"...and not without its peril."

I wondered myself, after reading certain of Chris Clarke's descriptions of arduous hikes -- uphill climbs! in hot weather! in the desert! -- what the hell might compel a person to, well, do that. But it was sort of an idle wondering, because it's clear from all of his writing about hiking that there's a lot going on for him -- it's not just about liking or not liking the weather or the terrain.

Another reader did ask him about it the other day though & I really liked his response:

"But there is more. Some of it is sheer joy at the subjective effects of my surface-area-to-volume ratio increasing: I sweat much less than I did forty pounds ago, and there is a kind of pleasure in feeling my body become more able to meet physical challenges with less strain. Some of it is knowing that I'll pass fewer people on the trail if it's 100 degrees than if it's 75. And there is the boasting, of course. One cannot overstate the importance of the boasting.

[...]

"But there is more. The heat is the way the desert is. I want to know the desert, so I must know the heat. The Joshua trees can't huddle in the air-conditioning, and the kangaroo rats still distill water from dry seeds when the temperature peaks. And there is this: as the desert goes, so goes the world.

[...]

"But there is more. How tempting to simply walk out into the extreme, to reduce all of life down to its elements. There is water, and there is heat, and there is rock, and there are those who are out in it, on two legs or six or none, flying or rooted. What more do I need from life?"

By the time I got to the end, I understood perfectly why a person would want to hike uphill for hours in dry blasting heat. Not so perfectly that I need to go do it, you understand, but his explanation illuminates my world too.

That's what I love about Chris Clarke's writing generally. Yeah, he's a skillful writer, but it's more than that. He's a skillful thinker and an acute observer too, and he has a rare gift for soaking his words in what he's thinking and whatever he's looking at, and hanging them up where we can see them.

But my favorite part of his response might be when he digresses into an essay idea he's been playing with, "Craig Childs gets a cup of coffee," written in the ['florid' and 'breathless'] style of nature writer & NPR commentator Craig Childs:

"... An ancient sacrament, this drinking of the juice of Arabic seeds scathed in the cleansing fire of the roaster, and not without its peril."