Hikes Tomorrow?

How a hiking community changed the weekends of a father and his autistic son

By Joe Brown

On December 17, 2023, I shared a few photos on the Hike WNY Facebook page from a recent hike with my 14-year-old son, Matthew, at Chestnut Ridge’s Eternal Flame Trail.

It wasn’t a remarkable post. I mentioned that Matthew is autistic, that short hikes around Western New York had quietly become “our thing,” and that he was usually lobbying me for post-hike ice cream before we even made it back to the car. I also admitted that I was looking for ideas to gradually challenge him with longer and more difficult hikes in the coming year.

I expected a few trail recommendations.

Instead, I found a community.

That post received more than 540 reactions and 32 comments, far more than I ever expected. Several hikers suggested that Matthew and I sign up for the Western New York Winter Hiking Challenge.

At the time, that felt almost comical.

We weren’t winter hikers.

We didn’t own hiking boots. We had never used trekking poles or microspikes. Snow-covered trails were something I admired from other people’s photos—not something I imagined my autistic son and I would be doing together.

Fortunately, Santa came through. Matthew and I each received new hiking boots and trekking poles for Christmas, and a few days later we started our first Winter Hiking Challenge.

Neither of us realized we were beginning something that would change our lives.

That winter we explored trails we had never visited before—Franklin Gulf, Eighteen Mile Creek, the Erie County Bureau of Forestry, Emery Park, Artpark State Park, and several others. By the end of the season, we had completed ten challenge hikes.

But the real accomplishment had nothing to do with patches or checklists.

It was what happened between the hikes.

During the week, Matthew started asking me the same question.

“Hikes tomorrow?”

Sometimes every day until the weekend arrived.

Preparing for the hike became part of the hike itself. Boots appeared by the door. The backpack came out of the closet. Apple juice boxes were packed without being asked.

And, almost always, there was one more item on the agenda.

Ice cream.

Somewhere along the way, the day developed its own predictable rhythm.

Go hiking.

Get ice cream.

In the winter, when many of our favorite ice cream stands were closed, hot chocolate at Tim Hortons quietly took its place.

Eventually Matthew gave the routine a name of his own.

“Go hikes. Ice cream.”

Four simple words that somehow described an entire day.

As the months passed, something else changed.

Matthew was nonverbal for much of his early childhood, and even today his spoken language is limited. But hiking has become one of the subjects we talk about most. Planning where we’ll go, checking the weather, talking about trails, and, of course, deciding where to get ice cream afterward have become a regular part of our conversations. Watching hiking become part of his vocabulary has been one of the unexpected gifts of this journey.

We stopped being occasional hikers and started becoming people who hiked almost every weekend. We moved from visiting a handful of familiar trails to exploring parks and forests throughout Western New York, gradually taking on longer distances and more challenging terrain.

Since that first season, we’ve completed three Winter Hiking Challenges and two regular Hiking Challenges. I’m proud of the patches we’ve earned together, but I don’t think that’s what Matthew remembers. He seems just as excited about a two-mile nature trail as he is about a mountain. What he loves is the adventure itself—and the chance to spend another day exploring with his dad.

People often ask me what hiking has done for Matthew.

The better question is probably what it has done for both of us.

I don’t think I’m the first father to discover that taking his autistic son hiking is a wonderful way to spend a Saturday.

But I do know what it has meant for our family.

The trail asks very little of Matthew. He can move at his own pace, flap his hands when he’s excited, repeat the phrases that bring him comfort, or break into a brief run when the moment feels right. In the woods, those things don’t stand out. They simply become part of the landscape. Hiking has given him a place where he can be fully and authentically himself.

It gave me a chance to stop measuring progress and simply enjoy being with my son.

And it gave us a routine that became something much deeper than recreation.

Over time, I kept sharing our adventures on Hike WNY.

People began recognizing Matthew from our posts. They asked where we had hiked. They wanted to know about trail conditions. And almost inevitably, someone wanted to know where we went for ice cream afterward.

Then messages started arriving from other parents.

One mother recently wrote, “Thanks for sharing all your adventures! You inspired me to give hiking a try with my guy on the spectrum and it’s been a great outlet for him that we’re really enjoying together.”

That may be my favorite comment I’ve ever received.

Because that was never the goal.

The goal was never to inspire anyone.

It was simply to spend time with my son.

Looking back, I’m grateful that one Facebook post led a community of hikers to encourage us to try the Winter Hiking Challenge.

They probably thought they were recommending a few good trails.

What they really gave us was a new way of spending our weekends—and, in many ways, a new way of understanding each other.

Even now, the question still comes sometime during the week.

“Hikes tomorrow?”

Most of the time, the answer is yes.

Author Bio

Joe Brown is a father, employment attorney, and President of the Summit Center Foundation Board of Directors. He and his 16-year-old autistic son, Matthew, have spent the past several years exploring the trails of Western New York together, documenting their adventures through the Hike WNY community. Joe is currently writing a memoir about fatherhood, autism, and the unexpected ways connection can grow through hiking.