MONTHLY CHALLENGE

The Hiking Gene

Wandering with mom, wondering at the world

Mum sitting on my sister’s lap and me on the right, on a lovely day in Estonia. All photos by author.

I owe my love of a good stroll to my mum. Ever since I was little, she dragged my twin sister and I with her, whether it was just a round in the small town we lived at, or a longer ramble across the meadows with birch trees and bees playing their harmonicas in the summer sun.

Growing up in post-Soviet Estonia in the 90s, there was only so much to entertain us with. She might of started doing this as a means to tire us out, my sister and I constantly going to her with complaints of boredom, but traipsing in nature stuck to us like marmalade squeezed from tube.

Once, when we were following her on another trek across the moorland right behind our block of flats, we came across a secret river. It wasn’t really secret, of course, but the way the branches of the thick trees nearly covered the sandy shore, it definitely did seem like we’d come across something no one else knew existed.

We quickly stripped to our swimsuits always underneath our clothes in readiness of a good dunk. Pisces by sign, Pisces by nature. We jumped into the bracing cold water, shrieking loudly. Even mum walked in with measured steps and waded through the stream.