Diane Soini, Sierra Club hike leader and the owner of www.santabarbarahikes.com, tells how hiking changed her life. Will it change your life, too?

I started hiking because a friend of mine was going to go to Nepal and invited me to come with her. She frightened me with tales of steep trails in Nepal and the high altitude. Completely out of shape and at least 35 pounds overweight, I decided I’d better start training. Good thing I had a year to get in shape.

First I tried running, but I could only go around the block before I was out of breath. I changed to walking the stadium steps at City College, repeating my mantra to keep going: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Eventually, I started hiking on Tunnel and Cold Springs Trails a couple of times a week. On bad weather days, or on days I didn’t hike the trails, I would invent “urban hikes,” anywhere from a mile to five miles long.

Some weekends, I would carry a backpack up to my friend’s rustic cabin near the top of Tunnel Trail. While there, I would read her books about Nepal and mountain climbing, and look at her singing bowl, silk painting and other Nepalese things.

My diet changed, too. One day I walked down the cookie aisle in the supermarket and realized I already knew what all those cookies tasted like, so I really didn’t need to eat them anymore. I gave up sugar and between-meal snacks. I ate more vegetables. I still ate fast food, making huge salads from the salad bar or indulging in a burger and fries.

My newfound power and strength encouraged me. I lost more than 30 pounds. More than that, I gained a confidence in my imperfect body and its strengths and weaknesses. I felt I knew what it took to physically survive great challenges. I was ready for Nepal.

My friend canceled her trip to Nepal. I would have to go by myself. I joined the local Sierra Club hikes, met a guy and we went to Nepal together.

Nepal was an amazing adventure. Imagine being at 18,000 feet, your lungs clawing for every breath, and still towering above you, 10,000 feet higher, are the mountains! All around you are the music and smells of rural life, hot milk tea, and colorful bazaar markets.

I’d journeyed my 1,000 miles but Nepal was only one stop along the way. More adventures awaited me.

Through the Sierra Club hikes. I’d learned about most of the local trails, and through my boyfriend I started learning about computers. I bought a computer and decided I’d teach myself to build web sites. I created Santa Barbara Hikes Web site, at first just a page listing the Sierra Club hike schedule for Santa Barbara.

Over the years, the site has grown. I hiked, measured and took notes on more than 40 local trails and wrote up descriptions and directions to the trailhead. I took pictures of wildflowers and created a database of their Latin and common names. I keep a Web log of periodic hiking adventures. There is a forum for people to talk about the trails and their own adventures.

Along my journey, I decided that being active is not about measuring out my daily dose of physical movement and balancing it out against my daily calories, electrolytes or vitamins. That seems like taking medicine to me. Being active is simply being fully alive, being open to adventure and new paths in life.