Hike like a Martian

The Martian Film, Jordan, Wadi Rum.

In the outdoors I have been falling between two schools. Adventure and challenge school, where we hike, walk, run, or ride from A to B with the fastest time possible, a physical challenge for ourselves, body and mind, a way to cross the barriers in our minds that keep telling us we can’t, because this is how it has been programmed to protect us, and this is what it does all the time.

We tend to challenge our physical abilities. Go out to do a sport and have a healthier life style. The natural terrain makes it even more challenging. There in the nature we feel how we are small part of a bigger planet, an infinite universe. We keep searching for new heights, pushing toward new limits to prove the capability of the amazing human machine! (Just to mention Ueli Steck’s with his fascinating 82, 4000m Summit in 80 days project). We Human are setting new limits of speed and challenge for the outdoors. (READ MORE

That’s the first school, and yet it has nothing to do with the Martians. I am not even sure if Martians are that fast. The other school, which I want to open the eyes on, the nature walk, observation, involvement and even absorbing the surrounding. Once you hike fast from A to B, you will miss what is in between, all the small fascination of nature, and sometimes even the big wonders. For once, try to go in the nature, forget about time, schedules. Forget about destination, and just go for a wander. No plan, no goal. Look at the surrounding with a Martian eye, an eye eager to see everything around, as if it is seeing it all for the first time, the eye of a child who never stops exploring, seeing the smallest details a whole eco-system in a patch of a grass and a rock formed over thousands and thousands of years. A blind person seeing the mix of the colors at the sunset for the first time. Feel your surrounding as an old man who lived his life in the driest desert when he touches the ocean's water for the first time in his life. Smell and taste. Set there and listen to the birds, the wind and the water. Observe and absorb.

 Our everyday life in the city is full enough with rushing schedules, plans, ideas and a fast beating life. For this time in the nature slow down, meet the rhythm of the nature, where everything happens slowly. Think of the endless time that a mountain or a river took to form, a tree took to grow, or a small bird standing still in the sky while gliding upwind as if the time stopped.

Don’t go to the nature with a heavy package, I am not talking about the load in your backpack but the load on your shoulders. Leave all these problems, fears and worries for a while behind. Don’t analyze, don’t think of the future, or even of the past. Be present! (I know it is very hard, but involve all your senses to just absorb the moment).

Just to mention, here I wasn’t comparing or preferring one of the two styles over the other. Two different experiences that each worth to give it a try.

If you like it, share it, it might inspire someone! (بعرف واحد ما عمل شير، هيه عادي ولا صار عليه اشي : )