Tails and Trails #1

Welcome to the first installment of Tails and Trails! Behind this cute punny name lies a series of posts with a two-fold purpose:

1. To provide just enough information on the best trails in the Baltimore-Washington area to hopefully entice you to get out and explore

2. Share perspectives and stories from Louie and I that came about on our hikes there

For me, hiking is roughly 10% about where my feet go and 90% about where my mind goes, so I wanted to share these ruminations in the hopes that they may resonate with you and perhaps challenge your own perspective. In the case that they don’t, I’ve also sprinkled in plenty of pictures of my handsome hiking partner so that there is a little something for everyone.

Side note - if any of my information is inaccurate, I reserve the right to say that this was 100% about the story anyway.

Our first endeavor takes place on Cascade Falls Loop Trail in the wonderful Patapsco Valley State Park. Patapsco contains over 200 miles of trails and is only about a 20-minute drive outside of Baltimore. It is also Maryland’s first state park, so it only seemed fitting to start our series here.

Dog friendly
Well maintained and marked
Difficulty 2/5
Length: 3 miles
Bathroom: Yes

The best tip I have: Don’t wait for the park to open at 9 am, it’ll be too crowded. Just park alongside Landing Road and start your loop there. But get there early as parking is limited in this almost-secret entrance, we arrived around 7 am and just barely found a spot!

After weeks in quarantine, I was excited to get out, get exploring, and just get some fresh air. I knew my dog Louie needed some change of scenery as well, as the most interesting smell he had been exposed to in these past few stay-at-home weeks was our next-door neighbor’s grill. Within the first few minutes of entering Patapsco park, I was able to breathe out a sigh of relief that I didn’t know I had been holding in. Abrasive city sounds were removed and replaced only with the distant chirp of birds and whisper of leaves rustling. We set off, Louie leading the way with the look of a kid in a candy store.

To be transparent, the urge to go hiking came on suddenly and was a last-minute decision, therefore I didn’t put much forethought or preparation into this hike. I saw that Patapsco was not too long of a drive from my house and Cascade Trail was a simple looking loop at first glance of a map. More admittedly, I’ve always had a bit of a propensity to get lost, especially during my cross-country running days. Long story short, Louie and I set out on the trail, became overzealous about our refreshing environment, and about two hours later I realized we had wandered off the designated loop completely and were somewhat lost.

This isn’t fun to admit, especially because when you post a blog about something you obviously want to sound like an expert on the matter. I wish I could say I am a seasoned navigator or that I am completely confident in all courses of life. However, I’ve always considered myself to be more of a wanderer, never having a crystal-clear direction or destination. My compass is more powered by curiosity rather than a certain gravitational pull.

I mean this in terms of hiking, but, moreover actually, in terms of life.

Until recently, I’ve leaned towards this characteristic of myself as negative. I grew up with three older brothers who all seemed to discover a confident career path early on, one positioning himself at the Naval Academy with a sense of patriotic purpose stemming from 9/11. One had a mind for medicine and dedicated himself to grueling pharmacy school. The last had a curiosity for mechanics and went into computer engineering. All three, in my mind, were exemplifying what I defined success to be.

Personally, I knew that I liked making people happy and yearned for some creative capacity, but that is really all I had to work off when trying to pick a direction in life.

For years I viewed this absence of a clear trajectory as a flaw, like I missed out on some career path gene. Instead of working my way up after graduating from college, I was working my way around my curiosity. Although I was fostering meaningful relationships with friends and family, exploring new places, and garnering various unique skills through exciting (at least to me) jobs, something still felt wrong in social comparison.

I often felt a sense of being lost because I didn’t know exactly what I was working towards, despite being content with what was taking place in the present. I was compiling meaningful experiences, but had never been able to obtain a compelling answer to that first question that someone asks when they meet you, “what do you do for a living?”

Once I was chatting to a coworker when I worked in events at a football stadium, who was asking me about my family and what they did. After running through the gamut of my mom's and brothers’ professions and quick bios, my coworker looked at me and point-blank asked, (verbatim) “Dang, what do you think went wrong with you?”

The question was a punch to the gut for me to be honest, but it was also illuminating because it helped me realize that my anxiety about finding my life purpose ASAP didn’t come from within, it was an external factor. I don’t think I fully understood the influence that social comparison had over me until my coworker exemplified the idea in one blunt verbal inquiry.

I know I am certainly not alone in this sense of disorientation. Whether it be personally or professionally, we all might have an aspect (or maybe more than one!) of life that we question our path on/second guess. It's only when we juxtapose our timeline to someone who we think has found certainty that this self-doubt starts to tell us we are not successful.

I also think it’s important to normalize the idea that just because you couldn’t pick a definitive major when you were 18, or still haven’t figured out your passions and purpose, it doesn’t mean you aren’t going to find them in the vast expanse of life that sits in front of you. There is power in the word yet.

While navigating back to the Cascade Falls Loop I had ventured away from, I reflected on this. When I initially discovered that I had inadvertently wandered off from the route for about one mile, I was so perturbed, beating myself up over the fact that I hadn’t been more thorough in my preparation to come out hiking or paid more attention while on the trail.

I recognized that in life I am the same, often spending a bit too much time mulling over past decisions, doubting steps I’ve taken, etc. In reality, Louie and I had a great time on the entirety of the hike to include the portion where we had strayed from the map. We even found an extra waterfall and some neat abandoned stone houses on that unintended path.

My mental discovery in Patapsco Park was that it is absolutely of no value to be hard on yourself about your course through life. Whether you take road A, road B, blue trail, red trail, whatever, you can’t decide halfway through to look at people on road C and compare. In that comparison you’ll forget about the extra waterfall you found.

Being Okay with Being Lost