When I first began hiking the trails of the Four Beasts, I generally wore my trusty AirPods to listen to podcasts and audio books. Nowadays, I don’t even bother to bring them with me because I have come to prefer taking in the sounds of the birds and animals in the surrounding bushes and trees. What a difference a year makes!
Looking back, I suspect that one of the reasons I kept my AirPods on was to shield myself from the unfamiliar physical grind of slogging up step after concrete step. I also view it as a sign that I was not quite mentally ready to embrace the challenge. It was only as I became more confident in my fitness and strength that I was able to throw off my AirPod shackles so to speak and open myself up to the full experience of simply being on the mountainside. Continue reading Notes from the field: throwing off my AirPod shackles