Walkabout

A long time ago, many years before I fully understood distances and their relation to time, I accepted my older brother's invitation to go with him on a hike to try and find the wallet that he had dropped somewhere along a motorcycle trek that he and his friend had undertaken the day before. At some point during the conversation, the words "seven miles" were spoken. As I mentioned before, this didn't mean much to me.
By the time I had finished this lengthy walk in God's country, I had a more full and complete understanding of how many steps that was, especially on my little pre-teen feet. My older brother was a Boy Scout, and he had a sense, I believe of what we were trying to do. Never mind that the wallet might have been a pine needle in the forest we were wandering through. He had made the trip the day before on two wheels. All we had to do was retrace those tire tracks and we were certain to find something.
We packed up our Army Surplus packs in the morning: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chips, a bag of cookies, and a canteen of water for each of us. My mother and younger brother watched us stride purposely off down the driveway of our cabin that morning, with no real sense of when we might see one another again.
For the rest of the day, I followed my brother over hill and over dale. Down dirt roads and dusty trails. When we finally reached the end of Gross Reservoir, we understood that we had only gone half way. The chirpy energy that I left with was gone as we ate our lunch. There was no wallet, and there was a return trip home. When we packed up our trash and started to walk again, my pack somehow felt heavier now that it was empty. I became aware of every little blister and scrape that I had managed to ignore up until noon.
I was surprised how familiar everything looked going back the other way, but it didn't make me resent it any less. The sun was high and our canteens were becoming empty. By the time we finally dragged ourselves back up on our front porch, most of a day had passed. There wasn't much of a story to tell at dinner that night, and when we went upstairs to bed it was only a matter of moments before we dropped off to sleep.
That was the first time I learned what seven miles feels like. Years later, when my father asked me if I wanted to run with him in a ten-kilometer race, I asked him how far that was "really." He told me it was six point two miles. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I figured that I once hiked fourteen, how hard could that be? Funny how time can change your perspective on distance.