Who Goes First?

From Sarah:
Jay hikes much faster than me, so who should go first? Sometimes he spurts ahead and says, "I'll wait for you in one (or two) hours." Then I have the peaceful joy of hiking alone, no one needing me, the world of nature all around. This joy only appears when I have the underlying knowledge that I'll be seeing Jay in a certain amount of time, able to share the wonders I've seen. (a blue-tailed lizard, a striped caterpillar, a bright orange fungus...)

Often Jay hikes behind me, letting me set the pace and mostly content to walk at my slower speed. This, too, is a time full of joy, as we startle deer together, share stupid jokes, or just walk in companionable silence.

Good thing they tell people things like this!



The Appalachian Trail is marked by about 80,000 white painted blazes along its length. Hiking together is very helpful when we come to a confusing conglomeration of trails, or the trail gets very faint over yards of rocks. Jay is apt to say things like, "Are you sure you're on the trail?" To which I reply, "I'm expecting to see a white blaze any minute now." "That is not very comforting to hear," he sputters. Another time he might say, "Are you following the white blazes?" I triumphantly point to a mark on the tree and he tells me, "That blaze looks blue to me." I peer through the green-filtered light and reply indignantly, "Well, if it's blue it's BABY blue." (He was right; we had taken the wrong turn and were following baby blue blazes.)

Jay at the first NJ swamp for northbounders.
Reason for his smile: the trail goes around it, not through.

One day, as we hiked together, I began catching cobwebs across my face and arms. "I know why you are content to walk behind me; it's so I can clear the cobwebs out of the path," I teased. "Oh!" Jay replied, a little startled, "I hadn't thought about that. But there haven't been many cobwebs lately, anyway." "How would you know?" I demanded, "I'm the one in front catching all of them!" After a few minutes of thought, Jay teased, "Yeah, I guess you're my bodyguard, catching cobwebs, finding snakes, collecting ticks, chasing off bears."

So, for couples trying to work out how to hike with differing paces, as you can see, there are advantages to both methods.