Why settle for a mere after-supper stroll when you could go for a postprandial perambulation? As for me, I’ve been off roaming in the gloaming.

I may not live a wild life, but I do live with wildlife. Like the squirrel this morning while I was sitting on the porch. I hear this sound of claws on metal from the top roof, then a BANG onto the porch roof, and a gray squirrel thumps down into the yard in front of me. The roof was wet with rain for the first time in nearly a month and this squirrel had clearly not factored that in to his or her calculations whilst traversing the roofline between the the eastern red cedar next to my front door and the black walnut out back. It shook itself off and headed back to the cedar tree to try again. Inspirational, really. Just like in some Disney movie, a forest creature was there to impart a valuable life lesson: Don’t try to cross a metal roof in your bare feet after a rain. Thanks, Squirrel!

Anyway. “Hiking” is so last century. Literally! Etymonline says (emphasis mine):

HIKE (v.)
1809, hyke “to walk vigorously,” an English dialectal word of unknown origin. A yike from 1736 answers to the sense. Not in widespread popular use until early 20c.

‘HIKE, v. to go away. It is generally used in a contemptuous sense. Ex. “Come, hike,” i.e. take yourself off; begone.’ —Rev. Robert Forby, “The Vocabulary of East Anglia,” London, 1830

Sense of “pull up” (as pants) first recorded 1873 in American English, and may be a variant of hitch; extended sense of “raise” (as wages) is 1867. Related: Hiked; hiking.

How typical that it was Americans who turned hiking into something aspirational: you’re going UP, and up is GOOD, so hiking must be this purifying, ennobling thing, a quasi-spiritual encounter with Nature, blah blah blah. NO. It’s the most basic form of human locomotion and should not be made into a special thing—a commodifiable leisure activity—because then it seems optional, rather than something that everyone who is able to should be doing every damn day for at least two hours. Many I’m sure will claim they don’t have the time, but the average person spends over four hours on their phone now, according to a new study, so whatever.

It’s getting dark earlier these days, of course, so an after-dinner walk does involve some level of comfort with darkness. Cue Robert Frost.