I’ve been eaten alive by blackflies in Newfoundland and faced dehydration in the Australian Outback, but right now it’s the baby kicking my ass. Two years ago, at four months pregnant, I struggled to summit a minor hill in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. My body was already working as hard as a mountain climber’s on the inside; the semi-steep hike was forcing it to do double-duty, and I didn’t even have a Snickers bar handy.

I thought it would get easier after my son was born. Babies are portable, right? Just strap him in a snazzy carrier and troop up any mountain you like. But the life of an outdoorsperson looks a whole lot different when even going for a run involves night-before planning and an intimate relationship with an alarm clock. And, I realized recently while planning hikes for our vacation in Montana in August, there’s a limit to how vertical your mountain scrambles can get when you’ve got a 30-pound toddler strapped on your back.

When the logistics of adventuring with a baby really come home, it’s easy to look back on your energetic outdoor past as simply that: the past. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Sometimes, the more adventurous the traveler, the more independent the adventurer, the harder it is to make an adjustment to an outdoor life with kids. The very attractions of going — being alone on a mountain, pushing yourself further and harder on every kayak trip — are nonexistent when you’ve got kids in tow. For someone raised in Montana’s wide-open outdoors though, as I was, the prospect of staying put, or staying only in hotels, is not an option.

It’s easy to focus on what you lose when kids come along. But in a society where Nature Deficit Disorder is becoming a diagnosable problem in children, those of us who live and breath the outdoors have a duty to make sure our progeny get the bug, too.

And that means starting young. My son has already been carried on minor walks in the Alps near Vienna, Austria, and near where we live in New York’s Hudson Valley. Near two now, he’s going to have his first series of longer hikes during a two-week trip to Montana in August. In preparation, I’ve begun carrying him on hour-long walks to the post office and back, and let me tell you, he’s heavy. It’s hard, and the prospect of carrying him uphill for several hours is daunting. Am I nervous? Sure. Is he going to puke on my head? It’s happened. Will he throw a fit? Too probable. Since he can hardly crunch muesli bars, what am I going to pack for him to eat?

The adventures don’t have to stop when the baby arrives. Maybe it’s just the gear that changes, and the time. There aren’t going to be any 14-hour mountain climbs in my near future. Sippy cups, diapers, and tons of crackers take their pack space, and my own back is spoken for. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up. Hell, no, my boy’s going to grow up loving hiking if it kills me.