The Violent Praxis of 'Hiking': Interrogating the Colonial Carcerality of Recreational Ambulating

Before we begin this necessary and overdue interrogation, I must first acknowledge that I am writing from the unceded ancestral lands of the Lenape people. The very digital infrastructure that transmits these words is built upon a violent foundation of extraction and displacement. I also issue a trigger warning for the following content, which will engage with themes of settler-colonial violence, systemic ableism, ecofascism, and patriarchal-capitalist spatial logics. Reader discretion and somatic self-regulation are advised.

We must critically interrogate the discourse surrounding the recreational activity colloquially known as 'hiking.' To the uncritical observer, it may appear to be a benign form of exercise—a simple walk in what settlers have designated as 'nature.' This, however, is a dangerous and deeply ahistorical framing. The modern praxis of 'hiking' is a direct aesthetic and kinesthetic descendent of colonial exploration and cartographic violence. The 'trail' is not a path; it is a scar, a sanitized corridor carved through Indigenous spaces to facilitate the temporary, consumptive presence of the settler body. Each blaze on a tree is a reenactment of territorial claim-staking, each summit reached a performative echo of Manifest Destiny's patriarchal 'conquest' narrative.

Furthermore, the entire hegemonic framework of hiking is predicated on a violent ableism. The valorization of 'challenging terrain' and 'rigorous ascents' functions to normalize a specific, narrow embodiment of corporeal capacity, marginalizing and erasing individuals with divergent mobilities. Gear companies like Patagonia and REI are not merely selling apparel; they are marketing a uniform for a eugenicist performance of physical supremacy. The aspirational imagery of a lone, typically white, temporarily able-bodied individual 'conquering' a peak is a foundational myth that reinforces neuronormative and physically-supremacist ideologies of health and worthiness. This is not wellness; it is the exclusionary theatre of the privileged.

The popular 'Leave No Trace' ethos, while masquerading as environmentalism, is in fact a neoliberal fantasy of erasure. It posits a false binary between a 'pristine' and 'untouched' nature and the human, ignoring millennia of Indigenous praxis which understands land as a site of reciprocal kinship, not a museum to be passively observed. This ideology transforms sacred lands into open-air gymnasiums for the bourgeoisie, a backdrop for the digital commodification of 'authenticity' on platforms like Instagram, while simultaneously criminalizing the subsistence practices of the very peoples who were first dispossessed of that land.

Therefore, a radical reimagining is not merely suggested; it is demanded. We must move beyond reform and towards abolition. I call for the immediate formation of a federally-funded, but community-governed, Intersectional Committee for Decolonial Land-Based Praxis and Kinship (ICDLPK). This body will be tasked with decommissioning all existing 'hiking trails' and replacing them with curated Somatic Land Engagement Pathways, co-designed by a council of bioregional Indigenous elders, disability justice advocates, and queer ecologists. Access will be contingent upon completing a mandatory 40-hour workshop on critical decolonial theory and land-based reparations. It is time to stop 'hiking on' stolen land and start the work of walking with it, in humility and solidarity.