Oh, c’mon, get over yourself

I’M TOO FAT TO BE HIKING or camping.

I know this because -- aside from occasional rude comments yelled from a pickup truck window -- whenever I walk into an REI or other outdoors store, the only thing that will fit me in the women’s department will be size 9 hiking boots.

When I hike into the mountains, the desert or the meandering paths of California’s foothills, I can almost guarantee I will be the biggest person out there. I will trudge along the dusty trail in my $12.99 men’s hiking shorts, $9.99 men’s T-shirt and $185 women’s hiking boots and watch the parade of hikers walk past me.

Most are slender, even wiry, and some will look askance at me, my chunky naked legs, and I may even get the surprised once-over. I sometimes take comfort in seeing backpackers with streamlined, muscular calves and pack straps clearly delineating their soft, round bellies.

You’ve probably seen me before. Maybe you’re just like me: self-conscious, uncertain as you watch everyone stream past you on the trail. Maybe you’re not overweight; maybe you feel you’re too thin, too tall, too old, too weak.

But the same question burns in your mind: Can I do this?

And with every step you don’t know if you will or what lies ahead. And the doubts persist. Did I work out enough? Will my old injury flare up? Will I get sick again? Will I be the last one?

I recently hiked out to a remote area of the Mojave Desert near Needles, Calif., and saw a woman who was about my size standing by the trail head. I was following a group of five going up to a cave with ancient pictographs, and I had a moment’s hesitation about climbing the 1,000 feet to see it. Was it worth it?

“You heading up?” I asked the woman.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m out of shape. But you should go.”

I thought about staying with her and just letting everyone else tell me about it later, but some bothersome voice in my head kept telling me to get up there. Why else drive 2 1/2 hours on a seasonal road? Why be lazy now?

As I hiked up, I tried hard to forget about the afternoon sun beating down on me, the sweat plastering my hair to my forehead, the peach-colored rocks skinning my arms and legs as the trail grew more vertical and I climbed up into an outcropping.

I started getting winded at the first bend in the trail and began to feel defeated. I should have worked out more. I should have lost that 15 pounds. I should have brought more water.

As I came around the bend I saw the others, and the trail seem to continue straight up a wall of rocks. I felt that body-racking sigh that accompanies turning a corner and seeing the path crawl up three sprawling switchbacks.

There was no reason I couldn’t do it, I told myself. I was three-quarters there. I kept going, watching my feet find small crevices in the rock and using my upper body to pull myself along.

And that’s when I saw the cave.

Maybe you have to be fat to have the “What if?” moment I had. Because that cave was not built for anyone who can’t fit into a Patagonia Seamless Mesh Bra Top. The entrance was maybe 3 feet high and 2 1/2 feet across, and I knew the shaman who had practiced here must’ve been a slender, probably wiry man.

A small woman ahead of me sprang in and out of the opening like a cat, signaling that it was my turn. I climbed up into the cave, prayed I wouldn’t get stuck and wriggled through. Of course it was claustrophobic. Of course I had the horrible image of rangers having to yank out my wedged body.

But none of that happened. I stood up as much as I could, feeling the smooth surface of the cave against my shoulders, worn away by wind and rain. I saw the markings made by a shaman ages ago, part of them vandalized by a sneer of white paint.

“Now look to your right,” someone familiar with the site said.

I turned and looked down about 2,000 feet to the canyon floor and the blue-green snake of water running through it. I could make out violet scorpion weed, desert aster and other desert wildflowers dotting its banks.

Then I looked across from my perch in the shaman’s cave and had a bird’s-eye view of petroglyphs carved across the canyon, only visible in this particular spot of the wilderness. They appeared to be the same sun-like symbols etched into the walls of the small cave.

I climbed out with a little more care and hiked back down, again trailing the others.

“How was it?” asked the woman, waiting in a car at the trail head. “Amazing?”

I nodded. “Very much.”

Barbara E. Hernandez can be reached at outdoors@latimes.com.