Looking southeast, toward the Elkhorn Crest trail and peaks above Rock Creek, from Pole Creek Ridge.

Though I’ve mentioned it before, hiking was built on a lie. A harmless lie, to be sure, but a lie nonetheless.

We cannot pinpoint whether it was a hunter, an angler or a forager who fathered hiking, but we can safely say it was a man because men generally have more fragile egos than women. It’s why accountants and mechanics drive massive trucks they’ll never use in their line of work. It’s why men spend money on enough workout supplements to stop their kidneys unless they drink copious amounts of water. It’s why men buy boats and kayaks and other high-value items simply to catch cold, unfeeling fish which will never justify those costs with the hope that they just might get one big enough to update a profile picture.

We know it was a man who invented hiking because hiking was invented to protect a male ego.

Perhaps it was Jose returning from an unsuccessful pheasant hunt. Or maybe Karl returning from a day at the lake with an empty stringer. It may even have been Xavier coming home from a day of mushroom picking without having actually picked any mushrooms.

The names are irrelevant because the details are more or less the same.

“How was your hunting/fishing/foraging trip today?” asks a significant other or friend or neighbor.

Rather than produce the same little excuse he’d normally produce, Jose/Karl/Xavier decides he just cannot admit defeat again — even if the defeat was justified by poor weather, car trouble or just nebulous bad luck.

So, instead of admitting failure, Jose/Karl/Xavier lies.

“Oh, I uh, didn’t go hunting/fishing/foraging today,” he says.

This, in turn, places a troubled look on the face of the person interviewing him about the 12 hours Jose/Karl/Xavier spent outdoors, alone and away from work, chores and family. The interviewer places hands on his or her hips and asks, a bit perturbed, “Well where were you all day, then?” striking the very same pose struck by that Pakistani man from the 2019 World Cup matchup that became a viral meme.

It is with these next crucial words that hiking is born.

Hiking is no longer just a means to an end as it has always been. No longer just a small, overlooked part of every other outdoor activity on earth. No. With these words, Jose/Karl/Xavier gives the idea of hiking legs — his legs — and invents a sport. Well, not a sport. An outdoor hobby? A pastime? A form of recreation? Semantics. Jose or Karl or Xavier legitimizes a walk outdoors as an activity all its own. But not just a walk outdoors, hikers will be quick to point out, a hike.

“I was hiking,” Jose or Karl or Xavier says.

It’s not entirely a lie. He almost certainly was hiking, but not in the way that his comment suggests. Not in the intentional, exclusive way he has just elevated hiking from a component part of most other outdoor activities to its own, independent status. No, his comment will come to embody the people who adopt this new almost sport.

“So. … you went on a walk? All day?” replies his original inquisitor.

“That’s it?”

“Yeah,” says Jose/Karl/Xavier. “It was very peaceful.”

“Huh,” the inquisitor replies unsure what to ask as a follow up. How do you measure a walk?

“How was it?”

Jose or Karl or Xavier isn’t quite sure how to respond, either. Unlike hunting or fishing or foraging, there is no measurable means of success. You cannot bag a sunset. You cannot harvest fresh air.

On this newly christened “hike,” whichever “he” we are talking about did not collect food or fuel or shelter. He did not train for battle or significantly increase his fitness level. He did not scout enemy territory or map game trails for future hunts or risk his life to accomplish some great feat. He didn’t even develop a skill. He just took a walk looking for food, failed at his intended task and then lied and said this walk was the actual purpose of the outing.

“Yeah, I had a nice time,” he replies, cementing his lie into a new reality in which hiking just for the sake of hiking is now a thing people do, apparently.

At this moment, humanity’s relationship with nature diverges. Gone is the survival imperative humans have always balanced when working outdoors. Gone is a tangible way to win or lose in a chosen outdoor pursuit. Gone is the honing of a skill or the significant strengthening of muscles. What remains is the softest of the outdoor pursuits, one that is furnished not at Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shops, a ski shop or marina but at a boutique clothing store or maybe an REI. Like the classical outdoor pursuits, naming hiking as an activity allows for commercial adoption. Now, practitioners can spend far too much on clothing and boots that are not really specialized outdoor gear in the same vein as a recurve bow, an ice ax, snowshoes, an auger or chainsaw — just priced like it.

Unlike rock climbing or whitewater rafting or even canoeing, hiking is not an adventure. It is nature with all of the sharp corners buffed out. There is no real risk of death or even significant injury hiking to the average person. Yeah, heart attacks and dehydration and exposure, but those are more endemic to being outdoors than hiking.

Hiking has no winner nor loser. There is nothing to carry out on your shoulders, to butcher, to compete with or leave your muscles truly aching with exertion after the fact. No, there’s just one foot in front of the other.

To be clear, hiking is not mountaineering. Hiking is only vaguely reminiscent of mountaineering in the way a toy poodle is only vaguely reminiscent of a timber wolf. Sure, they have a common ancestor, but they are not the same.

Hiking, as such, might be the brunt of jokes, but it serves its purpose.

While many were at first resistant to welcome hikers into the all-encompassing moniker of “outdoorsman” and “outdoorswoman” because of the strange otherness of this activity, it is important to note that most hikers do become truly outdoorsy with time. For many, hiking is both the gateway to the outdoors the last activity an outdoorsy person in their twilight can indulge in. This is why it is so valuable to society.

Cityfolk probably won’t just go straight from video games and Netflix and the gym into base jumping or freeclimbing or free diving for lobsters. Someone who didn’t grow up outdoors might be repulsed at the sight of a bird dog retrieving a duck or an angler fileting a fish she just speared. No, some must be slowly introduced to the outdoors with the softest and most accessible form of outdoor recreation: hiking.

Not everyone needs to hunt or fish or chase adrenaline, but at our core, we are still animals. Connecting with that wildness that, along with intellect and language, made humans the dominant species on planet earth is something everyone should experience in their lifetime — however small that connection is.

So next time you slide past a posse of new outdoorsmen and women on your cross-country skis or mountain bike or pack horse and sight the brand-new Patagonia jackets unmarred by dirt or scuffs or blood, just smile. Smile and encourage them because the natural world is here for all of us. The best way to preserve it is to engage as many people with it as possible and help them create their own value for the wild. It is much harder to neglect and ignore what we love, so let’s foster as many lovers of the outdoors as we can to share the burden of protection. Whether our focus is on the birds or the bees, the flowers or the trees, the water or air, hiking just might make someone else care.