Spring means one thing to a hiker. It’s time to get outdoors and tramp some trails. The early sun, warm temperatures and long days create an irresistible urge to be out there.

You may find yourself spending a half-day on a moderate hike in Acadia or all day climbing a bigger mountain like Bigelow. Either way, you might not realize you are actively pursuing a goal – finishing what you have started.

It’s one of those little life lessons hiking teaches. It’s also the most obvious parallel to life. You can’t reach a goal until you’ve taken that first step toward it.

Most hikers probably don’t think of themselves as goal oriented – at least in the beginning. Hiking a trail even seems contrary to what people associate with an accomplishment. “Going for a hike” sounds carefree and aimless, the opposite of achieving a goal. Then, over time, maybe in a single season, you make the connection between starting on a hike and reaching the top of a mountain as progression toward the goal, the summit.

For some, getting to the top is the only thing that matters. It’s not, it’s just one thing to achieve. If you become focused on topping out just to see the views, you miss all those small achievements along the way that got you there. You might overlook the fact that hiking back uninjured, while still having fun, is just as important as the summit. Getting outdoors should be the goal in itself.

But if you must bag peaks, then Maine is a great place to start.

Maine has 14 of the 4,000-footers in New England, according to the Appalachian Mountain Club’s official list. The total number of peaks over 4,000 feet in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire is 67. Hikers try to climb them all to get official recognition from the AMC. Some take their whole lives, setting their goal as just finishing the list. Others, overachievers, try to “bag” them all in a few years or a single season. Still others hike them all in winter to be recognized. Anyone who sets those as goals is certainly ambitious and noteworthy.

For those of us with less lofty goals, it might be enough to climb the same mountain once every year. That’s what thousands of hikers do who climb Katahdin every summer. Over several years, one man from Millinocket has climbed it more than 200 times. If his goal has been to see everything the mountain has to show, he definitely has achieved it. I’m sure it’s not the only mountain he’s climbed in Baxter State Park and elsewhere.

Not everyone is cut out for hiking mountains. Some hikers like lakeshore, river walks, short coastal hikes or low hills. They hike miles by circuits and loops and never climb a mountain. The goal for them is not a high peak but a linear accumulation of events. A river crossing, like the one on the hike into Gulf Hagas, adds to their concept of achievement. For them, moments of experience mean success. Sighting a moose on a remote trail with no one else around for miles marks such a moment.

Other hikers prefer to just log miles on day hikes or overnight backpacking trips. To them it’s all about the miles, up mountains and down, river valley or not. There’s a guy from Bangor who hikes every trail in Acadia every year. That’s 125 miles a year just in Acadia. He writes it down on a map, then gets a new one the next year. He then goes to Baxter State Park to hike every trail there. All on day hikes.

One benefit to setting goals that may not seem so obvious, at least as a benefit, is how you react when you don’t achieve them – like when a climb to the top of a big mountain turns bad. Say the weather gets ugly, then you have to turn around because there’s just no point in going farther. Then the goal has to shift to making the most of your time on the trip. If the idea had been all along to just have fun, no matter what, you’d have found a way to achieve it.

Goals in hiking, as you can tell by now, are individual. They are as varied as the hikers who set them. When it comes to setting your goals, start simple. Keep a yearly log of your miles, it’s the best way to track your progress toward reaching those goals, sort of like a map. In fact, use a map to write the dates of the trails you’ve hiked and you’ll have a handy reference the next time you go. When the map gets unreadable, due to all the dates you’ve written on it, it will be time to get a new map.

When you’re filling out the log, a spring bound notebook, guidebook or map, try to recount the little things that made the hike eventful. Describe wildlife sightings, weather conditions, the people you hiked with and the places you stayed. Along with the pictures you take, you’ll have a record of the goals you’ve set and made.

People find as many ways to set goals for themselves as there is variety in the outdoors. Backpackers count up their nights at the end of the season and miles hiked. Whether it’s miles hiked, nights out, peaks bagged or day hikes, it all adds up to the big goal of getting outdoors more. After all, most of us will never climb Everest, the biggest hiking objective of all. Even so, the outdoors anywhere is home to a host of smaller, but no less important or meaningful, achievements than climbing Everest. It’s really all about the hike.

Brad Viles is an avid hiker who has logged some 8,000 lifetime miles, including the Appalachian Trail. A trail maintainer for the Maine Appalachian Trail Club he has climbed Mount Katahdin more than 75 times. He can be reached at sball1@ prexar. Com]