Racing with camera

The Adam's Canyon trail contains many memories reaching back to the summer of 1995 when we moved to Layton, long before the connecting Bonnevile Shoreline Trails were built. I’ve literally spent hours stretching right here amongst the rocks up the trail on the left; more significant these rocks mark the top of a long set of sandy, hot (in the summer) switchbacks, my finishing spot for punishing 4-5 minute hill repeats. At the end of the trail, several miles behind the hill in the background, is a wonderfully high waterfall—24 minutes is my fastest ascent. On this day though I’m not checking my watch, in fact I don’t even have one on; I’m gauging success by slower means.

As you can tell, I took a camera with me, something I’ve never done in the 100 or so times I’ve been up this trail. So many ascents but often they are hurried, they have had “purpose.” Instead, today I begin by noticing the ice.

Ice is quite amazing, the crystal patterns, the dark shapes darting just under the surface, the rippled textures--seemingly manufacture yet too natural to have come from our hands.



Next, I hit one of my favorite parts of the trail. For a few hundred yards the trail skirts through a clump of evergreen trees before the first bridge. I’ve always looked forward to passing this particular grand conifer.



It's a magnificent tree which always briings me some comfort, brief shade in the summer, assurance and firmness in every season. Speeding up the trail, hoping for a new record, I’ve rarely stopped here; generally just a quick glance out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes, if not going for a record, the hike only a detour on a longer day of training, I may stop for a minute or so, stretching my hip or achilles; I might pat the tree as if it were a dog. It’s been a long love affair between me and this coniferous fellow. Several times I’ve brought my children to the upper falls; when passing the tree I’ve encouraged them to touch it, look up in its branches.



Often I’ve wanted to climb it, sure if I could just pull myself up on the first branch, I could climb forever. Even on a new-experience day like today, it’s a bit out of my reach, a bit too dangerous.

But I do risk something, I do take the road less travelled even while on familiar terrain. I wrap my arms around the hulking tree, and lean and feel, sensing its essence, realizing and not caring how silly I might look. A tree-hugger. Until this moment I’d never thought about the term literally. Today, I think about it. I wonder about the original usage of tree-hugger, having recently finished The Professor and the Madman about a man in an asylum who turned in over 10,000 citations for the first edition of the OED. It tells me its "depreciative" as in the first usage: "1965 Appleton (Wisconsin) Post Crescent 10 Sept. 1/4 The battle was between the *tree huggers and the city. The city won, 100-0" or "literal" as in a person who hugs a tree in order to save it from being felled.

Neither of these quite work for my situation. Clearly I don't see my tree hugging as a negative thing, yet I'm not making any political statement. I fashion myself more a tree-hugger in the sense of Salamanca Tree Hiddle in Walk Two Moons who offers, "Have you ever been overcome with a desire to hug a tree?" Now that's about right.

***

I don’t regret the full tilt, air-gasping sprints up this trail. They were impressive and fun, gawking hikers incredulous that I was running through this steepness in 95 degree weather; several upward battles with my old running buddy Jim. But today I travel as if on a new trail, full of wonders I’d noted, witnessed but never fully engaged. Maybe its my age (I just turned 38), maybe it’s the humility brought on by the bulging disk in my back or my NSAID eaten stomach. Whatever it is I’ve finally committed to a love affair held until now at arm's length.