I led a First-year Outdoor Orientation Trip (FOOT) in the Catskills this year. For a week, I successfully mother duck-ed eight freshmen through the forest. We marched (and slipped and slid) through gravel, rainwater, and mud. Our renditions of trail songs were no less annoying than harmonic quacks. My FOOTies were silly, and I was happy to match their energy in literal stride.
For a mile-long stretch on our second day, my co-leader and I decided to do a “solo hike” on our way down the Devil’s Acre mountain. After two days of nonstop conversation—a byproduct of the freshman-extroversion—we thought the silence would be a welcome reprieve. I led the pack, walking 50 feet ahead. When I was far enough away, at a junction where crooked fir trees met brambled bushes, my co-leader sent the next FOOTie down the path. We continued in this fashion, hiking just far enough apart for each other’s distant falling footsteps to blend in with the rustle of the foliage.
In the lull of the gentle forest, several thoughts and sounds orbited my mind. Hamilton, starting from “The Battle of Yorktown,” for one. Second, because of the solitude, I noticed features of the land in ways I hadn’t before: the way moss muffled the fall of water in a brook, or the sight of multilayered peeling bark of a river birch.
My fixation in this brief silence was the abundance of mushrooms. The fruiting bodies that emerged from mycelium were vast and varied. Scarlet caps, turkey tails, tangerine peels. Given how quickly mushroom caps emerge, many of these fruiting bodies would not have been aboveground during our ascent. I was the head of our line, so my gaze was the first to fall upon each misshapen lump. The element of newness added to the novelty and thrill of each fresh clump of caps I happened to glance upon.
I found a junction to pause at, allowing my FOOTies to catch up and bunch into a pile.
One of them reflected that those thirty minutes had been the first time he had gotten to be alone since arriving on campus. Another—an only child—mused that he had missed the silence of solitude. A third exhaled a great sigh of relief and carried on with conversation like before. Someone started a round of pop song sing-along, and our troupe carried on down the mountain with glee.
