To continue staying away from mainstream sports I am going to talk to you about the sport that is hardly considered a sport at all, this is backpacking.

Most People at some point in their lives travel, want to travel, or wish they could travel. My advice to those who want to go out and not look back is to put a backpack on your shoulders and go conquer your land and find your freedom. I myself have never gone on such a quest, It as always been a desire that I've had and many times the urge hit for me to pack a bag, put on a comfortable pair of boots and just go and see where the road takes you.

I believe that deep down inside of every human being there is a desire to see what's beyond the horizon. When I was about 20 I took a trip to Alberta, a trip that I didn't want to make but had to in order to find work. It was in late spring, just about the time it starts to get hot. I found myself a job in landscaping and worked my ass off every day for 4 months straight. One of my co-workers was from Alberta himself and was about the same age as me too. During the hot summer days we would discuss travel and where we would love to go when we actually got the chance. Being in Alberta the most logical and cheapest trip would be to see the Rocky Mountains. It was about mid-August month before the two of us finally decided that we could no longer do back breaking labor in the hot sun. We left work early in the afternoon packed our bags and hit the road! Our first destination was Calgary, this would be our "home" for the next 4 days seeing we had friends there and it was more convenient than making camping arrangements (plus we wanted to check out the night life in Calgary too!)

Anyway, back to the topic of backpacking. On our trip we took the easy way out and drove where ever we wanted to go and always came back to home base in the night. This was due to the fact that our trip was only four days and there are hundreds of miles of mountains to see! Once out to the first park I have to say it was the most exhilarating feeling that I ever had in my life (next to visiting New York, but that's a different story). We hiked all day looking over crystal blue lakes and up over hills and mountains with some of the best scenery in the world surrounding us 360 degrees. It was an experience that changed my life forever and I owe it all to the sport of backpacking. It's rewards are much deeper than any sport can offer, and much greater than any trophy. It's in a class of it's own.

-Lestat