A cool fresh mountain breeze. The slow trickle of a quiet brook. The soothing song of a bird.

These are things mostly unknown to someone like myself. For the most part I spend my time indoors, where it’s safe and climate controlled. No bugs, no rain, no worries.

However, the call of the wild does beckon – to other people. More than a few friends of mine have heeded this call and dragged me along with them to explore the beauty of nature.

This rarely ends well for me or nature.

Consider one of my last excursions into the wilderness. A couple of years ago, some friends convinced me to join them on an afternoon hike. Nice and easy, they promised me, nice and easy.

Liars. And I would have told them that, but after the first mile I was too tired to speak such a complicated word. I was too tired to think, I was too tired to breathe. All I wanted to do was stop.

So, we kept on hiking … for four more miles.

This incident has become known as “The Death March.” It was not pleasant.

It’s not that I lacked encouragement. My friends kept cheering me on. “C’mon Will, it’s just a little bit farther.” After an hour of this I realized I had a radically different definition of “little bit farther” than they did.

Soon the hike deteriorated into my friends walking ahead of me at a normal pace, then waiting for me to catch up. As soon as I reached them, they set off again. This routine allowed them to stay well-rested. Meanwhile, I was dying.

For four miles.

It was one of the worst days of my life. (Four miles!)

There and back againThat event (and many other unfortunate escapades) demonstrated to me how out of shape I am. During the last year I’ve made a concerted effort to exercise, and things have improved for me. So, when I got another chance to go hiking, I jumped at it.

This time it was with a different group of hikers on a different trail. I handled the trail with ease. It was a glorious day with good food and good company.

Very unique company at that. Among the dozen hikers were several with Scottish accents (one could alternate between a Southern, English and Scottish accent) and a young hobbit.

A young girl named Megan had earned the moniker of “Frodo” because she bore an uncanny resemblance to the hobbit hero of the recently released movie “Fellowship of the Ring.”

Her flowing green cloak and ability to gracefully leap from rock to rock only completed the image. (Hobbits, if you did not know, are very agile creatures.)

Frodo also had the tendency to wander off, and after I managed to resist the temptation to snatch the ring off the chain around her neck and shout:

“One ring to rule them all,

“One ring to find them,

“One ring to bring them all,

“And in the darkness bind them.”

I realized I should probably keep an eye on her and fend off any marauding orcs that might accost the Ringbearer. So I followed her around as she explored the splash-pool near the trailhead.

This became an interesting game of follow the leader. I mean interesting for her. She certainly enjoyed watching me try to keep up with her as she scrambled over rocks and through dense foliage.

Finally, she scrambled up a rock wall about five or six feet high. Her nimble hobbit feet easily found purchase, but my troll-like self couldn’t find so much as a single toehold.

I had just hiked miles through the mountains, scaled steep trails, gazed down into deep gorges. There was no way I was going to let some pipsqueak of a wall stop me. Ah, silly me.

Muscles straining, I pulled myself up that wall. The only thing I could hear (besides alarming popping noises in my arms) was my German weight-training instructor shouting “use your sitz bones.”

As my eighth-of-a-ton bulk began to clear the top of the wall, I only wished I knew what a sitz bone was.

In the end, I made it. Just barely. As I collapsed in a heap, Frodo checked to make sure I was OK. Then scampered along the rock wall for a few feet and jumped back down.

I decided I could watch her just as easily from where I was lying.

Will Koenig is a copy editor for The Daily Astorian and plans on hitting the trails again, just as soon as he finishes studying up on hobbit lore.