[at-l] Maps

[cballs@mindspring.com (cballs@mindspring.com)]

Steve Vickers <SVICKERS@proplayerstadium.com> wrote:
>Did you all
find that the maps were essential to your hike? 


Ahh! a good southern questioner?  Steve, the AT maps will save your life.  If you're planning on hiking a lot of blue blazed side trails off the AT or when you wander off the trail to squat in the woods and the experience leaves you bumfuzzeled about which way you were pointing when you squatted, when the snow covers the trail over rocks where the blazes are and look up to find that you're in Rhode Island, when your toes fall off from frostbite, when that 20,001st spoonfull of peanut butter permanently seals your eyes, when you faint from heat exhaustion, when you're running around screaming from snakebite,  when your stomach is walking off without you, when your flesh is hanging in tatters off your bones from bear attack, when your heart stops working, when a tree limbs falls and cracks your head open, then maps will help you get out of the woods in a New York minute and back in the bosom of your dear sainted mother before you can ask "Pardon me, which way is Carthage?"  At l!
!
east that's the theory. They are exciting, colorful, full of graphics and directional information (Men adore them!) and they fold up to fit neatly into your map bag.  And best of all they're waterproof.  If any of this stuff scares you or excites you about being on the AT, take the maps along with a compass and learn how to use them before you get on the Trail.

OTOH, they're expensive, they add weight, they dilute the element of surprise and you just simply don't need them to hike the AT.  If you decide not to take them, and for whatever ridiculous or bizzare reason (hey, love happens) you find it would have been better to have brought a map, and you have to whip out your cellphone and call for help, or pull out your shotgun and shoot wildly into the air, it'll likely cost you more. (Love stinks sometimes.)  I think they charge people to come after you these days and there is the risk that you might be putting the rescurers at risk to find you.  What is the probability that any of this would happen?  Practically zero.  There could be an earthquake that would swallow you up, a tornado that would twirl you off to Oz, a nuclear disaster to tan your hide, a terrorist attack, a stampede of black bear, a deer plot to murder you or even a sudden surge in global warming, and I'm sure you can imagine a thousand other disasters that could befa!
!
ll you, absolutely none of which is likely to ever happen.  But then again you have to wonder sometimes about those deer, especially the ones in SNP, the dears.

Ptolemy