Karina Moreno shares about her reservations around hiking with her phone.
One of the recurring spats with my spouse is that I hate taking my phone with me when I hike alone in the east bay hills. I recognize this is an ill-advised point of view, for all the safety and convenience arguments most people make when I tell them phones do not belong on hiking trails.
Generations have survived walking in the woods untethered to technology, I self-righteously say. In turn, I get articles of mountain lion attacks and women – always women – disappearing without a trace. I have long felt most at peace with packed earth beneath my feet. But it turns out even the refuge of nature has its limitations.
The other day, I was on the Huckleberry Trail when suddenly everything felt like a threat. The poison oak grazing my exposed ankles, a dim hissing sound I couldn’t quite make out, rustling in the bushes around the bend, the menacing squeak of a tree branch about to snap. I stood still. I focused on the light coming through the trees and inhaled eucalyptus.
I forced my quick and shallow breath to grow slow and steady. I talked myself off a ledge of panic that has become all too familiar. This is what it’s like when fear seeps into everything, I thought. Even things that once brought calm are tinged with menace in an increasingly anxious world. I finished my walk unscathed but unsettled.