"Hiking"

I recently went backpacking with nine friends for five days in the Torres del Paine national park in the extreme south of Chile. I saw a glacier for the first time, but was most impacted by interactions with my companions.
So here's one way to express it. The poem jumps, but so does thought when you're hiking.

Hiking
“I’m going to die” you think as you look up the steep ascent.
You stretch your shoulders and feel the 20 kilos of your pack pressing into your hips and shoulders, the weight compressing and bending your lower back
Your eyes fix on the ground a foot or two in front of your feet as you begin to step on and around rocks and roots. After a few days of hiking in poorly made boots, you notice everything you step on.
Your thighs burn. In a gym, that would be great. “I can really feel it.” Ha.
It’s also two hours to the nearest campsite, where you will arrive only to have an hour or two of work to do before dinner.
When you stop at the top of the hill, put your pack down, and breathe, it feels wonderful.
The ration of water that you greedily sip is relaxing.

I enjoy observing the landscapes, flora and fauna as I hike, but I am most impressed by a sense of anxiety
I move outside of my comfort zone when I hike with a group
In the world of hiking, values are similar, but slightly different
Carrying more weight, cooking, cleaning, starting a fire
Recognizing if a backpack is “sitting right” on you
Getting out of bed when it’s cold and no one else will
Reciprocity is splitting the cost in labor instead of dollars
It is a different game – basketball instead of golf or some analogy like that

You notice that the mountain in front of you is covered in tens or hundreds of thousands of trees. An hour ago it looked like moss.

There’s a humbling aspect of hiking that I enjoy.
I struggle walking uphill, then downhill, then uphill again – because just as everything that goes up must come down; every time you walk downhill, you will to have to walk uphill again –
As difficult as it might sometimes feel, these are trails that have been walked by thousands
These are trails that people have worked on, made easier to walk - building bridges, cutting steps, moving stones
We hike for entertainment with gas stoves, manufactured tents, and carefully designed backpacks
We pale in comparison to Hannibal and his elephants, but they in turn pale next to human advances
Hiking underscores technology for me specifically because I don’t have to hike or hunt or forage
We aren’t “getting back to nature” by buying food in the supermarket and thermal underwear from a department store just as we don’t connect with our ancient African past by watching lions at the zoo.
There is no going back and that is all right.
Atop a mountain, we stand as well on a grand staircase, with bricks laid by each generation that has preceded us - trailblazers carrying machetes and concrete, but also pens and paper - explorers, architects, physicists, conquerors, bards