Welcome to my 50th Trail Tip. A journey I started almost a year and a half ago. As I pondered ideas for this Trail Tip; the word and challenge I kept thinking about was how to keep it fresh, which in turn helps keep it consistent. Keeping our hiking, personal, and work life fresh; creates consistency and allows for growth and new insight.
In hiking, there are a number of ways to help keep the hikes fresh and new. Start by moving out of your comfort zone to look for new trails and wonder how they are connected when viewing them from overlooks. Another way I’ve found is to mix up the standard trails by combining a few of them together and create a new route. Then there is the sharing of your trail knowledge with others and seeing the excitement as others see a new trail for the first time. I recently did this by combining the routes of “Sundance Loop” and “Ice Cave Cliffs” into an 8-mile hike with 2300 feet of gain. It was refreshing to see the wonder on the faces of the two people I took with me as it was completely new to one person, half new to the other person, and even I saw it in a new way. I often get asked “How do I know the trails so well by where we live?” My response is, “When you hike these trails 3 times a week or about 120 times a year, you can create a very vivid map picture in your mind.” Any yet, with always finding new trails and guiding others, the hiking stays fresh.
In our personal life, we can keep things fresh by being intentional about wanting to learn new things and create new habits. Since the beginning of year, I’ve started committing to reading for about an hour each day by giving up TV time. With a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, I’m finding my mind is much more engaging and fresh as I see the world that fills my mind from the book I’m reading at the time. Writing these Trail Tips, has also helped to keep my mind fresh, because as soon as one is done, I need to start thinking about what to write next and that thought becomes a mediation for about a week as I put together the thoughts to put on paper.
At work, it can be easy to lose the freshness of the daily grind. Having a servants’ heart and being willing to help others is one way to keep things fresh. When we have the opportunity to invest in others, we grow ourselves as we discover new insights when we share information we already know. Then there is the learning we gain as we take on new projects, use new tools, and work with different people. It’s having the attitude of wanting to be a consistent learner; that will help keep our minds fresh for years to come.
Keeping It Fresh can be a weekly/daily/hourly challenge as we go through the routines in our hiking, personal, and work lives. And it is also one of the most important things to do to keep us healthy. My goal is to keep hiking into my 90’s, start taking piano lessons again in my 60’s, publish these Trail Tips in a book in a few years, and have a 50-year wedding anniversary down the road. But none of these things will happen if I’m not keeping them fresh. Just like the picture in this post has a new day beginning above the clouds; what new beginning are you doing and going to do to keep the areas of your life fresh and alive.
Al Andersen 