Geezers, gravity, and trekking poles

When I was but a young lad, I had very, very thick hair.

If my head were a model of Mother Earth, my scalp would have been the Amazon rain forest.

When my mother gave me the money for a haircut at the Drexel Barbershop, she always forked over the cash with the admonition, “Please tell Mr. Anthony to take some off the top.”

As I entered my middle-teen years, I looked disparagingly at geezers with chrome domes, middle-age practitioners of the futile comb-over, and even those who plunked a bird’s nest down on empty ground.

“I’ll never be like those pathetic losers, “ I sneered.

Boy, oh boy, did Mother Nature have a surprise for me.

Decades later, in my 50s and 60s, my bald head glistening like a freshly polished bowling ball, I vowed I was never going to get old.

Too active … too fi t… too busy to bother.

Age is just a number.

Trouble is, I feel like my number nearly came up on a recent weekend afternoon.

One moment I was walking down the Hollipop Trail in Valdese Lakeside Park with my friends Ginny and Kevin Rector. The next moment, my right foot catches on an upraised root.

I spend a long moment in free fall. I think maybe I can right myself. And then I hit the ground with the force of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. In other words, hard.

When I stop tumbling, I take a moment to assess the situation.

I’m alive.

Doesn’t feel like any bones are broken.

My right arm is bleeding in half a dozen different spots between my wrist and my elbow. On my left wrist, a big and ugly bruise is already starting to blossom. My perennially balky lower back is beginning to throb. My right knee is scratched and bleeding.

Helped up by the Rectors, I consider myself pretty lucky.

But then the question rears its ugly head: Will I be so lucky next time?

Although I enjoy hiking with friends and family, I also love hiking alone.

Some of the most fulfilling days of my life are those I have spent deep in the backcountry of South Mountains State Park. Just me and the woods and the streams and whatever animals I happen to encounter.

Wouldn’t have seen that bobcat on the Sawtooth Trail had someone been with me. Wouldn’t have jumped nekkid into the headwaters of the Jacob Fork on a blistering July afternoon.

And, most importantly, wouldn’t have had all those long and productive talks with myself and with the woods had I been chattering with companions instead of listening to my soul.

But now, I’ll be 71 in a few months.

Now, I have to question the wisdom of putting myself deeply into the woods alone, in areas where there is no prayer of cellphone service.

Now, I have to wonder what the consequences might be if I took a serious tumble, spraining an ankle or breaking a wrist, and facing a 5- or 6-mile trek back to my car.

Now, I have to make some changes.

It would please my loving bride to no end if I said I was never stepping foot alone into the woods again.

But, not ready to do that.

Instead, one thing I need to do is train myself to hike with two trekking poles.

After Googling “Geezers and Hiking,” every site I came across sang the praises of trekking poles for the 70 and over hiking crowd.

Our friends at WEB MD put it best: “On uneven ground — roots, loose gravel, wet rocks, stream crossings, steep descents — poles effectively give you four points of contact instead of two. That dramatically reduces the odds of a slip turning into a hard fall.”

Another tactic I can employ, keep my solitary hikes on relatively easy, regularly traveled trails. If I’m headed deep into the backcountry, Allen VanNoppen or Angela Copeland need to accompany me.

Finally, and this may sound contradictory, I need to hike more.

Falls are more frequent, and often more severe, when your hiking muscles are not fully toned and ready to support your body weight.

So … hope to see you all, from youngsters to geriatrics, on the trails of Burke County this spring and summer.

I’ll be the bald guy with the two trekking poles, taking in the scenery, but also keeping his eyes on the trail below.