What are my fellow old hikers doing to adapt to the new old and slow? I am 79 and I am finding that loading up with my gear and sleeping on the ground does not work as well as it once did. I went out backpacking a couple of weeks ago and found that I am covering about 1/3 of the distance in the same time compared to what I did in the past. I hiked 8 miles because I had to get to a water source but I was beat and would have liked to have quit sooner.

I am fortunate because I live in Michigan and the North Country Trail goes right through the state. Much of the trail is on state forest land so dispersed camping is permitted on a lot of the trail. The last couple of years I have been parking my truck either in state forest campgrounds or near existing two track roads with access to the North Country Trail. I obtained a partial rear canopy which fits on the back of the truck which has a cap. This gives me a bug free space and a place to sleep on an air mattress. It allows me to cook on a two burner stove and have access to an ice chest so the eating is good. I walk one direction on the trail until I feel I have had enough and then turn around and come back to the truck to chill out and read for a while. The next day I do the same thing in the opposite direction. If I feel I want some more I move to a different spot and repeat. I have even stopped for lunch and listened to NPR for a while or read for a while before starting back.

It is not the backpacking I have done for the last 40+ years but it certainly beats soap operas on TV.