Hike Week
One week. 3 hikes. Lots of walking.
Y1, 2 and 3 are all going on a hike this week. Y1 is heading out for 2 days, Y2 for ten, and Y3 for a 7-day bushwhack hike.
(A bushwhack is like a normal hike, except there’s no hiking trail to walk on, or signposts to follow. Instead, you bring along a map and compass and figure out how to get to the tops of the mountains you’re aiming for. If that sounds challenging to you, you’re right – it is.)
Why Hike?
Each of these hikes provides opportunities for many potential benefits. Of course, there’s the physical exertion which pulls a whole host of positives with it. There’s a special sense of camaraderie which comes from braving and conquering a challenge together. There’s the friendship that blossoms from spending so much time together. In fact, we say that there’s no such thing as doing the same hike twice, because you’ll never be hiking with the same people in the same stage as they were before. The people you’re with make or break the hike, not the other way around. When you’re walking with someone for an entire day, you’ll find what to talk, joke, sing and tell about eventually.
Y1: Baby Steps
There’s also a strong psychological impact from completing a Yagilu hike. The first Y1 hike is very simply an opportunity to try. Almost none of our campers have been on a multi-day hike before, sleeping outside and carrying all their gear (as well as shlepping their share of the group gear). For some, when they first hear about it, they’re terrified! By succeeding on this hike, no matter how difficult it might be for them, they show themselves they can accomplish something that was previously way out of reach.
Y2: Turning Pro
This is reiterated in a more extreme way on the Y2 10-day hike. It’s one thing to hike a couple of days; a whole other thing to walk for more than a week, again carrying that week’s supplies in your backpack! Every year, we hear from campers at the end of the summer that they feel totally different. If they can succeed at a hike, which seemed so impossibly difficult, they know they can also succeed in the other challenges that face them in life. Family issues, problems at school, difficulty with classwork – everything is put in a new light after reaching the tallest point in New Jersey or climbing 10 mountains in 10 days.
Y3: Getting Lost on Purpose
The Y3 bushwhack has a similar message, but more intense. Normally, the feeling that you’ve gotten lost is one that grows on you slowly. You make a turn you’re not so sure about, drive or walk for a bit, and think, “This just doesn’t look right.” After a while, you decide you’re lost and turn around. On a bushwhack, you make a conscious decision to do the unthinkable – to turn off the trail and walk directly into the woods. There is a visceral feeling of immediate lost-ness, the moment you lose sight of the trail behind you (it takes about ten seconds of walking). If you can deal with that without losing your head, you can deal with anything.
Find Yourself
A hike is a funny sort of journey. It is definitely not the most efficient way to get from point A to point B; on one of the Y1 hikes, the bus covers the distance between the start and end points in about an hour. However, we’ve learned that at the end of our hikes, from YN to Y3, our campers are at least a few steps closer to finding themselves.
