Re: [at-l] look at me stunts and Goose Creek,etc

ooh, ooh, I think you hit on something here!  You are a wise old sage!

belcher

----------
>From: "David Hicks" <daveh@usit.net>
>To: "AT-L" <at-l@edina.hack.net>, <Ramkitten@aol.com>
>Subject: Re: [at-l] look at me stunts and Goose Creek,etc
>Date: Fri, Dec 29, 2000, 10:35 AM
>

> Ramkitten
>
> I have never seen this said about thruhiking before.  It may have been out
> there and I just missed it.
>
> But the reason I'm writing is that your feelings about talking to non
> thruhikers about thruhiking are very common among veterans, esp. combat
> veterans, talk to non-vets.
>
> I would suspect that you have a slight understatement in your, "I own the
> experience and the memories and everything I take from it for the rest of my
> life that, in some ways, are hard to explain to people."  I suspect that you
> have found, and will increasingly find, is that you cannot explain it --
> that they just don't get it, no matter how clear you try to be.  They just
> don't have the points of reference to understand the words.  Not that your
> choice of words are inadequate, but rather that for them the essence, the
> meaning is just not available.  What they hear becomes so distorted that it
> hurts.
>
> On the good side, your, "I don't know...hits me, and I stand wherever I am
> like a zombie thinking about the trail, how it affected me, little
> details--the minutiae--that suddenly pop into my head and I smile
> remembering" is so very, very much better than flashbacks and 1000 yard
> stares. However, I suspect something of the same  process is going on in
> your mind.  Although in your case, it sounds like something to envy.
> Something to  hold on to.
>
> Maybe OB could share some light, or point out how far off base I am.
>
> Chainsaw
> 
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