Hiking

IN THE 1920s, work began to create and protect a system of National Scenic Trails in the United States. As a result, the 3,100-mile Continental Divide Trail runs from Canada to Mexico, with stops at Yellowstone and National Glacier Parks. The Appalachian Trail can be hiked from Georgia all the way to Maine. And the glorious Pacific Crest Trail winds through the top of the Sierra Nevada range and hits over 13,000 feet above sea level. These are the prized wilderness trails that hikers dream of.

The wilderness is the ideal locale for pulling yourself across outcroppings of bedrock, trudging through leaves, or nimbly hopping over a stream. There are glorious discoveries to be made on smaller and more ordinary trails closer to home. All you need are your sneakers, some water, a map, a compass, and a sense of adventure.

1. Head to a Trail Head

Most trail heads—that’s the beginning of the trail—have a posted map to view what the hike entails. The map describes clues, like colorful marks on trees, signs, and places where other trails cut in, that will help you keep track of your location.

Topo (topography) lines—the mysterious squiggly lines on the map—show elevation. Trace your finger along each line, look at the lines alongside, and you’ll start to see peaks and troughs. Each continuous topo line is the same elevation. Lines that lay close together indicate a steeply rising terrain. Lines spread farther apart signal a lighter slope. If your trail line crosses many topo lines, you’re in for a steep walk. A trail that follows the curve of topo lines is taking a single altitude, and the walking is relatively flat.

Getting lost and finding your way home is part of the journey and a compass should help you figure out how to get back on the path. Match the dial on the compass so it reads north wherever the needle points, and turn the map, too, to line up with the compass’ north. Start early in the day and bring a whistle along if you’re worried.

2. What to Do

In one sense, hiking is just walking on a footpath that often angles up, but in the wilderness. If you look closely at the trees you should be able to see how they are different from one another. With a good guide to identification you will be able to figure out the various trees by leaves, bark, and fruit. You can also see life at its smallest by turning over rocks and digging into streams. You may want to try to figure out which animals have passed by the trail by identifying their tracks and scat (droppings).

3. What to Look Out For

Once upon a time, mythology has it that children were given shovels and machetes, sent out after breakfast, and told to clear their own trails and not come home for dinner until six o’clock. While clearing a trail makes an inspiring metaphor, we can’t advise it for two reasons. First, most wilderness is now protected, and we hikers are asked to stay on the trail and leave the homes of animals and plants untrodden.

Second, many woods are filled with poison ivy, and there’s little worse than coming home from a hike with set of small dots on your arm, ready to erupt into the worst round of five-day itching you can imagine. “Leaves of three, let them be” is the watch-out-for-poison-ivy mantra. There are many well-behaved three-leaved plants out there, but poison ivy takes so many forms and seasonal colors that the best advice is to stay far from for all three-leaved plants—on the ground, vining up trees, and hanging from overhead.

If you run aground of poison ivy, nature is there to help you. Look immediately for jewelweed, also called touchme-not. It often grows nearby poison ivy and especially loves creek beds. Break open the stem and rub the jewelweed’s juice onto your skin as an antidote against the poison ivy.

4. How to Make a Walking Stick

A walking stick should only be fashioned from a fallen branch, not pulled from a tree, and should reach from the ground to your shoulder. First, use your Swiss Army knife to remove the bark and whittle away extra branches and spurs. Then sand it down until the stick is smooth to touch, and finally just shine it with a little linseed oil.