High school was such a confusing time. Take sex, for instance. My friends and I, like all hormone-driven, red-blooded teenagers, used a simple baseball metaphor to talk about our sexual escapades: striking out, reaching first base, etc. It was a simple analogy, but we could never agree on all of the components. First and second were clear: kissing and anything under the shirt. Everyone agreed on that. But reaching third was open to interpretation. There were at least two solid possibilities of what third base actually meant. We spent hours in Brandon Lemke’s basement debating whether what I did with Sandy Doowater on her couch while her parents were out caroling constituted a triple or not. I insisted it was. Others said it was something else altogether, like a ground rule double.

Immature? Sure, but the open interpretations extend into adulthood. President Clinton used a similar argument to defend his relationship with a certain intern. What he and Monica did was not a home run. It was merely a stand up triple, and a standup triple, in his book, is not sex. The point is this: It’s a gray world full of gray interpretations and gray definitions. This is never more apparent than in the world of hiking. Take the Craggy Gardens Trail off the Blue Ridge Parkway. It’s a grueling 0.7-mile round trip trek with roughly 13 feet of elevation gain. Exactly 0.35 miles there, 0.35 miles back. Total elapsed time: nine minutes, including scenic gazing. It’s such a short trail that it begs the question: Is this really hiking?

I’m wearing hiking boots. I have a personal hydration system on my back. I’m walking on a trail. Nature is involved. The Craggy Gardens Trail takes me to a lookout with some of the most dramatic views along the Parkway. It even has a trail shelter, in case the weather changes during my nine minutes of total hiking time.

But my gut says, no, this is not hiking. Sure, most of the elements of hiking are there, but the trail just isn’t long enough to truly classify as hiking. In my mind, length is the determining factor. The American Heritage Dictionary agrees. According to the reference guide, a hike is, “a long walk taken for pleasure or exercise.” (Oddly enough, the dictionary has a similar definition for sex.)

So a 0.25-mile nature walk isn’t a hike. Okay. But what about a 0.9-mile walk in the woods? A 1.2-mile walk in the woods? When does a sexual act become sex and when does a walk in the woods become a hike? Is there an imaginary line somewhere that you have to cross before you can actually say to yourself, “Hey, I’m hiking?”

Can you see the gray? It’s all around us!

Matthew Davis of the Appalachian Trail Conference says to forget the gray interpretations: “A lot of people hit the A.T. for a quarter of a mile. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just as legitimate as a thru-hike. It’s all hiking in my book.”

I like Davis’ egalitarian point of view. Ultimately, it’s rather elitist of me to say that a short nature walk isn’t a hike. Who cares if you don’t traverse epic distances? Who cares if you don’t break a sweat or burn off the cheeseburger you had for lunch? What’s important is that you’re out in the woods. What’s important is that you’re stepping off the pavement and immersing yourself in nature, even if it’s only for a brief amount of time. I don’t care what my gut says-from now on, I’m gonna call the 0.7-mile Craggy Gardens Trail a hike. And to all of my friends who were in Brandon Lemke’s basement, I implore you to abandon your elitist sexual interpretations and admit to yourselves once and for all that I did, in fact, reach third base with Sandy Doowater.

Graham Averill is associate editor of Blue Ridge Outdoors. He can be reached at graham@blueridgeoutdoors.com.