The first two big hiking and outdoors trips I’d ever done were to Marin Headlands when I was 10 years old for an overnight school trip in elementary school, and then to Olympic National Park in Washington state on an outdoor education trip via my middle school when I was 14. Outside of these trips, I’d never been exposed much to the “outdoors.” My parents never appreciated hiking or visiting national parks, so they were never going to take me. And when friends’ parents offered to take me on snow sport outings to Tahoe, my mom always refused to let me go. She was overprotective, to say the least.
When I look back on my childhood, those are two trips I always remember fondly as happy moments of my life. I was with good friends, my parents weren’t there, and I was just there to take in my surroundings and all these new and foreign experiences. I think that these trips helped me develop a desire to do more hiking, visit more national parks, and pursue new outdoor recreational activities.
Yesterday, after about seven hours of hiking, we sat and relaxed at the Fairmont Lake Louise bar in Banff National Park, and we chatted with a man who came with his wife and two children from New Jersey. They love the outdoors, and in this same year, also visited Bryce and Zion National Park in Utah as we just did. He said they did many hikes, some more strenuous like the Lake Agnes tea house hike overlooking Lake Louise, and their children, ages 10 and 12, really enjoyed them. He said they exposed their kids to a lot of outdoor activities, so they were used to be being outside and active.
That’s what I want for our future kids. I want them to appreciate both urban city life and the outdoors, and to be exposed to hiking in natural, beautiful places like Banff from a young age. It’s true that my parents never took me to national parks or hiking in places like Yosemite or Olympic National Park, but they did pay for me to have the opportunities to do those two outdoors trips that led to my appreciation of nature and love of hiking. I still had the opportunities in a different way. And I’m grateful for that. I hope to be able to take it a step further with my own children and participate with them. Because don’t we all want our kids to have more than what we have been privileged to have?