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The above paragraphs were written in response to an increasingly popular outdoor hobby (or is it a sport, a practice, a philosophy, a price system, a recreation cult, a mass Kool-Aid binge?) referred to by the acronym FKT, short for fastest known time. When you haven’t heard of FKT, well, presumably the cave you reside in is a snug, comfortable domicile. Very simply: Self-propelled endurance freaks—primarily runners, though also cyclists and ski-mountaineering devotees and gonzo alpinists—push themselves on established routes, racing against the clock, the terrain, previous FKT holders, future FKT aspirants, and their very own impending meltdowns. In line with the rules page on the location Fastest Known Time, the official FKT clearinghouse, archive, and stoke repository launched as an internet forum within the mid-2000s, a route must be notable, distinct, and repeatable to merit inclusion. [Editor’s note: Outside Inc., the parent company of Outside magazine, purchased Fastest Known Time in early 2022.] Examples include the two,189-mile Appalachian Trail, or Japan’s 272-mile Shiga Round Trail, or South Africa’s 24-mile Otter Trail. A woman named Catherine Weiner apparently dashed to the summit of Camel’s Hump via the Burrows Trail in 49 minutes and 36 seconds, a staggering 15 and a half hours quicker than my slo-mo ascent. We are able to’t all be champions.

Folks have likely chased speed for countless millennia (the joyous agonizing Cro-Magnon rush) and John Muir was hardly the primary fuddy-duddy to criticize the speedy folks when he said, with contempt in his voice, “People should saunter within the mountains—not hike!” It’s a hoary refrain, forged some ways: Stop and smell the roses. How gross to cut back nature to your ego’s Indy 500. This behavior is symptomatic of a sickness at the guts of our species, a sickness exacerbated by mechanized industrial society’s infatuation with efficiency, busyness, competition, linear measurement, Fitbits, Twitter, blah, blah, blah. I want to avoid that entire rat’s nest, er, debate and limit my comments to the real challenge and delight of going slime-mold slow, tectonic-plate slow, drowsy-manatee slow. Pace is a key chain with dozens of unique keys, each of which opens a secret door within the land. Pedal to the metal? Dragging ass? Who could ever select one over the opposite?

My recent trip up Camel’s Hump wasn’t fiction. I actually did spend 16-plus hours covering fewer than three miles, and it really did bring me to the physical-mental edge, and I actually am pleased with myself. The elemental elements of classic burly wilderness adventure were present: The SKT demanded a bunch of energy and energy and calories. It was a test of my fortitude, my wherewithal. The consequence wasn’t a foregone conclusion, i.e., failing to summit remained a possibility to the tip. Style mattered, each ethic and aesthetic. And most vital, primal shivering contact with the environment was mandatory. Key in lock—click—the door swung open, revealing raptors, fungi, an emptiness of blue sky, a knife cut of starlight, frigid gusts, sudden stillness. Sensory overload.

Camel’s Hump isn’t the one place where the important thing has clicked. From Atlantic beaches to southwestern deserts—from the Cascades to the Tetons to the Adirondacks—I’ve experimented with extreme slowness, notching SKTs along the way in which. My Rim-to-Rim on the Grand Canyon was molasses. My Grays-Torreys traverse in Colorado was honey oozing from the jar. Don’t even ask for the story of my trek within the Olympic Peninsula’s Hoh Valley—it could take eternally to inform.

I can’t recall when exactly this quirky pastime began—after fifth grade, definitely, as my childhood was all sugar and bouncy balls and Mach-5 exuberance—but a Saturday afternoon in San Francisco, back in my twenties, marks the moment when the concept crystalized and I clearly grasped the magic of slowness. I used to be living at the middle of the town (a dirtbag nature boy will do strange, torturous things for the love of an excellent urban woman) and the claustrophobia of concrete heaped upon concrete was threatening to suffocate me. Dreaming of the Sierra Nevada and the Lost Coast, of the getaway automotive I didn’t possess, I bolted for the Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve, an 80-acre grove of eucalyptus tucked behind a hospital complex, three miles from my apartment and smack-dab in the course of the town. Green scent, green light, green mood, green freedom… ahhh.

Nope. The relief was ephemeral, because inside an hour I’d strolled out of the eucalyptus and into yet one more neighborhood of wailing ambulance sirens and latte-sipping yuppies. Instinctively, I spun on my heels and reentered the grove, with no plan but determined to one way or the other extend the green.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.

Step.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale.

Step.

How’s the expression go? Scorn for latte-sipping yuppies is the mother of invention? Five breaths at a time, I moved up the trail. Five breaths at a time, the 52 delicate bones in my feet absorbed the micro topography. Five breaths at a time, my spine tingled with electric signals that appeared to emanate from the soil. Five breaths at a time, I adjusted to a radically unhurried rhythm and a thrillingly fresh awareness.

A snail dropped me to all fours. I zoomed in. A fog-dragon rattled branches in the cover. I zoomed out.

Inhale, exhale.

Step.

I stayed within the grove until dusk, going nowhere, traveling far.