How Hiking the Grand Canyon Taught Me to Take Care of My Body

One of the most amazing hikes I’ve ever done is the Grand Canyon. It’s really important that if you’re going to take on the Grand Canyon and go down to the Colorado River, you absolutely, 100% need to follow the National Park Service Permit Process.

Way back when when I did it, you had to do it by fax. On the day that the permits opened, we actually only got our third choice, which was the South Kaibab Trail down and the Bright Angel Trail up.

This was an extraordinary journey which took months to train for. You have to carry water in your pack, and you actually have to train carrying water, because there isn’t always water along the way.

But I think what was most important, what I learned about that hike, first of all, was that I really should be using hiking poles. South Kaibab is ten miles of downhill, which is really rough on your knees. Then, on the Bright Angel trail uphill, you start at 5 in the morning and it’s ten miles of relentless uphill. It is not just like a rolling hill here and then a break, I mean, it is switchbacks all the way through. The views are extraordinary, like nothing I’ve ever seen.

One of the best tips that I got was was to make sure that you rest your legs every hour. So that means that when you’re hiking, every hour your take a break, you have a snack, you hydrate like you’ve never hydrated before, and you lay on your back and put your legs in the air.

This, for me, was such an important metaphor because sometimes you get into these arduous tasks in life, like writing a book, raising children, all these other things that take so much time and energy. It’s important that you schedule your moments of rest and break to take care of yourself, to make sure you’re fueled for the day’s journey ahead.

So, on the Bright Angel Trail, every hour we just rested. We put our legs up, we had a snack, we refueled.

It was scientific, I know, but I hadn’t treated my body like that, with food and fuel and rest. So, I needed to learn this lesson so I could carry it with me wherever I went from there.