Little Bear Beating Feet

Those of you who follow me on Strava may have noticed that recently I’ve started to shake things up a bit. Instead of steadily building runs through island forests, you’ve likely seen me walking … sometimes slowly … usually with our youngest son in tow.

My original plan was to return to Ultra running. Build up slowly safely and then get back into racing. The end goal was to run long FKTs and multi-day events. I’d been working toward this goal steadily and successful since September when I made a bunch of changes in my diet and lifestyle to aid me along this path.

Then the holiday season and subsequent breaks befell us and, well, there’s just no way to carve out a couple of hours of your day, each day, while you go run and still provide anything that resembles child care for your kid who is at home. Maybe some of you young dynamos can do it, but not me. I was already a hot mess.

But here’s the truly wonderful thing I discovered while Aral was home for the holidays. He may not be interested or capable of running at my pace or close to the distances I wanted to achieve, but he’s enthusiastic about backpacking.

Consequently, I’m in the process of reviewing my near and long-term goals and looking for ways to make them work for the two of us. We’ve been hiking around the island a lot the last couple of weeks and he’s been showing a great deal of interest in the idea of Wilderness. I’m investigating backpacking trips for kids his age and realize that there just aren’t a lot of people doing this.

I’ve since found a couple of guides and ordered the materials for making him a sized-to-fit SUL backpack, but there is a dearth of written experience and it’s more than a little troubling. Kids can and probably should get out into the woods every day. All day, if possible. He comes back a better, happier kid without fail.

I’ve been constructing the outline for my own guide/semi-autobiographical tome on the subject and I think this may be where I’m now headed.