[at-l] perspectives and competancy in dealing with danger Re: pictures at eleven...

[sloetoe@yahoo.com (Sloetoe)]

--- Orange Bug <orangebug74@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I had a point that the rest stop attendant was performing his job,
### which completely ignored the point of the thread: that it was a
dumb job, senselessly performed, to the ultimate detriment of safety.
You *had* to comment, though.

> familiar - not a far stretch from "hike your own hike."
### Off-topic response: I don't subscribe to HYOH. Like you (I
think), I work hard to master that which interests me, and think I do
it "best" as I am able. Thus, for me, not offering advice is a
breachment of a personal responsibility -- I *hope* it only comes
when I am either too busy at work [vis the at-l since March], or that
I truly think others have a better handle than I [vis my "lurker"
membership on the BackpackingLight list], or know that someone else
has already responded. 

> Your message feels like your messages while I had family at Ground
> Zero.
### Let's get the facts right. That was your choice on 09/11 to
respond to a message dated 09/10, asking you to quite the snide
remarks, stemming from an at-l post from you dated 09/09. You were
worried about Ground Zero? Then what the hell were you doing on the
at-l?

please do not respond to this paragraph:
### But regardless, I *lost* family at Ground Zero. I have *likely*
lost grad school friends, acquaintances, and (probably) a former
lover at Ground Zero. I have *likely* lost professional acquaintances
from the City of New York (internship) and from Cantor Fitzgerald
(Indiana SO2 emission allowance trading policy) at Ground Zero. I
don't *know*. I don't have the stomach to check either, but what's
the knowledge going to do for me? If Fred's alive but Wilma's gone,
so what? The only reason I didn't lose the friendship of a former
tenant is because she'd gone on maternity leave just two weeks
before. She worked in the south tower on the floor where the right
wing hit; her firm was instantly immolated, and I saw it live on tv
before I came to work. (So did she; she then saw the tower collapse
from her porch in New Jersey, and ran back inside to hold her baby,
trying to reconcile her grief with the relief of knowing her husband
(a former work colleague of mine who now works in the financial
district) had already called.) I'll bet that other at-l members have
been touched by the 09/11 attack, too. (Seriously, I wonder if
Ryan/Milt have had to handle emailbox overload bounces from ...
"missing" listers. Jeeeeezzz, but I bet that's fun.) Should I mention
live connections in the Pentagon yet...? And I can't think of the
aftermath without thinking of two listers in particular who must feel
the impact in ways we just can't fathom.

### Butttttt.... it was your choice to respond on that day as you
did. Did you think you were the only one concerned that morning? All
manner of persons, friends, family, and acquaintances, were running
through my head, too. So what? That had nothing to do with your poor
behavior days earlier on the list. [And by the way, your being more
direct to me in the insults backchannel is not constructive either.
Although I read them this morning, I mostly file them away in a file
labeled zzz-zzz-zzz. That's where I've put the crap the list went
through this summer, almost entirely unread; *not* good company.]

> If you have a point, make it.
### My point's are not been obvious after this much time? Fine.
Here's two:
*** Quit making snide remarks and then feigning surprise when you're
responded to in kind. It is a trolling poison this list does not
need.
*** Speak from your own experience, or qualify your statements as
appropriate. Doing otherwise *hurts* people.

### To continue to post as you do, with your pontificating habit*,
[*something else I share with you; very necessary for my job, very
boring outside of it] is to appear *much* more knowledgeable than is
right, and steers at-l how-to threads into needlessly hard and
distractingly emotional terrain -- *and* heavy backpacks -- for
people who don't know better. 

### And fear-mongering about rest-stops is not speaking from
experience. I do *all* my interstate highway traveling at night, and
have "forever." I *have* confronted real live rest stop mashers in
the dark of night -- but somehow I fail to attach that as a
*likelihood* when I pull over. I have no desire to dilute *real*
fears with false ones -- people get *very* hurt that way. How?
http://www.backcountry.net/arch/at/0103/msg01339.html
Recall the unfortunate history: you chastised two experienced hikers
who cooked in their tent, I called 'foul!' and warned that a much
more real danger was had every time we reached our arms toward open
flame to light stoves, adjust flames, stir meals, etc. I wrote "When
you caution in relation to the actualized danger, you'll be doing a
service. When you do otherwise, it's not "prudence," it's fear
mongering." It was just a few weeks later that you gave yourself a
serious burn, in just that way I warned. I felt (and feel)
responsible for that accident, because I did not do enough to foster
an environment that focuses correctly on *real* dangers.

### And on the AT, there are *very*few* real dangers. Were I to win
the lottery tomorrow (as I understand it, a 1 in 80,000,000 chance),
or if I'm healthy enough upon retirement, it's my intention to
commence walking from Maine west to Washington via the Northwest
Passage and the Bering Strait. Suddenly, fording the Kennebec looks a
mite mundane, eh? (And having made this little idea public, I know
there's one other lister who's now scratching their chin and
muttering with interest "Hmmmmm!") But it's so so much relative: two
years ago, an logistical accident (a Homer DOTE! moment) left me on a
training run in a state forest 45 minutes from downtown Indy in inky
darkness with nothing but running clothes and my wits. Well, maybe
not my wits: I was SCARED. I had to remind myself *repeatedly* that I
knew the trail *very* well, that there were no monsters out to get me
[that I was the *top* of the local food chain], and that, should
worse come to pass, it would be warm enough for me to burrow into the
leaves just about anywhere and pass the night in warmth, wake at dawn
and boogie home for a shower, and be to work at 09:00 with no one
knowing better of my foolishness. I chastised myself for being so
afraid -- "Would you have felt this way in Maine? At nineteen? Why at
40-something are you now captured by such mindless fear?" It was
*thrilling* to be that scared -- my rational mind (what was left of
it) knowing I was perfectly safe - yet when I think of that night
now, I don't laugh, but grimace, because I know that the fear was an
*unthinking* response that backcountry travelers can ill afford. Had
I just gotten off the AT, or looking forward, were I competently
prepped for the Northwest Passage, mmmmmmm, somehow I don't think I
would have been too worried. But what is more, in *not* being
worried, my mind would have been better focused on the tasks at hand,
doing them well, doing them safely, and thus doing them in the manner
that would thereby lead to the best outcome of my journey.

### Where you're standing/starting from makes all the difference in
how you deal with problems. Zen time: "Man stands in his own shadow
and wonders at the darkness." 

> Otherwise, don't offer commentary on my messages again - ever.
### This is an entirely inappropriate statement. That said, "no harm,
no foul."

Spatior! Nitor! Nitor! 
*IN* Nitor!
Sloetoe


> 
> --- Sloetoe <sloetoe@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > --- W F Thorneloe <thornel@attglobal.net> wrote:
> > > Sleeping in the open made you appear suspicious as well as
> > > vulnerable to assault. We have several stories of people with
> > broken cars at rest stops who have disappeared or lost their
> lives - 
> > 
> > ### "We have several stories..."??? And 280,000,000 people in
this
> > country, and more arriving every day, and 279,999,989
happystories
> > that just don't make the news EACH AND EVERY frickin'day.But
let's
> > find that miserable 11, call 'em "several", hold 'em up as poster
> > children for the "This *could* happen to *you*!" campaign, and

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