Weekend hike at Bernie's
On the trail with Vermont's stalwart Senator
Maybe it’s the chaos of the current moment and the feeling that we could wake up to world-shattering news any day now, but lately I’ve been thinking about opportunities not taken and the regret that can haunt you. The Simpsons, easily one of the most instructive texts of our time, sketched out this all-too-human dilemma in the Season 5 episode “Deep Space Homer.” Homer is selected by NASA to take part in a mission that involves sending an unqualified Average Joe into space—to improve their launch ratings on the major TV networks. Naturally Homer has second thoughts and when he calls Marge in a panic from Cape Canaveral, she urges him to think hard about how he might feel if he bailed. “You could end up regretting it for the rest of your life,” she says.
”You’re right, Marge,” Homer replies. “It’s just like the time I could have met Mr. T at the mall. The entire day I kept saying, “I’ll go a little later…I’ll go a little later,” and when I got there, they told me he’d just left. And when I asked the mall guy if he would ever come back again, he said he didn’t know.”
About a week ago, I came close to having a “Mr. T at the Mall” moment of my own. My friend, housemate, and hiking buddy, Katie Metzger clued me into a special event that she had learned about some proper Instragram lurking. On June 14th, as a corollary of the No Kings protests against Donald Trump’s cruelty and corruption, Bernie Sanders and his Vermont staff were leading a free community hike along the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail; a gorgeous multi-use path that runs across the northern Highlands of the state. (We’ve been there via Mind The Moss before.) This unexpected news made me go saucer-eyed for a few reasons. I volunteered on both of Sanders’ presidential campaigns and in general, I’ve admired his willingness to aim higher and encourage others to have more ambitious vision of a future; which feels severely lacking on the center-left side of the aisle these days. I’ve also felt that community hikes—which I often lead in Boston—are a unique form of social engagement that politicians can theoretically adopt. But the revelation that this Bernie Sanders hike was taking place on the doorstep of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom in Morristown was the chef’s kiss.
I have to go, I thought, forgetting that I had to be back in Boston for a Sunday morning engagement. And as I remembered my prior commitments, I realized that heading up to northern Vermont for the Saturday hike would mean spending a ton of time in a car, for an event that probably wouldn’t last longer than two hours. My excitement began waning and I felt the gravitational pull of being able to sleep in on Saturday morning before venturing out to the Pride celebrations and the No Kings protests happening across Boston that day. But even as the rationale for staying home felt more practical, I still couldn’t shake the hunch that I was walking away from a once-in-a-lifetime event. In the end, I shut off the practical side of my brain, grabbed my boots, and drove north.
Now that I’m back, I’m going to tell you what it’s like to go hiking with Bernie Sanders.
