MacGougan at Large

Notes from Hawaii (Redux) - 7

Hiking Speeds

My wife, Linda, is faster than I am. Pretty much anything you can think of, she does faster than I do. This becomes most noticeable when we walk together. When I walk on my own, I mosey - lost in deep meditation or, more likely, shallow daydreaming. When I walk with Linda, I have to work just to keep up. For an ordinary walk around the neighborhood or through the woods near our home, I can generally keep pace with an occasional catch-up jog. The rub comes when we do a serious hike together, as we did a couple of times in Hawaii.

The Kalalau Trail is a very challenging 20-mile hike along the wild Napali Coast of northern Kauai. Like the vast majority of visitors, our goal was simply to hike the first two miles in and out. The hike features a lot of up and down through a rainforest with slippery mud footing. We came equipped with hiking clothes, boots, and poles, although a surprising share of our fellow travelers were passing us in bathing suits and bare feet.

Linda was eager to attack the trail and make good time, but I was even slower than usual. In addition to being a moseyer, I’m also cautious and out of shape. Cautious in this context being a euphemism for paranoid. Despite my boyish good looks, I am a septuagenarian. Visions of broken hips dance in my head - particularly when I’m in a rainforest thousands of miles from home. I also like to stop from time to time to take a picture with an actual camera, although this may relate to my out-of-shapeness as much as to my artistic eye.

You can probably picture the rhythm of our hike. Linda would jackrabbit ahead and then cool her heels while I slowly made my way to her latest stopping point. I would then make a brave speech - channeling wounded heroes from the war movies of my youth - urging her to cut me loose and hike the trail at her own pace. Linda, not wanting to leave me totally without adult supervision, would politely demur. In the end, we successfully completed the four-mile version of the hike, although not in record time. Despite my seeming caution, I managed to slip on a rock within sight of the finish line and cut my hand.

The same speed disparity was in evidence the following week when we hiked the Thirteen Crossings Trail on Maui. That trail follows a creek up a wooded hillside. The path isn’t always clear and the creek crossings all look the same. You have to take their word for it that you cross the creek thirteen times because no one has ever been able to keep an accurate count while actually doing the hike.

Here, my inability to keep up was a bit more embarrassing. The Kalalau Trail has a fearsome reputation, but Thirteen Crossings is one you might choose to teach young children about fun in the forest. Still, I’m grateful to be waited for. I’m thinking, in fact, that a good addition to wedding vows would be “for faster, for slower”.