Ive been thinking lately about the juxtaposition of the old and the new.

While visiting one old friend and two new ones in Cortez, Colorado, I had the great fortune of visiting both the Canyon of the Ancients and Mesa Verde National Park to see ruins of structures built by the Ancestral Pueblonans more than 1500 years ago. These native people lived on top of the mesa for hundreds of years before migrating down the sides and building dwellings into the cliffs. I imagine back then this was thought of as a new, innovative idea.

On the same day I visited Mesa Verde, I was trying to set up my new ipad with the GPS chip in it which I was able to purchase thanks to the generosity of my readers. Being semi ancient myself 😀, I was struggling to get comfortable with the new device. Luckily I was visiting my young friend Kremlin (https://www.instagram.com/happytrailsfromkremlin?igsh=MWFld2xubG52djQ0NQ==) who I met while hiking the CDT. Her friend Jenny, (https://www.instagram.com/jennyjune_0623?igsh=c3p3d3R1YnY5Zndt)

who is quite savvy with computers was also visiting. Jenny sat down with me and showed me how to transfer the information I needed from my old to my new device. She even got me set up with an instagram account. https://www.instagram.com/themarybadass

I may be able to post on instagram easier than posting blogs when there is no internet.

She was patient with me, allowing me to do it while she walked me through the steps. How different this was from my ex who insisted on doing it all for me. By the time Jenny was through with teaching me I actually felt I was beginning to grasp this social media thing and how it worked. For better or worse, what had previously felt like a foreign language to me, now felt like a language I could haltingly speak. All while I was learning this new language, I thought about how our culture has changed from the days of the Ancestral Pueblonans.

I recently completed an interview with backpacker radio, which will be turned into a podcast coming out around the second week in July. (https://www.backpackerradio.thetrek.co/) In part they chose to interview me because I am an old lady who has been hiking for a long time. They were interested in hearing about the contrast between what hiking was like in the 1970’s when many hikers, including myself carried 65 pound packs, had no gps to guide us and little information about many of the trails. I was asked what I thought about technology on the trail and if I thought it was good or bad. I replied that I did not see it as either good nor bad but rather as different.

It is easy for an old lady like me to poo poo technology as bad. After all, most of the young kids I meet now do not know how to use a compass and barely know how to read a map. Some walk all day with ear buds in, missing the sounds of nature and escaping having to be alone with the thoughts inside their head. I view some of those things as a loss to the next generation. However, I must admit I like having a GPS to help me navigate. While it gives some people with no skills and who are unprepared a false sense of security that they can safely navigate deep wilderness, raising the risk of requiring a rescue, it makes me feel more confident that I won’t need to be rescued when hiking alone, especially in areas with no defined trail. I worry about losing my map and compass skills so sometimes I make myself rely on the old technology. Ironically, I realize that at one point maps and compasses were considered new technology. People used to be much more savvy navigating with just the stars and sun and other subtle signs of nature. I wonder if any of them viewed the compass as bad technology or witchcraft.

I am often told how lucky I was to have hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and even the Appalachian Trail long before they were so populated. The trails WERE different then, and while I could say they were better because there were fewer people, I also celebrate the fact that more people are out in nature pushing themselves to do difficult things which will change their lives in what I am certain are positive ways.

I hiked many of the National Scenic Trails in their youth. The PCT, Ice Age Trail (IAT), CDT, and Potomac Heritage Trail were not even fully completed, with land acquisitions and new trail being built yearly. Other trails such as the Natchez Trace are not completed and at the moment have no plans for completion. On the other hand, the Appalachian Trail, New England Trail and Arizona Trail were fairly complete and much easier to follow, in part because they were older, more established trails. But even these older trails have periodic changes made to them, which is a good reminder that even when we grow old, it’s important to be open to change.

It’s a pleasure to be able to follow some of the more established trails without having to constantly think about navigation. On the other hand it is sometimes fun to hike a newer trail where I have to rely on my skills to get from point A to point B. What a great reminder for me that both the new and the old have value.

As I hike, I love seeing the ephemeral spring flowers and am thrilled that on my journeys this summer I am experiencing spring many times over as I travel north. Yet I realize that these spring beauties are often growing on plants such as the cacti or agave that are quite old. I have been in mountains such as the eastern Appalachians which are quite old compared to the newer mountains of the west. Yet these more recent geologic features are still old by human standards. In Wisconsin on the IAT, I hiked along the edge of the last glaciers in that area while passing by modern houses and farmland growing technologically modified crops.

I try to take the attitude not to judge the old nor the new as better or worse. Sometimes this is impossible for me to do. While I am grateful for some things my cell phone allows me to do, I am nostalgic the past when people weren’t constantly scrolling on their phones and rather than being inside on computers, young kids were happily playing outside. Yet I don’t regret the passage of time which has reduced the amount of child labor and slavery around the world.

I laugh when I think that in human years I am becoming an ancient, though my 80, 90 and 100 year old friends think I am still young. I am thrilled that my body still works as well as it does and am committed to keeping my mind open to new ideas. I felt proud that my old brain was able to grasp some of the new technology, even if it did take me eons longer than it would’ve taken for a three-year-old.

I have mixed feelings about utilizing some of this newer technology, but I know it could help me get my book published and also connect me to others who I might be able to share my experiences and knowledge with. In addition, it is this newer technology that allows you all to follow me. So to that end, I embrace it.

And now I look forward to hiking yet another fairly new, still incomplete National Scenic Trail, as I embark on the Pacific Northwest Trail. And I’m glad to have the technology to take you all along with me. I hope that I can continue to learn from both my elders and the youth as both the old and the new are equally important.

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