Spring Hiking
There comes a year when we get so busy or so turned off by the grey that we miss Spring happening. It’s hard to get out and witness those first robins + redwing blackbirds, to catch ice cracking and breaking off a river (breathtaking by the way), to look up and see the buds on the trees… and suddenly it’s 25 degrees every day and too humid and we’ve missed a whole slice of things emerging. During the pandemic I decided to make the leap from 3-season distance hiking to learning how to properly hike in winter but also the cold and wet spring and I ‘met’ a lot of new plants, saw songbirds in the leafless trees, and found a lot of peace in diving into territory where the average bear may want to stay indoors.
Part of carving out delightful winter + spring experiences is absolutely the gear you head out with, but a lot of it is mental fortitude + listening to your body: getting up one last ass-kicking hill, crossing a stream when it’s freezing, waiting 45 minutes in -30 weather to get picked up and doing jumping jacks past the point of exhaustion to stay warm while standing still, battling ‘did I pack enough’ wiggies etc. Pushing past the stuff that makes us cranky is one thing, but finding the things we need to more comfortably weather something, internally and externally is what I’m getting at- the rewards are surprising and encouraging.
This winter was so grey I really did not get out the same way. I wandered city streets I hadn’t seen and a lot of city trail sidequests but also leaned into ‘hibernation season’ and wished we had more snow. Being the first human footsteps on a trail in a fresh snowfall, finding deeply quiet and peaceful places to sit and enjoy the sights feel more powerful in winter: in part because of the extra noise muffling of a snow blanketing or thick fluffy snow experience can bring when there are only so many openings in a frozen river to hear it running.
I’m sure many of you can see the correlation I make with this sort of full body experience and very deep immersive kink experiences: sounds, sensations, visuals, scents and more outside our home/ office norms, connecting with our inflated and deflated selves (or strengths and our smallness). Nature is enormous and as much as we do horrible things to it in the name of our own interests without much thought or change, it can always kick our asses: we are at its mercy always, and I think if it hasn’t humbled you recently, then you may be overdue. The level of activity/ terrain/ experience that does this for you will vary, and mine will change with time and ability as well.
I’m inspired by the plants that send up flowers before leaves, that have found their own ways to survive before the sun and normal pollinators show up, and since I started seeing them, I try to make a point of going out to see them. Sure, the sun can tickle the plants and creatures living in the subnivean zone to let them know it’s coming and give some sleeping leaves a feed, but I’m taking about the plants that go hard in spring in beauty and colour and otherwise blend into undergrowth. The Eastern Skunk Cabbage plants (pictured) shoot up through snow and melt circles around them as they grow- the first time I stumbled into this patch of ‘smelly lobster claws with orbs inside’ I was blown away- it was the only thing growing as far as the eye could see other than swamp trees., through snow, in February.
We haven’t had enough rain yet for them this year, but my image is from the biggest “cabbage patch” I know about a week ago before we had all that rain. Usually it’s fully muddy, but there were a lot of dry sections so I explored a little deeper to find more deer trails to guide me (I make a spring trip here once a year, twice if I can before they become enormous leaves that protect the muckiness all summer, and impossible to stroll into without causing heaps of damage). Found a skeleton in there too (also pictured), my guess is the muck is about 2km square, give or take some developed chunks. You can find this plant on the trail in the city between Sherwood Park and Sunnybrook under the (busted) boardwalk.
Between the ice melting and the ferns + ground cover coming back is a great time to explore river ways and get familiar with the trails we can usually never see, and in parts of summer need to leave alone for the birds. It’s also a perfect time to pick up a few bags of garbage because all the debris the ice dumped downstream is now fully visible and it doesn’t take long to fill one recycling bag and walk it the 5 mins to a can on the shore/trail so I do.
Beachcombing isn’t terrible along the lake in pebbley places if you have your creative mind turned on during the scour. Generally folks take away/burn all their non-organic altar offerings but I have found many many parts of statues washed up: Buddhas/ Bodhisattvas, horses, dragons, Krishna’s, Kwan Yins, and many figures that I don’t recognize as well as a large number of oranges, coconuts, flower petals, golf balls, lego + related toy bits, rusty metal bits and the odd awesome piece of copper.
I wanted to share a bit about this season specifically because it can be unmotivating to be outside, to take an extra 20 mins or hour on some route to see something new, to sit on the water, but there are rewards for our brains and senses. The sounds of big water and beach textures are very grounding for me, so I do like starting off or finishing by big water with a bit of soup or a tea made on the beach (or on a busy day, a thermos). My pack stove + kettle/pot help me bring little comforts and bits of decadence with me, I can’t stress enough how fun it is to cook or even eat outside somewhere interesting or in the middle of harsh terrain, or break into the fancy snacks. For me distance hiking and deep extended kink sessions or full days playing off and on need similar fuel and I’ll have a few ideas floating around with great flavour, colour or texture to choose from. Both experiences to me are a navigation and balance of stressors that need calories to attain and good foods for fuel and recovery. On the trails within transit reach of the city I’ve made Vietnamese-style coffee on an escarpment, soup with fresh veggies in the middle of a river bed, and some of the best noodle soup of my life was had with sharp snow blowing into my eyes: it hits different when you are so so present already and eating mindfully.
I’m sharing a basic packing list below of what I usually have on me as a minimalish pack+: I have a bucket of things to choose from to take with me that changes with the season and I take what I think I might need. Included in those items are multi-use things like a piece of chalk, bright LED + paracord ‘makeshift poi’ and my favourite hiking spoon that still makes me laugh (pictured + reference link), . I’m mentioning this because I’m talking about the mental fortitude portion of givin’r for a while and the difference between discomforts that need to be named and dealt with versus the ones we are there to suffer/ enjoy.
I’m not an expert distance hiker but I do end up being with folks getting walloped by being a ways from a comforts they dont consider for the first time, and the speed of the decline and loss of will to adventure is really fast in cold and wet weather, and can teeter on dangertown very quickly if someone doesn’t want to speak up- in this case please stop and fix that rubby thing happening with your sock asap! Push past feelings of what needing to stop might look like to some newb, the experienced folks get it.
Each of us need different things to stay in our bodies or focus on sensations, or to be in a place where we can be direct about discomforts. The things that are quick take downs outdoors are the same indoors with kink (very cold fingers, extreme sweating with cold air, crashing hard after focus or movement + losing the ability to do rational things, dizziness, blistering, numbness). Rope blistering from improper dressing, for example, is something that I’d never want to do intentionally to someone, whereas I’ll gladly tuck bottle caps under well-applied rope to make it more painful.
With both of these activities I find the highs come just before the rewards, and there’s an attempt to ride that high at the edge of reward, with building rewards and experiences as long as possible until the body cant take anymore, and there’s some snack -hacking involved. Pictured is my current favourite snack tower ‘where the sidewalk ends’: a convenient flat area at the end of a trail that the river ice started eating a few years ago. I’ll often check around several dip-outs of big trails for roadside pie stands, bakeries or diners with amazing reviews for a well earned meal, which is also something I used to love to do when there were dungeons downtown that would shoot myself and my experience slut out into sensory exploration overwhelm in some cases.
The chalk or a light on a string that I mentioned above are both great ways to ground someone but also check where their mind and finger dexterity is very gently when weather is crummy and newbs say they are ‘fine’ or “ok”. I do semi-sneaky checks all the time with kink, like skin temp checks around bondage, or dad jokes about what’s happening in scene. If I tell a horrible joke, or pull out a silly reference I can get a lot of feedback about where someone is in a session, how much of one side of their brain is online so-to-speak, and whether or not they need a banter moment or another sensation thrown on to shake it out and dive in even more. With any given person there are times where it’s more fun to take advantage of speechlessness and go deeper into sensation, or stay in a more alert game of sensory tennis, bratting or perving. It certainly helps that sometimes legitimate laughter is the natural chemical relaxant shove we need to spring off the diving board. Related: I’m sharing this other classic Simpsons-related session image from a while ago for your enjoyment.
My last big hike had a high of 7 degrees then dropped to -15 as the sun started going down. I decided around 4:30pm to add another 3 hours of walking to my already full day because I wasn’t tired enough: I managed to see a big group of mixed birds settle in for the night, a pair of coyotes, and had a lovely full moon stroll by the lake in near darkness and quietness aside from the odd goose.
Spring Day Hike Checklist:
22L Backpack
Goretex trail runners (Waterproof shoes really make a difference. I used to take WBSJ folding wellies with me to switch out if need be when I wore regular hikers, and I put alpaca wool insoles in them for comfort/dryness)
Pre- Hydration + 2-3 L of cold water and 1L hot water for a day, and a small tin or ceramic cup to double as a hand warmer
Sitting pad (mine is wallpaper wrapped around insulated cardboard)
A pack towel + emergency washcloth tab (the type to add water to), trowel, soap in a tin, a hiking bidet (currently using a travel silicone shampoo bottle 1/2 the size of my hand), a puppy pad, garbage bags, a nitrile glove, sunscreen, lip balm, some sort of body balm with beeswax and a heavy butter (shea/ cocoa) to protect hands (or exposed skin, or nostrils), toothbrush and toothpaste/tab
Empty plastic bags or non-recyclable envelopes from online purchases to collect garbage (so much easier to see garbage before the plants come in, and they often get shoved downstream when the ice cracks and melts)
A toque/ sun hat, gloves, extra puffy vest, sunglasses, spare socks and underwear
Food/ Calories: snacks + meals (last one was a litre of sweet potato red lentil soup, a sandwich, mango salad with avocado, roasted peanuts and butterscotch chips, currants and raisins, gum/mints/raw ginger)
Extra Gravy (things in the extra gear bucket):
Hiking poles for hilly terrain, mud, snow and river crossing
Insulated ground tarp or all purpose fort tarp and paracord or hemp twine to rig
Mini first aid/fixie kit (either in a tin the size of a beer or an Altoids tin depending on what I need):
paracord, folding scissors, hemp twine, a few twist ties, a forearm length of duct tape (halved lengthwise), an armspan of electrical tape, nub of beeswax, alcohol pads, iodine pad, burn cream packet, powdered antiseptic (plant), matches or lighter, clotting pad, a few zip ties, cotton square/filter, water filter tab, 22g needle, Tums, Advil, Aspirin, piece of chalk
Dry sac/ wet bag for food scraps or biohazards- coffee/ some freezer-section plastic bags are good for this too after regular use
Arm reflector band, LED zipper pull or dog tag, headlamp, biotite flex lamp, small battery (Biotite 40) + charging cables
Bear Spray, Knife, Firestarter, Incense, Kindling, Firewood, Fire Wind Screen, Pack Stove + Fuel
Small Book, notebook, game on phone to distract while waiting for pickups or getting there, headphones, pre-downloaded movie, podcast or playlist so you don’t have to think as much if you get “stupid cold” but can maintain a focus of some kind
I may have missed a few things, but that’s the basics of how I set myself up to get out the door and not miss Spring entirely before it gets hot and humid here. Watching the trees wake up (red maple, willow, magnolia) can be really fabulous. I’m overdue for a spring stroll through Mount Pleasant Cemetery for tree appreciation, but have a trail with more hills and mud in mind for my next adventure. Speaking of gear, I have a special place on my wishlist for Adventure Gear! (If you’d like to buy something from it and bring it to a session instead, I can send you the details for things). I just found some sweet pre-loved goretex to replace my regular rain coat (hiking last May long weekend soeaked through in deep mud was a learning experience), and I am stoked for the improvement in comfort to be able to go even further.
Hope this gives a bit of insight into what I’m really getting out of walking outside all day, haha.
~Aspasia
