Are There Exposures in Everyday Life as Well?
What is a hike with exposure? We’re talking about cliffs. I belong to one MeetUp group of backpackers who keep posting trips I’m not sure I could survive. Doesn’t matter what clothes I wore, or what brand of backpack I managed to get. They just sounded hard. And then, finally, a recent backpack trip they posted sounded okay … 12 miles a day, flat, basically doable. But then the description mentioned “exposure.”Are
Exposure, for the uninitiated, means long drops without protection from falling off them. Exposure is what they call it when you might slip on something and, you know, die.
I read in the trip description, first the word exposure, then the word climb, and finally height, and I imagined this particular hike with exposure. I imagined myself trying to boulder up a ridge with a backpack on above a cliff.
Like I said, they have yet to post a trip I feel I could keep up on.
Hiking by Yourself
Anyway, 12 miles wearing a backpack, in itself, might be a bit much I don’t hike enough for practice, and the times I have to hike don’t often match up with preferred times of others I know. I have thought that maybe I should practice hiking by myself. It’s true, I feel nervous to go alone, but there are places you can hike where there’s a lot of people so you’re not really alone even when you are. Like Coyote Ridge. The three miles to the top of the ridge are almost treeless. So if you fell and got hurt, not only are people coming by every ten minutes, or so, at least on Saturday afternoon, but they could probably see you lying there from a long way off.
This reminds me again of exposure. You are always potentially exposed to problems if you go into the woods by yourself. Even if you go with other people. Especially if you didn’t bring water and an extra jacket and a hat and sun screen, but those things don’t protect you from every contingency. The wilderness is a random area. You’re always somewhat exposed.
That doesn’t make it different from the rest of human life of course. There are other exposures to consider. There is the exposure to disappointment. Trying things that Might Not Work scares the hell out of me. Kind of like falling off that bouldering ridge.
These are Things I Don’t Want to be Exposed to:
- Running out of money
- Getting sick
- Offending a close friend or even a stranger
- Car accident. This week it snowed and the roads had two to three inches of coverage. A black Explorer spun out on the other side of the divided highway, bounced/slid across the dirt median, and spun into my lane. I missed it but not by a lot.
- Not being loved by someone that I love. This can take many forms.
- Failure in itself. At almost anything. I don’t want to be exposed to potential failure!
I think of (what I initially think are) great ideas, and then, right when I’m about to dive in, I think: What if this doesn’t work? And I’m terrified. Even if, when it doesn’t work, the situation would be recoverable. Suddenly, I don’t want to try it, because I don’t want to spend all that energy on less than a sure thing.
Human Life is Just Full of Exposure. We have to Get Over It
There’s a fine line between accepting reasonable risks – starting a new job, trying a new recipe – and trying to do too much. “Too much” is definitely out there. For most of us it’s way closer than trying to climb Mount Everest.
Still, returning to the proverbial hike with exposure. I probably will never fall off a cliff while hiking. Does this mean I should just march off by myself into the woods assuming that “everything will be okay?” By no means. Every week during the summer, it seems, on the radio they have another dude who thought he could make it alone in the mountains. When he doesn’t come back they send out a search party. Sometimes this ends very badly.
I don’t want to be that guy. But I also don’t want to stay at home and be bored.
This is where accepting risk meets being prepared. You get your sunscreen, your hat, your extra Nalgene, a sweater, bandana, compass, jackknife, and you go out there.
If you’re really “into” exposure, you might enjoy this list of the “7 Most Daring Hikes in Colorado” from Out There Colorado. Just don’t ask me to join you on any of those traverses. I’m much happier on a Hiking Weekend on the Coyote Ridge Trail
It will almost certainly be okay. Just don’t ask me to walk alongside any cliffs.