My father's philosophy of hiking can be summed up thusly: If there's no fish at the end of the trail, what's the point? He did his very best to instill his beliefs in me, but he clearly failed. And that's why I found myself on Mailbox Peak.
Mailbox is the very antithesis of my father's ideal trail. It's steep. It's boring. It's cold. Most of all, there are exactly zero places to fish on the mountain. Dad would not have been impressed.
And yet, there I was. One foot in front of the other. Crunching through the ice and snow. Wheezing. Sweating. Freezing. With no fish in sight.
At least there was dopamine. Sweet, sweet dopamine just waiting for me on the summit. The chemical reward for accomplishing a goal doled out by the brain. It's what keeps me going back.
In fact, it's not disimilar to the feeling when you land a fish. "Job well done," says the brain. "You did it!" The big difference is that the purpose of the dopamine reward when catching a fish is to encourage you to find food. Standing on the summit has no such purpose. Of course, I don't eat fish so maybe the two aren't that different after all.
Who knows? Maybe I'll trick Dad into climbing Mailbox by telling him it's just like catching a fish. Nah. He's far too smart for that.
