Guest Essay: Hiking the Downhill Side of the Mountain, by David A. Phillips, Jr., Ph.D

David A. Phillips, Jr. is an archaeologist, naturalist, outdoorsman, and photographer, and retired acting director of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. His birding and outdoor adventures are recorded on his website www.dogofthedesert.net.

In 2022, at age 70, I did what I consider a moderate day hike: 1100 feet of elevation gain, and the same amount down, over six miles. That evening I wound up in a hospital emergency room with atrial fibrillation. Since then, I’ve developed an arthritic hip that can leave me limping. As much as I hate to admit it, the rest of my hiking career will involve rambles that seem too short, easy, and slow. Even so, for the reasons explained here, I won’t stop.

The biggest reason is the regret I feel because I actually did stop at one point in my life. As I began juggling the complications of middle age—career and personal life—it became harder and harder to disappear for days at a time. I concluded that it was time to put away my backpack and focus on being a responsible grown-up.

What a mistake! Not the responsible gown-up part, nothing wrong with that. The mistake was thinking of my problem as an either/or situation. I assumed that if my future hikes weren’t going to be the epic outdoor adventures I was used to, they weren’t worth the effort. Thanks to my career as an archaeologist I still got outside, and wound up in some remote places, but I regret prematurely giving up trips into the wildest parts of North America. I had sacrificed a valued part of myself.

Coyote, Rio Grande Bosque, Corrales, NM

In hindsight, as I took on new obligations I should have continued to do the longer hikes I loved, even if only just once or twice a year. Between those occasional big hikes, I could have done one-nighters and day hikes. Even getting out on a trail once a month would have been better than quitting entirely. I should have bent with the circumstances, instead of letting them break me of my habit of getting out into nature.

In my early sixties, a friend convinced me to get back on the trail. It wasn’t easy, after several decades of not hiking, but I quickly discovered how much I missed it. This time I’ve stuck with it. At the same time, I’ve had to adjust to the reality that no matter what I do, my body has reached an age where it’s gradually falling apart. And that’s because I’m lucky enough to have lived this long.

The biggest letdown of being an older hiker is declining strength. When I was young, I did pushups. Now, if I get down on the floor to fix something, getting back on my feet feels like an achievement. Young people may not understand that, because exertion only makes them stronger. Long, difficult hikes build their endurance for even longer and more strenuous hikes, and it feels like that will never change. However, the day comes when the purpose of exercise isn’t to gain strength but to slow the process of losing it. I also found out that some parts of getting older simply can’t be slowed, even with proper diet and exercise and good luck. My sense of balance, for example, is getting worse. When I was young I almost never used a hiking pole, even on scary routes; now I use them regularly. And when I do, the poles save me from taking a spill at least once a hike. It’s an important adjustment to make, because at my age, falling can mean injury, even death.

And it's not just my own health that concerns me. Hikers tend to have friends with whom they’ve rambled for years, becoming almost like brothers and sisters. Sooner or later, one of them is going to struggle with hikes you’re still able to do. That’s when you have to make a decision. Do you tell your trail brother/sister that because they can no longer keep up with you that they need to stay home? Or do you trim back your next hike to accommodate them?

Here’s the surprise payoff I discovered: even the short, easy rambles are satisfying outings, the way the multi-day backpacking trips used to be. That’s because these days, my number one motivation to go hiking is to enjoy the outdoors with those cherished friends, as opposed to completing a physical challenge. I no longer feel the need to prove anything to anyone, including myself.

Osprey, Rio Grande Bosque

The payoffs don’t stop there. When I was young, nature was the inspiring backdrop for the physical challenge of a difficult hike, but it wasn’t more than that. Now that I’m older and walk more slowly, I see more. I’m aware of aspects of nature that in the old days, I walked right past. The handfuls of tiny flowers and butterflies I barely noticed have become hundreds of individual species, and I’m learning how interconnected they are. Which butterfly I see, for example, depends on which plant is there to feed its young. In some ways, my epic hikes were like tromping though Mother Nature’s library as quickly as I could, past shelves of books. At this age, I prefer to stop and browse.

Western Wallflowers, Sandia Mountains

A couple of years ago I took up birdwatching. I used to make fun of birdwatchers, until I became one of them. To do it properly, on average I move even more slowly than an old geezer on a cane. In fact, I stop all the time, anytime I hear a bird and start looking for it. In the county where I live—a place many people view as completely unremarkable—I’ve now identified almost 200 different species of birds. I figure that as long as I have the strength to make it out the front door, I can keep birding. And butterfly watching. And wildflower hunting. I can do those things alone or with like-minded people, and doing them is downright addictive.

So perhaps my biggest mistake as a young hiker was not paying enough attention to the world I was hiking through. Once I was forced to slow down, and started looking around, I also began to regret all the things I had walked past in my youth. If I could do it all over again, I would still begin with the epic efforts, but I’d set aside a little time each day to learn about the things I was walking past. That way, as I increasingly shifted from cranking out miles to enjoying the natural world, I could draw on knowledge accumulated from the very start. One way to visualize this approach is to assume that as a young hiker, I should have spent 95 percent of my time and energy meeting the physical challenge and 5 percent learning about the places I was in. Then, as I got older, the percentage would shift.

Northern Flicker, Jemez Mountains, Central New Mexico

One last thing. Having been a hiker more than half a century, I can see the consequences of long-term climate change. Springs I drank from have dried up. Forests that I walked through have burned. In other forests, trees that I walked past have turned into brown skeletons. Beyond the obvious losses, I’m now aware of how much else there is to lose. I’m astounded by the fact that wherever I go, I’m passing through a delicate web of life, peopled by hundreds of species of plants and animals. We will lose so much if we don’t all work to save it.