Some­times a back­pack trip is not about going as far as you can or reach­ing a sum­mit or any other land­mark. Some­times a back­pack trip is sim­ply an oppor­tu­nity to relax out­side all day and all night. For­get about the fast-paced, high tech world we live in and enjoy some sim­plic­i­ties of life.

Our most recent back­pack trip epit­o­mizes one of the key rea­sons that I like to back­pack. It is an escape from our com­plex, yet some­how “eas­ier” life in today’s soci­ety. Being removed from most of the gad­gets and con­ve­niences of life that “progress” has brought us allows me to sim­ply enjoy being alive. I can appre­ci­ate our beau­ti­ful and amaz­ing planet that we live on. I can actu­ally relax, not think­ing about all of the tasks that need to be done at home or work. It is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity for me to reflect and spend qual­ity time with Aaron. Some­times the sim­plest things in life can be the most reward­ing and most enjoyable.

Well, I’ll give a brief descrip­tion of Aaron and my recent back­pack trip to Cochise Strong­hold. Our orig­i­nal plan con­sisted of hik­ing up to the strong­hold on Sun­day and spend­ing the night near the strong­hold. On Mon­day we would explore the area of boul­ders around the strong­hold, then hike down a canyon to the park­ing lot, mak­ing an 6–8 mile loop. Things didn’t go as planned. For starters we didn’t get to the park­ing lot until 2:30pm. We shoul­dered our packs at about 3:30 and head up the strong­hold. A mile and a half to two miles up the trail we found an inter­est­ing sec­tion of boul­ders. We left the trail to check it out. It turned out to be a really nice camp­ing area as well. It was already 4:30 so we decided just to stay there for the night and then do the rest of the loop the next day. We could save explor­ing for another trip.

The next morn­ing it was cold — 20’s. I found it dif­fi­cult to moti­vate myself to get mov­ing so we didn’t. Instead, we dragged our sleep­ing bags out­side and read our book (we were in the mid­dle of read­ing “Angles and Demons” by Dan Brown to each other) until the sun­light reached us. The silly book was rather engag­ing so we didn’t actu­ally start pack­ing up to leave until 12:30pm. Need­less to say we didn’t do the whole loop, we sim­ply hiked back the way we came. Def­i­nitely not one of those record break­ing hikes for miles or alti­tude gain/loss!

On the other hand, the two days were absolutely gor­geous. The moon that night was bright, the sky clear and the air was crisp and clean. Spend­ing the day lying out in the sun in our own pri­vate, out­door “home” was sim­ply heav­enly. I couldn’t have wished for any­thing else.

The next time we visit though — I’ll make it to the stronghold…