Psychology and ways of crossing a stream

Trail understanding, psychology and design thoughts by Frits Ahlefeldt – See all hiking illustrations here

Hiking as real time choices

Text and concept sketch by Frits Ahlefeldt. Hiking.org

There are more than one way of crossing a stream – and both our strategies, personality and experience plays a part in what we prefer and choose. Some want to go safe, others want the challenge, or the experience of moving through a different world, feeling the water.

Often we don’t even know what or how we want to cross before we are there, standing in front of the challenge. It can surprise both us and our fellow hikers how we decide to approach it in real time… and it can help us understand both our selves and others in new perspectives.

Trails can be designed to give more than one option and in this way facilitate different choices and help make different strategies, we all use, more visible. And in this way hiking together can be a great way to get to know each other.

The crossing the stream drawing is part of hiking.org research of ways to understand, why and how to design, build and maintain hiking trails