Hiking Through Your Day

I recently had the opportunity to do quite a bit of hiking along the North Shore of Lake Superior. Why is it that the return leg of a hike — the journey in — is generally not nearly as impactful or significant as the journey out when it is the same path?! I’m sure you can come up with several reasons why the journey out is more exciting and interesting …

• You are seeing and experiencing things for the first time; things are “new.”
• You begin the journey with a sense of anticipation and curiosity.
• You are probably more rested and energetic at the start than the end.

All very true. And then I connected hiking with the start of each day of our lives. What if I approached each day like a new hike — with anticipation and energy, with the intention to “see” new things, with rest and focus. Wouldn’t each day then be more significant, memorable, breathtaking, alive?!!

While these unfettered thoughts were swirling … I was provoked by the question … “What do you want your days to look like?” This is a powerful question that can be leveraged to discern most areas of one’s life — work, career, relationships, interests, goals, education, friends, living environment, and so forth. “What do you want your days to look like?” forces one to imagine the day in, day out journey.

Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” In 1851, Nathaniel Hawthorne, after spending the day with his five-year-old son, wrote in his journal, “We got rid of the day as well as we could.” So each morning … what do you want your day to look like? Where will you hike today? What will you see and experience?