Martha here. Since the summer of 1993 when I dropped out of the University of Toronto and headed out west, I’ve spent the bulk of my time supporting peoples’ movements, in particular in the Philippines and Palestine. Whether we’re talking about colonial occupation, the economic struggles of low wage workers, or the looming environmental catastrophe – clear minded analysis leads to a common denominator in the private ownership of productive capacity, including land, and to exploitation. So what does criticism of capitalism have to do with hiking and backpacking?
Just as capitalists destroy our planet and our communities with a capriccios desire for more: more wealth, more plunder, more profit-earning wars, so structural violence damages the mental and physical health of the poor, the exploited, and the oppressed. Humans are inextricably connected. An injustice to one is an injustice to all – health research demonstrates this. I feel injustice in my heart (anxiety and insomnia) and in my body (pre-diabetes and arthritis). I believe peoples’ movements for a just and lasting peace hold the key to a cure, but right now I need some pain relief. I’ve tried other things, but tramping about in the wild – that’s the best!
There are sharp criticisms to be made of the hiker community, an overwhelmingly white, male and privileged group of people. Those with the time, financial and social resources, and desire to make a long-distance trek; those who have the privilege to view physical challenge and sparse living as an adventure instead their day-to-day reality. Race and class play out in backpacking – it doesn’t take a sociology degree grasp why.
But at the same time, there is a compelling relationship to utopian socialism and anarchism in the hiker community. Many hikers are deeply influenced by utopians such as the American abolitionist, advocate of civil disobedience, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, who pondered the dialectics of nature and society. In Walden (or Life in the Woods), Thoreau wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Hiking isn’t necessarily an intentionally exclusionary space, as Rahawa Haile, Black writer and AT through-hiker says, “the trail itself was the kindest and most generous white space imaginable in America. I have nothing but good things to say about the thru-hiking community. It’s incredibly warm. I don’t know if I’ll ever experience something like that again.” It’s not necessarily hiking that’s exclusionary, it’s our capitalist, white supremacist, neo-colonial society that’s exclusionary by design.
We’re directly impacted by our environment: physically and psychologically, right down to our very genetics. For many hikers, myself included, the trail is a respite from injustice, and a space for healing. Today I heard the radio documentary “The Long “Walk” about Amiththan Sebarajah’s Arizona Trail experience and felt he beautifully captured the relationship of hiking and healing.
One day I hope to hike the entire Appalachian Trail; when the kids are older and Aiyanas and I have more flexibility. We can’t hike our way to a just society. But hiking has renewed my strength, my commitment, and my passion for the people and our common struggle to build a better world.
Under the Frosty Sky 