Mountain trekking, a meditative experience!
The benefits of hiking are widely known in the international community of hikers
There is no purer way to enjoy nature and get closer to the people who leave near it. In our time, the tendency to escape to nature is becoming more intense and leads people to regularly leave the urban fabric and seek moments of relaxation and recreation away from the cities and the stress of every day life.
Of course hiking is not the only reason or way, that people leave the cities and take to the mountains.
There are countless outdoor sports and pursuits. Some are friendly with a minimal footprint on the environment and others not so much. Some gradually strengthen man`s and others his vanity. It is unknown how many more sports will be invented for escape and relief out there..
They are two definitions which distort the perspective and motivation to visit mother nature and over time wear down both the ecosystem and our relationship with this.
Ecology determines the approach, but what is ecology nowadays?
Indeed, if every man were willing to move by long-distance transport and then on foot through marked trails or on ridges and paths, touching as little as possible, we would speak for a friendly approach, of a step closer to the knowledge and wisdom of the mountaineers with the difference that our survival iw not longer judged by the next god.
We do not discriminate, not is there a critical mood. It is a prompt to an idea, which wants us to become part of nature during our journey.
Our topic is to mention the benefits offered by long-distance mountain hiking, which ideally takes more than we usually spend and is only achieved under specific conditions. It clearly requires will, resources, study, proper equipment, a good friend, patience, courage and faith, like everything we plan to succeed.
O f course, in modern times it is considered a luxury to leave home, work, friends and habits, in order to find yourself isolated on a path that will keep you interested for o few weeks, maybe even months, let alone maintain your physical and mental condition at competent levels. But everything happens if you deside to and this is witnessed by thousands of lovers of mountain crossings, who travel non-stop all over the planet expanding their horizons, hiking in the mountains.
Expanding the experiences, it is easy to understand that you do not conquer the mountain, rather you gain respect for what is generously given to you and you worry that it is not lost from you, and you from it.
It`s not necessarily elitism or seclusion, it`s a need for experiences, perhaps a simulation of outdoor living, that more or less everyone has fantasized about it.
Allthough both of them sometimes push people to the extremes, we can say that the highest differs from the farthest. There is a difference between climbing by gaining altitude in exposed terrain and wandering through forests, valleys, villages and plateaus. No matter how you go, the emotions are strong in both versions with the difference remaining in the time and the mood that everyone has.
We can look at it in many ways.. Health, well-being and training are some of the individual benefits, which are given to us when we are often in the mountains, even if only slightly looking for the goal or simply spending our time constructively.
But crossing the mountains for days, whether you want to or not, you live a meditative experience!
Day after day, every breath, every step, every drop of sweat, puts you in a meditative mood frequency. The all day march transports us to an archetypal dimension of space-time, while reforming our motivations regularly, revealing facts and images, concerning the history of man and the natural processes of the enviroment, reinforcing teachings and instinctive reactions.
Exposure to mountain trekking helps in self-improvement. By generating mental reserves it becomes subtractive by clearing thought or vice versa.
In the first days, the hiker manages to classify, outline his phyche, traveling distances in his natural enviroment, while discovering possibilities and weaknesses.
In the next steps, he adjusts hiw priorities and sets goal, wich sometimes lead to atonement and sometimes to higher power, which positively affects his psychology in various ways. Initiation brings a zest for companionship, extroversion, but also tendencies towards monasticism and even asceticism. There is a measure somewhere. But where?
In the final stage of initiation, if it exists, we could say that it brings knowledge with traces of imitation of nature itself, causing excessive admiration to the point of worship. Here joy fights with pain..
At this point you can become God or Devil. This close contact would be a good thing to do, taking into account the reintegration of the dedicates traveler-nature lover into the circle of urban society, where he came from , or his preparation for resettlement in some part of the countryside, since this is what he now recognizes as his ``home``
It is an undeniable fact that no matter how far and isolated you find yourself, you will find that your only opponent is your species and yourself, while nature regulates everything around with a system, even when it breaks out.
The defenses, like the power, used by the hiker during a multi-day effort in the open fields of the mountains, spontaneously evoke the disposition to solve visible and invisible problems, as this exactly what he is doing at that moment, on other scale by marching all day and detecting.
Hiking for days in the mountains, you carry and consume the essentials for the body, giving space to abstraction. You don`t care what to do with the empty time. There is no idle time out there. You carefully manage your reserves of strength, mental strength, nutritional re sources, while in many cases you even count your words if you happen to meet someone. You will be impressed when you find that you sat and listened to a person without interrupting or adding something intelligent.
When you travel as a foot camper from place to place, you can stage the decor of your accommodation every day or simply ignore the aesthetics and look for water, a sheltered spot for your tent, basic facilities for safe outdoor living or a hostel if it exists around there.
The analysis is anexhaustible when talking about the benefits of multi-day hiking to the hiker. In summary, however, we can mention the benefits to local communities that welcome pedestrian visitors and buses and their vechicles flooding and poluting the place.
Pedestrian crossing through the forest or a village is usually done in pairs and less often in small groups of 3-6 people, as in the past in peacetime. Visitors do not arrive en masse pushing the system for quik service , commercialization and tourism standardization.
The long paths are not loved by chance by the whole world and soon become an istitution. They strengthen morale, the local economy, as well as our behavior through the links and grafts, which are now deemed necessary for the possitive transition of our mountain society and the improvement of the standard of living of the people who derive resources from nature.
It is a universal rule that what we give, we get. With love and respect for nature and the peaceful man of the countryside, we can march!
Best wishes for 2023!
Sincerely, Apostolis Tsimpanakos