The Flamingo Flock has now been hiking together on a regular basis for three years. In middle-aged women terms, that’s, like, an eternity and the blink of an eye at the same time. It’s been an educational as well as a physical journey along those trails. The most important one for me has been living out the realities of making, and then keeping, new friends.
See one, do one, teach one… Here for you now are my four key lessons, for free, no sign up required, on how to lose, I mean, make friends on the trail.
1. Start the hike at 7am on a Saturday
What else are they going to be doing at this time of day? I mean, women who’ve brought up families and lead high-performing teams and created gardens that can feed an army, these people never stop! If they did, there’s no telling the devastation left in their wakes. Gardens will sprout weeds, teenagers will have to pour their own cereal and, horror, the groceries might not be bought until mid-afternoon! An early start means hikers are out of the house before mother-guilt kicks in and back ‘in place’ before anyone reappears from weekend sport.
No matter how far we hike and how hot we get, an early start does two things – it keeps you cool and helps you keep your cool. Practically speaking, this is how we women of a certain age can be guaranteed to be walking in the kind of air required to keep internal body temperatures at ‘manageable’.
And, this one is the best of all, you get to see sunrise. Stop and stare at it. Take a couple of photos. Smile.
Really, a 7am start is a community service.
My pleasure, friends.
2. Make them drink instant coffee
Now, settle down, quiet in the back there. Himself may think it’s clever to call the instant version bogan coffee but I’m here to explain where he’s gone off track with this one. True, there IS a right way and a wrong way to partake of the kind of beverage that comes in a sachet. Taken without the requisite conditions, instant coffee can be heartbreakingly disappointing at best. Sipped at the right moment in the right place with the right people… ahh, it’s delectable. Get your pens out, you’re going to want to take notes for this one.
ALWAYS….
- Always carry a JetBoil and at least one spare cup. This way no-one can ‘accidentally’ miss out.
- Time the hike so that you are too far from civilisation to ‘pop in’ to a cafe during peak coffee-drinking hours (ie mid-morning). They will be vulnerable to accepting anything caffeinated you have to offer.
- spend a bit extra and get the double-shot version. It needs to have kick if you want them to talk to you after morning tea.
NEVER…
- Crack open the box and offer a sachet too early. Conditions aren’t in balance until nearly two hours OR ten kilometres into a hike.
- Add too much hot water to the cup. There is nothing you can do to rescue a watered-down instant coffee. Should this ever happen, throw out the offending drink before a sip is taken.
- Sit where the wind and/or rain will interfere with the pleasure of sitting with a hot drink in the open air.
It’s a kindness, too. Money is saved ($7 for 20 chai latte sachets from Aldi, that’s less than 50c per cup! Compare that to nearly $7 PER CUP at our favourite cafes and I am literally saving my friends enough money to buy brunch when we get back to the car! Win win, right?)
The bottom line of this is a lesson all of our parents probably tried to teach us. You have to work for the good stuff. Earn it, it takes time and effort and a bit of sweat (and sometimes tears). This is especially true of a great coffee. The one you get at the end of the adventure made with love by a barista and drunk on a chair with a padded seat will be incomparably delectable.
My pleasure, friends!
3. Tell them “it’s only a short hike”
You know I love words and you might remember I keep my thesaurus handy at all times, but this is one occasion where I give permission for you to bend the meaning of a few words here and there. Just temporarily, you understand. Long enough to be out on the trail and close to a coffee break before anyone realises that you didn’t calculate the distance correctly. Sometimes some of us need a little push to get out of our comfort zone.
My preferred and practised method here is failure to incorporate the return distance in an ‘out and back’ hike. It’s true that it’s only 6km to the viewpoint. It’s also true that it will only be 6km back again. Doesn’t this make it a 6km hike? No?
Why would I do such an evil thing, I hear you ask? Not on purpose, of course, and never because I might have made a mistake… It’s for the health and wellbeing of my friends, obviously! Longer to chat, more time to unpack those issues, push that little bit further on tired muscles because, you know, you can!
My only hint when using this strategy is do not overuse it. Too many ‘errors’ and this one will backfire faster than you can grab your carkeys.
My pleasure, friends!
4. Fail to research the area
I’m an optimist, a Pollyanna, if you will. Another description might be ‘lazy’ when it comes to planning. It’s just that I believe with all my heart that things will turn out… in the end. This is why I continue to trust AllTrails to take us the most direct route on sealed roads (unless otherwise noted in bold) to the start of our hike. This is the recipe for unexpected adventure.
Ensure you carpool so that ideally no driver is left alone. There IS a chance a passenger will mutter lock the doors as you drive past unsettling paddocks lined with white statues and graveyards of pushbikes and they may hold the handle tightly shut at the sight of skeleton-embossed mailboxes. And, sure, it’s concerning when you pull up in a carpark at a campsite where the occupants of the only tent stand and stare at you expressionlessly. But in a group we are strong and we are hoping the points on our hiking poles will frighten away every threat (snakes included).
This method has also taken us through some of the most breathtaking Australian landscapes we had no idea were in our backyard. Rainforests, hidden historical sites both indigenous and colonial, views that take your breath away as you round the corner before the turn off to the trail. I choose to focus on these wins, they’re far more frequent and likely to occur in even a short drive.
This strategy is all about creating bonds fast; they’re far stronger when forged in fire of this kind. It’s also a surefire way to recruit alternate hike-planners and map-readers for backup.
My pleasure, friends!
Do you have any more pearls of wisdom like these? Please share, I’m not sure how long these particular ones are going to be effective…