graveled surfaces include, easy walks at the , out the , anywhere on , and .  The more ambitious and willing to hike on possibly muddy trails could try, the , , or the hike out . 

Then again, you could decide to just take your family for a walk around the block.  It could be the start of something big.

Thru hikers in town: Last week I got a call from Dreams, (his trail name) a geneticist working at UC Davis with whom I’d hiked part of the Pacific Crest Trail last year, and Hurricane, a Kiwi friend from the same trail.  They wanted to come over and hike Diablo, something I’m always ready to do. 

I first met Hurricane north of Lake Tahoe last year.  He’d been worn out by the middle of his PCT thru hike and after hiking well over a thousand miles, he vowed never to hike again.  He wanted his wife and kids back, even his old job.  He finished the trail in September, a few days ahead of me, and went back to his family and life in New Zealand, but by last Christmas, he couldn’t stop dreaming of the trail.  He came back to America this summer and hiked sections of the Continental Divide Trail and completed the Arizona Trail.  He called because he wanted to get together before his wife flew in from New Zealand.  They were to spend some time exploring America together this fall.  

Dreams, I first met last year sitting outside the Tuolumne Meadows Store in Yosemite, a bag of bread in one hand and a big bottle of mayonnaise in the other.  That was lunch.  In short order however Smiles, Little Engine, Plain Slice, Mango and I had each bought something to accompany that simple start and we had the sandwich equivalent of “Stone Soup.”   Pickles, cheese, meats and every kind of cheap deli goody was spread out on the picnic table making one great thru hiker pot luck lunch.   If we couldn’t find a trail angel, we became one ourselves.  The camaraderie and fellowship just never ended on that 2,600 mile hike.  

Well, it happened again, but this time it was a human “Stone Soup.”  Hurricane wanted Dreams and I to meet two new friends of his who live in Pleasanton.  They turned out to be none other than Ken and Marcia Powers, two of the leading long distance hikers in America.  Not only have they hiked the triple crown of National Scenic Trails, the Appalachian, Continental Divide and Pacific Crest, but they are the first people to have thru hiked the 4,900 mile long, American Discovery Trail -- Delaware to Pt. Reyes CA -- in one season.  Completing those four trails is the Grand Slam in the thru hiker world, and big enough that crew of the Today Show met them on the beach at Pt. Reyes at 4am to do a live feed to New York as they stepped into the Pacific Ocean, 8 months after beginning their hike.

Since Ken’s retirement in 1998, the two have hiked over 17,000 miles across America, on trails north to south and east to west.  These guys are famous!  But you couldn’t tell it as the five of us hiked up Diablo’s Burma Road several days ago.  They were genuine, regular “hiker trash” folks, and great talkers, willing to share all they know, full of encouragement and advice to get people outside and onto the trail next door, or all the way into the amazing expanses of America’s wilds.  They are missionaries, much like me and most hikers I know, only too happy to share a bit of their experience and the joy we’ve found on the trail.  In that sense, they're not too different from our own local, John Muir, who preached that the wilderness of the world was part of the antidote to the industrial life of the cities, and a way to heal the soul.

When I asked what had gotten them long distance hiking, Marcia said that when Ken retired in his 50’s they looked at each other and decided they didn’t want to get old sitting in a chair watching TV.  They started hiking, and one long trail led to another.  In 1998 and 1999, they started their adventures by hiking the John Muir Trail, then thru hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in 2000.  In 2001, Europe and the Tahoe Rim Trail were preparation for the Continental Divide Trail in 2002.  Along with all four of America’s great Scenic Trails, their hikes have included the Pacific Crest Trail a second time, Arizona Trail, Grand Enchantment Trail, Idaho Centennial Trail and countless forays into our East Bay Regional Parks.  

Off trail, I’m often asked why I would ever want to hike thousands of miles, filter my water and live in a little tent month after month.  I answer as best I can, a question I don’t fully understand myself.  It just makes me really, really happy.  I loved it like I’ve never loved an activity before.  With another thru hiker, the question doesn’t even come up, as each of us knows the answer intrinsically without putting it into words.  

The experience of hiking a long trail caused a change in most people I hiked with.  Some joke that they are “ruined” because all they dream about is finding a way to start that next long trail.   The several thousand years we humans have been farming and living in houses, barely scratches the emotional surface of the two million years we spent as nomads chasing game across the savannas and through the forests of the world.  We are built to find joy in this.  The species would have died out long ago if people didn’t love doing what sustained us.  

There is something deeply satisfying about returning to those beginnings, even in our modern modification of a nomadic life, the experience of a thru hiker on a long trail.  The bones ring with the rightness of the life and a joyous side to our human natures comes to the fore that most of us have never felt before.  Hikers give freely of themselves to people they’ve just met, and the spirit of a moving tribe seems to make real the notion that we are all one family under the skin.  I’ve never felt it so profoundly as in the community on the Pacific Crest Trail, and in my own joy at moving across a continent.  

That spirit was with us in spades as we hiked up a terrifically steep trail on Diablo.  No griping, nothing less than pure happiness.  A slip and crash on the pebbly surface was cause for laughter, and a helping hand.  In no more than a few hours on trail, and a pull together up a mountain, and a new tribe had begun.  

Hurricane will be on his way across the world to his home Down Under, Dreams will be back at UC Davis, and the Powers will be off on a new hiking adventure, as will I, but the bond was so easy, so swift, so bone marrow, genetically deep.

I highly recommend a glance at Ken and Marcia Powers web site, a treasure trove of their journals and pictures from all of their hikes.  If you want a good read, you could spend many weeks with their journals.  It’s beautifully organized and begins with a map of the United States that is webbed over with the trails they have hiked.  They’ll be speaking in Pleasanton in January, and I’ll keep you all posted as I get the details.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

“In God's wildness lies the hope of the world - the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.”   John Muir

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