Take A Hike: The Personal Hiking Project
For this project I went hiking for people too busy to hike for themselves, made them photo books of their perfect hikes, and photographed them “re-taking” their hikes when I gave them their books.
Carried out in a spirit of play, the project ultimately asked questions about what humans lose when we deny ourselves time in the natural world. It also played with imagination and memory by conflating the two in a virtual experience with real evidence.
Project Description
Research has shown that contact with nature benefits human beings physically and emotionally. Lowered blood pressure and stress levels, increased immune response, faster healing, and a more positive state of mind are among those benefits. Children who play in natural environments display increased concentration, imagination and creativity. Activities beneficial to an organism’s well-being—and therefore survival—are normally conserved by natural selection. Thus, we may be hard-wired to seek natural environments because they’re good for us.
Some of us recognize our innate desire to connect with the natural world, to frolic in spring wildflowers, to enjoy balmy weather after the dreariness of winter, or to see the reds and yellows of turning leaves in fall. Yet we are so busy with work and domestic duties, we never get around to going for that nature walk or hike, despite the availability of public lands for just such activities. We don’t have time to refresh ourselves by immersion in things grown rather than built, in an environment of organisms rather than artifacts.
Sensing a career opportunity, in spring, 2007, I styled myself a “personal hiker” and began convincing friends and colleagues to pretend they were out hiking instead of busy at work. In reality, I myself would be hiking on their behalf. (At last I had found a way to be working and hiking simultaneously.) As evidence they had taken the hike, I promised each collaborator a narrative book of photographs—with the hiker’s name in the title as the possessor of the hike, eg. Michele’s Hike, Susan’s Hike, etc. As it turned out, the hikers reciprocated by graciously agreeing to let me photograph them (re-)taking their hikes when they received their books.
“Where would you like to go? What kind of landscape would you like to see? Do you like the desert? The green, rolling hills? The ocean, or redwood forest?” Together, each collaborator and I selected a place to hike. On the morning of the hike, I called to describe the hiker’s alternate reality (eg. “you’re at Whaler’s Cove and it’s clear and warm”). Afterwards, I called to report the events of the hike—what the hiker had seen, smelled and felt during their day in nature. I also sent a few advance images by email to further fuel each person’s visualization of the day.
Of course, the hikers had already been enjoying the alternate reality, imagining themselves out roaming around in nature instead of working, or caregiving, or washing dishes. Apparently it’s no problem to take the virtual escape. Dennis spent a half hour at lunchtime walking along the Big Sur bluffs with closed eyes (a dangerous activity in reality). Lowell was pleased to hike the Enchanted Loop while I did the work. Vanessa took a swim in the cool waters of Lake Alpine.
Each time I hiked for someone, I thought all day about that person and what they might enjoy. Sometimes, a person told me of specific things they like to look for outside—wildflowers, insects, birds in flight, rocks—and consequently, I sometimes focused on aspects of nature I might ordinarily notice only casually. (More than one person told me they usually look at the trail when hiking so I spent a lot of time photographing the ground.) Sometimes, it felt as if I was “channeling” the hiker that day, seeing through their eyes along with my own.
Usually I collected (from areas near the protected parks) a small physical memento to go with the photo book, often something smelly or textured, such as a fragrant twig, a bit of bleached kelp, a vial of pink sand. Troy told me he looks for animals when out in nature, so he received a tin of bighorn sheep dung (along with an image of a distant sheep).
While composing the photo books (which I made through Blurb.com), I continued to think of each hiker as I assembled a group of photographs that would reflect each person’s (soon-to-be-had) experience of their hike. With a souvenir of their special hike, they can each trigger their “happiness reaction” by (re-)visiting the day. Researchers at University of California, Riverside, have found that people who use mementos to remind themselves of good times report more appreciation of their lives. I suspect this trick works even when the original experience is virtual. Helpfully, the area of the brain used to visualize an imaginary event has been shown to be the same area used to remember an actual one.
Ultimately, the purpose of this project was to have fun. Our lives are filled with worry and responsibility, with global climate change and economic upheaval, with traffic jams and relentless work. We have many problems to address, at all levels of our lives. By taking a break to refresh ourselves, to play a little, perhaps we can better maintain the will and the energy to confront the problems we face. And by reconnecting with the natural world, we remind ourselves of our place in that world, and maybe even of the absolute necessity of its existence to our own.
Carol Selter
November, 2008