My inspiration for declaring this year “The Year of The Hiker” came from attending a stirring performance of a play by the same name during the waning days of The Year of the Rat (2008) at the Banshee Theater in Burbank.

John B. Keene’s The Year of the Hiker has been a classic in the playwright’s native Ireland ever since it debuted in the early 1960s, but is rarely staged in the United States.

Here’s the set-up: After twenty years of wandering, “The Hiker” Lacey returns home looking for forgiveness and a place to die from the family he abandoned. On the day his daughter is to be married, he lurches back into her life and the lives of his two sons, long-suffering wife and bitter sister-in-law. As first introduced, The Hiker is a character of the worst sort. We’ve all seen hikers poorly portrayed in the various media—as goofy gals and macho guys, as crazed survivalists and tender-footed nincompoops, but The Hiker in the play, “The Year of The Hiker,” has got to be the worst hiker ever. Or is he? We gradually learn just how devastated family members have been by The Hiker’s absence.

Responsible older son Joe lost his idol and lost out on his childhood by having to become the man in the family way too soon. Wife Kate withered in isolation and shame. To the rural citizens of County Cork, The Hiker is at once a figure of scorn, grudging admiration and even myth. Neighbors even mark time by The Year of The Hiker. As The Hiker, speaking of his son Sime, the veterinarian, put it: He'll be examining a cow some day and he'll ask the owner how old it is and the owner will say: 'I'm not too sure but she was born in The year of The Hiker.'

Why did The Hiker leave? Well, we never really learn exactly why, and are left with more questions than answers. Did wanderlust overpower this hiker’s good sense?

Was the call of the wild Irish hills and shores just too irresistible? Was it the domestic disharmony caused by live-in sister-in-law, Frieda, coming between Lacy and his wife Kate that caused him to hit the road and never come back? Was it mere pride, the undoing of many a man or woman in Irish tragedy or Greek tragedy?

The universal tragedy of the prideful from every country and culture? Although driven to near madness by gut-wrenching loneliness and despair over what he has done, The Hiker does not cease his wandering and head for home. That is, until he’s dying. The tragedy is not that The Hiker went wandering to find himself, but that once having found himself he didn’t come back and share his greater evolved self with those dearest to him. “Men are born to wander,” declares The Hiker.

Surely we can understand this sentiment. “Wandering was my disease,” opines The Hiker. We modern hikers might disagree with The Hiker on that one; certainly wandering per se is not a disease. Today’s hikers have a more tolerant view of wandering and like to wear T-shirts with the J.R.R. Tolkien quote: “Not all those who wander are lost.” It’s fair to ask: Why bother examining The Hiker Lacy? Certainly he’s not a hiker like you, not a hiker like me, not a hiker like anyone we know.

Psychologists and mythologists say it’s good for us to take a hard look at the very darkest side of our beings. Before we can share the joy of hiking and the light it brings into our lives, perhaps we need to come to terms with The Hiker’s dark side. If we’re honest, we can admit that at least one time in our lives difficult relationships with friends, kids, mothers-in-law, boy friends, girl friends and spouses have made us want to go screaming into the woods and take a very long hike. Fortunately, we usually return restored after a day or weekend of hiking, ready to face city life and domestic challenges.

The Year of The Hiker is an excellent play—tragedy mixed with the brilliant Irish wit. Playwright Keene, a barkeep at a pub in the early days of his writing career, has quite the ear for dialogue and brings out all the nuances of rage and repression, flickering hope and biting sarcasm. If you ever have the chance to see “The Year of the Hiker,” do so. In the meantime, we need to remember, as the play reminds us, that the path between love and hate is shorter than we think. Those having too much pride, on the trail or off, are headed for a hard fall.