Re[3]: [at-l] Failing the List requirements

[Bob Cummings <ellen@clinic.net> (Bob Cummings)]

Are you folks ready for another answer to Jim and/or Ginny's queries-- especially one dealing with
RnR? If not please leave now.

>RnR contributes important thoughts to this debate, I said.

Jim etc. replies: "OK – this isn’t the first time you’ve said this --- I didn’t believe it the
first time – I don’t believe it now.  If his ideas are so important, then 
YOU define them.  He obviously can’t, so let’s hear how you define what’s so 
important in his ideas.  Otherwise this is a scam - if you can't define it, 
then you're bullshitting me."

Ah, Jim and/or Ginny. Ye folks of little faith. RnR believes the highest form of trail use is to
thru hike.  I might agree had I ever completed a
thru hike, though I doubt it. The highest use of the trail is achieved by the hiker who most
appreciates the infinite variety of terrain, wildlife, plants, amphibia etc that makes up this
magnificent trail. In my experience, that rarely is the thru hiker.

The most dedicated investigator of the trail I met in my six months was a day hiker seeking help in
naming a plant with a tiny quarter inch, brown(!) flower.

He was so devastated that an exalted (in his mind) "thru hiker" wouldn't know this rather common flower that had
inexplicitly slipped from his memory that I didn't have
the heart to tell him that the typical thru hiker spends six months complaining about the "long
green tunnel," ignoring the amazing mix of wild things that reside under his feet.

So why does RnR contribute important thoughts to this debate? Because he is a thinker and a
passionate believer in the real magic of the trail. Like many brilliant people, RnR marches to a
different drummer and speaks with a different language. He, more than any of us, thinks outside the
box.  Like Ralph Waldo Emerson (who I
also had difficulty understanding) RnR ponders the imponderables -- and has the courage to express
his beliefs, convoluted as his language and thoughts may at times be.

Only the most arrogant will deign to criticize or analyze someone like RnR. That would be like the
critics who claimed the 23 year old Einstein didn't know what he was talking about nearly a century
ago.

Weary