How to get your kids to go hiking

And other tips for coping with impending fascism

When I was a teenager, I had a huge crush on the actor Elijah Wood.

Looking back on it, it was part of an adolescent pattern of declaring my love for safe, unattainable, and not-too-hot guys. (I just Googled Elijah Wood and, in fact, he is still quite handsome and successful. But yes, there was a reason 16-year-old me had a self-professed thing for the Hobbit rather than Pacey from Dawson’s Creek. Defense mechanism.)

My friends bought me a Lord of the Rings poster, which I proudly hung up in my bedroom. I wasn’t particularly a Lord of the Rings nerd, but boy did I love Frodo. It stayed in my childhood bedroom for years, until I finally took it down sometime in the 2010s.

I hadn’t thought much about the Lord of the Rings movies until a few weeks ago, when my husband and I re-watched them. To be honest, they were a mixed bag. Since becoming a parent, I’ve found I have zero tolerance for graphic violence, so I covered my eyes when the orcs attacked. I’m not sure the movies passed the Bechdel test.

But Frodo was as good-looking as ever. The scenery — the movie was famously filmed on location in New Zealand — was gorgeous.

And I let myself feel a little glimmer of excitement and optimism because: I, too, am going to New Zealand!

We’ve been planning this trip for over a year. The occasion is a wedding — one of my husband’s oldest friends — but most of the time we’ll be hiking. The wedding is the excuse to go, but being outside, in nature, and not in the United States — well, that’s the real reason for the trip.

It’s been strange, allowing myself to feel excitement for such an extensive international trip while things feel so precarious here at home.

I keep making jokes that we’ll stay in New Zealand. “Maybe we just… won’t come home,” I say, a little bit serious.

U.S. medical licenses have reciprocity in New Zealand, and I know several American doctors who have done stints working in rural parts of the country. That could be me, healing the sick amongst the sheep and mountains! It’s not the craziest plan I’ve ever considered.

But alas, we are planning on coming home, and I keep having intrusive thoughts that, for some reason, we won’t be let out of — or back in — the United States. In all my years of traveling, my U.S. passport has felt like an immense privilege; right now, it feels like a liability.

I read news stories about U.S. visa holders being deported for their political beliefs with dread and a grim sense of horror. (For more thoughtful perspectives about why these deportations are deeply concerning for all of us, including U.S. citizens, read this or listen to this, with gift links.) I speak out against our impending police state in conversations with friends, neighbors, and online, but I mostly just feel helpless.

And when I feel helpless, I try to go outside.

This is actually where we’re going!

I recognize what an immense privilege it is to travel halfway around the world for a vacation.

But I also believe that spending time in nature — anywhere — can be a real antidote to the hate and fear that plague the public discourse in the U.S. these days. I’ve been reflecting on what a strange and lucky thing it is to travel to one of the most beautiful and politically progressive countries in the world right when we’re at the precipice of an authoritarian political state here at home.

Hiking is a hobby I developed in adulthood. (Despite gazing at my poster of Frodo in the shire as a teen, I didn’t grow up in an outdoorsy family.) It’s a practice that brings me a lot of satisfaction and happiness, and it’s one I hope to pass on to my son.

Yet anyone who’s tried to take kids hiking knows that it can be, um, challenging. But over the four years of my son’s life, I’ve developed some tricks for getting kids on board. So in the spirit of all of us getting outside more — and into the humbling and generous headspace that nature affords — here are some of my best tips for helping kids enjoy the great outdoors.

1. You don’t have to be hardcore. For years, as I watched friends go off on backcountry, off-the-grid backpacking trips, I thought that “being outdoorsy” meant being willing to poop in the woods for weeks at a time. That is simply not the case. I’ve enjoyed multi-day trips in the past, but now with my son along for the ride, they’re not realistic. (At least at this stage — he’s almost four.) We usually stay in hotels or AirBNBs and stick to day hikes.

2. Kids are more flexible than you think. While we haven’t taken our son backpacking, we finally did take him car camping last fall — and he loved it! We picked a campsite close to home, invested in new sleeping pads, and he did great. I have many friends who have even taken babies camping, setting up a pack-and-play in the middle of a big, family-friendly tent.

3. You have no choice but to enjoy the journey. Hiking with kids is an exercise in mindfulness. They literally stop to smell the roses, and they do it often. You can’t get too fixated on getting to a certain destination in a certain amount of time, because it may not happen. Rather than fight against it, I try to embrace my kid’s wonder and appreciation of nature.

4. Bribe children liberally. Who isn’t motivated by the prospect of a great snack? I love the satisfaction of sitting down at the top of a mountain, taking in the view, and eating my PB&J. (Here’s a great essay about the pleasure of eating while hiking.) Unsurprisingly, kids love that, too. I also like to make up games that involve candy rewards, like finding Starbursts left on the trail from the “fairy of the woods.”

5. Let kids pick the path. My kid is so much more engaged in hiking if he is allowed to help dictate the plan. If there are forks in the road, see what it feels like to let the kid lead the way.

6. Invent fun games. My kid goes nuts for finding trail markers or for doing treasure hunts. (You get a prize if you find a beetle, a bird, an orange leaf, and a purple flower, for example.)

7. Have an exit plan. Last summer, my family went hiking in the Catskills, and we couldn’t find the trail we had planned to take. So we picked another: one called “Devil’s Path.” It turned out to be, um, really hard. (The segment we did was part of a multi-day trail that I found on a top-ten list of “hardest hikes in America.” When I texted an experienced hiker friend about it later, she wrote, “Didn’t the name tip of you off at all?”) I never felt like I was truly in danger, but I was glad we had taken some basic precautions: Let people know where you are. Bring enough water. Although my son is mostly too big to go in the hiking backpack, we had brought it along, and we squeezed him in it when the trail got too rough.

8. Do some basic research. Which brings me to my next point: Don’t randomly pick a trail called “Devil’s Path.” A little research goes a long way, especially with kids. I’ve always found the designation of “easy” vs. “challenging” a little hard to parse out, since we all have different fitness levels and hiking experience. Reading AllTrails reviews can help clarify, since one woman’s “easy” is another woman’s “death trap.” Many reviewers specifically address what it’s like to bring kids along and how old said kids are.

Yep, going here, too! Eeee!

Do you take your kids or animals hiking? What makes it work for you? Please share any tips you might have — I’m all ears!