My first official hike was, believe it or not, with my parents. It was not actually planned at all. I was about 7 years old when we went to this small church in the mountains for a monthly gathering of the member churches in the association. (You see, the churches then were so small that people in these churches create a group they call an association and once a month, one of the churches hosts the services where all the other member churches attend.) It was not compulsory though but my mother being the pianist of the singing group and the unusual lure of a mountain setting on a Sabbath morning, my father was convinced (this is rare) to tag along and bring me there too. Of course I could not be left alone since it was just the three of us and I could not resist the excitement knowing that the other kids my age in our church will be there too.
The day was indeed one of a kind. For one, it was unusual sitting on bamboo pews during the service (since they could not accommodate everyone inside the church, they build this makeshift pews for people to sit outside). The cold breeze that seems to be omnipresent in high-altitude areas, the picnic-setting lunch you share in the grassy shades of coconut and fruit trees, the vast space you could run around the church, the what-seemed-like-a-dried-up-stream road leading to the gate, these and many more were the things we sure did experience there, the exact same things you could not find in a city-church setting.
But the remoteness of the place took its toll when it was time to go home. After just about an hour down the road when we were to cross the river (the bridge wasn't made yet so the jeep has to plunge into the most shallow part of the water and drive itself back up), the engine just stopped. For almost an hour they tried to start up the jeep again. However after some time, the driver finally declared that there was nothing he could do about it except to wait for help (this was the pre-cellphone era, my dear friends). With this unwelcome news, we didn't have any choice but to walk the remaining 4 kms home or maybe less if we would be lucky enough to get a ride along the way. And so we made that march back home dressed up in our best clothes and leather shoes in the next two to three hours!
I can't exactly remember anything else on that walk home except that there was much talking between our adult companions and there was so much running for the kids, occasionally being warned of not going too fast and to be careful. Reaching home at around 7 in the evening, all I could remember was being carried by my father to my bed, and then there was the morning. Despite the exhaustion, it was just remarkable that I did not even feel a tiny tinge of the "it-was-so-inconvenient-i-would-not-do-it-again" thought. Well that probably explains why I tried my best not to miss any association meetings (or the camping and hiking activities held regularly) again in the next six years or so (and even choosing to hike at some point instead of taking the jeep).
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Note: One night, I decided to write a narrative of a certain memory I had of the past, a memory of an experience I believe may explain in some way my current travelling habit. My affair with the outdoors started when I was about five or six. Having a mother who seems to be so out there (everyone in our neighborhood and the local church seems to know her) and a father who never gets tired talking about different places from all over (he claims he might know more about a place than someone who has actually been there), the physical limits that exist between where I was and where I would want to be has always been non-existent. Up to some extreme when I was in gradeschool, i would stay awake in the night just stare at the cloudless skies (if I get lucky) and imagine what it's like to fly to the space and visit the moon with spaceships just like how they do it in the Jetsons.
