San Juan Hut Hike
I recently completed a five-day hut-to-hut hike through the San Juan Mountains. The route was supposed to be 34 miles—although ours was closer to 40 thanks to a few scenic, unintentional detours.
The hiking was stunning and challenging, winding through high alpine meadows, massive aspen groves, evergreen forests and stream crossings—some involving logs that required focus.
What I hadn’t fully appreciated when I proposed the trip to my friends was just how rustic the huts would be. No running water. No electricity. We carried our food, collected water from mountain streams and purified it, and shared one outhouse and a small hut with four strangers.
This was nothing like the Tour du Mont Blanc hike we had done the year before. This was roughing it.
And it was wonderful. I want to keep doing hard things. I don’t want to get too comfortable.
There is something freeing about reducing life to what you actually need. Food. Water. Warm layers. A place to sleep. Miles to walk. And, at the end of the day, a competitive game of cards.
What I will remember most about this adventure isn't how far we hiked or even the incredible landscape we moved through. It is the people I shared it with—my dear friends I came with and the new friends we made while sharing a small, rustic hut.
Maybe the best adventures aren't really about where you go, but who you share them with.
This experience inspired a poem.
Layers
The layers in nature invite us in.
Green grasses speckled with wildflowers,
aspen groves, their powerful roots intertwined below,
pines and evergreens reaching toward the sky,
mountain peaks in the distance
calling us to continue on.
The hiker has layers too.
Wool against the skin,
another layer of wool,
a puffy for cool mornings and evenings,
rain jacket and pants ready for weather,
hat and gloves tucked away.
In the mountains,
we prepare ourselves with layers.
And then, as we walk,
something begins to happen.
Surrounded by all this beauty,
moving forward one step at a time,
the layers of our lives begin to fall away.
The roles.
The obligations.
The noise of everything waiting for us somewhere else.
There is only the trail.
The next step.
The mountain ahead.
No running water.
No electricity.
No WiFi.
No cell service.
Water gathered from a mountain stream.
Meals shared around a table.
Eight people and one outhouse.
Friends becoming closer,
strangers becoming known.
And somewhere along the way,
with so much stripped away,
we become simpler too.
The layers we thought defined us
are left somewhere along the trail,
revealing what was underneath all along—
our essence,
our true selves.
A reminder that perhaps
we don’t need to add more
to discover who we are.
Perhaps we need to shed.
To walk.
To notice.
To connect.
To remember
what was there all along.
