Living off the Beaten Path

I just turned 42 this past weekend, which according to Doug Adams is the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.

Maybe.

But it did get me thinking, which is the point of this blog.

We spent the Labor Day weekend camping in Denali National Park. The park has numerous established hiking trails; Denali also welcomes hikers to leave the established trails and hike where they will in the park, but with the understanding that groups of more than two people should not walk in a straight line. Hikers go off the beaten path to experience Denali and the wildlife in a richer, and some might argue truer way. And although hikers are always welcome, each must walk his own path. In this way, the 6 million acres of Denali National Park are criss-crossed with hikers/backpackers every year but once you leave the single road and handful of maintained trails, the only paths are those left by the animals.

So how does one live off the beaten path and experience a richer, perhaps truer, life?

Being off the beaten path doesn't mean moving to Montana or Alaska. It's not even a case of Living Simply (although that helps). Ironically, in American society, you are automatically off the beaten path when you decide to live within your means (much less beneath them). When doing something because it is right trumps doing what you can get away with, you have left the common path that dominates our society. When you live with what you can afford and not by what you can finance, you have departed from the crowds. You can trod your own path by what you eat, by what you wear, by what you watch, read, drive, and say. And all of these things reveal who you truly are.

Hikers leave the established trails to see Denali as it "truly is" --without the crowds or the tour buses or the established trails. As a metaphor, it only goes so far because living in Denali is generally frowned upon. But if hiking through Denali is a simply a metaphor for seeing life as it truly is and not simply as it is being packaged and shown to us, then we can learn from it.

Every year, an easy million people visit Denali National Park, and most of them come on train or bus, stay in one of the large expensive hotels, take a bus into the park to look at the sights, and leave on another bus or train. They are herded from bus to hotel to souvenir shop and restaurants without ever experiencing what it really means to visit Denali. They have seen the park, but they have not experienced the park. If we are herded through our lives, moving from institution to institution, doing as the experts say without ever questioning their credentials, living in fear of losing our jobs because it would mean we might lose our things, have we truly experienced life as it is, or have we simply viewed it from the bus window?