Before I get to ‘About Me’, let’s include you for a minute. Some of you may see hiking as your gym, while others see hiking as a way of connecting with nature and the outdoors. You may also see hiking as an opportunity to appreciate the vast amount of beauty that our hills and mountains have to offer us. A beauty that is oft taken for granted. I see hiking as all of these things, and more.
I’m half Italian, and I love good food. However, about a year ago, I was diagnosed as being pre-diabetic. My doctor told me that this was a correctable condition. All I had to do was lose some weight, exercise more, change my diet (to a certain degree), and take certain vitamins. Easier said than done, right? Exactly, but I definitely took this diagnosis seriously. I’ve already been hiking off and on throughout my adult life, and I’ve also done other types of exercise. I just never had a routine. Now I do, and my routine includes all the things my doctor suggested, as well as something I’ve always loved to do: Hiking! It’s been a lot of work, and I’m still a work in progress. I’ve lost some weight, and changed my diet. I’ve always taken vitamins, but now I take certain vitamins that make a more significant contribution towards my ‘inner workings’. And hiking regularly has made an improvement on my physical condition. It’s also taken me to some wonderful places here in Southern California and beyond. Many that I never knew existed.
I don’t consider my elevated interest in hiking as a wake up call from a red flag on my bill of health. I do believe it was inevitable. I’m in my 50’s now, and as society becomes crazier, my escape more often becomes the trail. So, in addtion to the other things I previously mentioned about what hiking is to me, hiking is also my escape. My ‘Zen’ if you will. When I’m on the trail, I don’t bother to make sense of what goes on in the valley below. I leave that all behind and for that time being, I’m taken in by all the positivity that I’m surrounded with when I’m on the trail.
My goal for this website is for it to be a hiking tool. That tool being relevant information you might be able to use to enhance your hiking experience. If only one sentence, paragraph or photo on my site helped you in any way, or made even the slightest improvement on a hike, then I have succeeded in doing what I’ve set out to do with this website. By the same token, I do not wish for anything on this website to do the contrary. I’ve made every effort for my blogs and articles to be accurate and also based on my own experiences. I always stress that you assess yourself before setting out to do something I’ve done or suggested. We all have our own limitations, physical, mental, and otherwise. Addtionally, we all have our own advantages, physical, mental, and otherwise. Part of being a good, and safe hiker, and having a great hiking experience, is to be able to know what all of these things are within ourselves.
I HIKE FAR (do you?) 