The day I wrote this, October 9, I went for a hike in the San Gabriel mountains in southern California. That morning, the newspapers reported that Obama would announce the designation of a part of these mountains as a National Monument.

The range is currently a National Forest, and the new designation will mean more funds for the Forest Service to deal with the large number of visitors the mountains get — 3 million annually.

Apart from improving access, such as better signage and information areas, it’s hoped that there will be more environmental protection, especially to reduce problems of trash, graffiti and overcrowding.

My hike was planned before the news, but I decided to extend it by way of celebration. After all, my wife and I love these mountains — even after just a day at the beach, we’re so happy to return to their comforting fold. My hike that day was 16-km and about 900m of elevation gain, so there was a cardio workout on the way up, and a muscular workout on the way down. (The great mental challenge of hiking is that descents aren’t easier than ascents, completely unlike bicycling where descending is one of the great well-earned joys of life).

I’m often in the San Gabriel mountains, but nearly always on the paved roads. Hiking on the trails is like being kicked off the double-decker tour bus and left in the middle of a strange city — everything looms overhead and you suddenly feel small and alone.

On the main road, if you have a debilitating leg cramp, you abort the ride and coast back down, or even stop and hitch a ride. But 8-km into the wilderness on a foot-wide trail, there are few options, even if there are passers-by. What would I do, get a piggy back ride? Also scary is that a lot of the trail has “exposure”, or steep drop-offs along it. These are made less dizzying by the vegetation, but it also means that if you slide off, you’ll be hidden from view almost instantly.

In the three hours or so of my weekday hike, I passed around 10 people — which is a lot or very few depending on your opinion of what wilderness should be. There were times when I was completely alone,with the woods almost closing in around me, the large grey squirrels startling me with their noise. (With every snick and crackle comes the reminder that this is a bear country.)

Four deer

Luckily, the biggest mammals I saw were four deer on the path ahead, looking towards me with comically pricked ears before retreating downslope into the canyon.

The combination of beauty, nature, isolation, mild fear and exercise is a dose of humility and happiness. By the end of the 16-km hike, though my legs and feet were hurting, I was all but skipping along, swinging my bottle as I went.

The troubled thoughts with which I’d begun the hike had been left on the mountain slopes, and any move to protect spaces such as these fill me with even more happiness. A lot of people think of America as the land of commercial opportunity and materialism; I think of it as the land of wide open spaces and incredible natural beauty.

It’s true that the Forest Department isn’t anywhere near perfect (a read of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods will relieve you of that misapprehension), but I feel blessed to have a backyard National Monument to remind me of my place in the world: not that I’m important and loved, but that I’m just another creature, just another blip.

Gautam Raja is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, US.