[at-l] More Sticky Thoughts...

[datto_atl@yahoo.com (Datto)]

This whole subject of sticky fingers and other similar
discussions leads me to three topics I've been
thinking about for quite a while.

1) One of the things changing a person along the
course of a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail is the
taking on of personal responsibility. That 'you' are
responsible for the outcome of what happens. That it's
not the responsibility of someone to look out for your
backpack. 'You' are the person who must keep your own
backpack from being stolen or lost, It is your own
house, your own food, your own belongings. For some on
a thru-hike the contents of their backpack is
everything they own in the world. So...the thought of
just leaving a backpack sitting around ready to be
stolen seems so foreign, particularly the further
along a person gets on a thru-hike. By the time a
northbounder gets to say, oh, pick a point...Harper's
Ferry, maybe well before Harper's Ferry, that backpack
has become such an integral part of a thru-hiker's
body (Ha, like it or not) that to be without that
house, that backpack, creates a feeling of uneasiness,
a feeling of uncomfortableness, that something is
missing in the Universe.

Much of that has to do, I believe, with the feeling of
taking on personal responsibility for oneself. That
you are not a victim, have not been a victim, were
never a victim in the first place. You're just the
result of your own chosen actions. You take the credit
and the blame for what happens. Revel when the good
times happen, curse yourself when the unthinkable
occurs. But never assume it is the fault of someone
else, that you can legitimately shirk the
responsibility for the outcome. When you come to this
realization, there is such a great sense of freedom.
That you are not purposely held back by the gods or
the relatives or the boss. That if there was any
holding back to be done, you did it to yourself. The
freedom part comes about when you are slapping
yourself in the leg with a switch and when you stop,
you think to yourself, 'Hey, this feels pretty good
when I stop.' 

I am still amazed at the numbers of thru-hikers that
admitted to having this dawn on them during their
thru-hike. One of the great joys of a thru-hike is to
realize the freedom gained and realized during that
six months on the Trail doesn't have to end after 21##
miles.

2) Along those same lines of 'uncomfortableness' about
being without one's 'house' comes the increased
awareness a thru-hike brings. Not so much awareness
like might be thought in civilization -- awareness of
what is going on in the world, down the street, over
yonder...but awareness that is greater than the sum of
the five senses together. It's the combination of more
than one sense at a time, or more than two or three at
a time, that blends to a better perception, a better
awareness of what is around, what is there to
experience and realize. 

All of this was explained to me before I had started
my AT thru-hike. Not quite in those words...explained
by past thru-hikers who could describe the concept so
well but portray it so differently than what it
actually is the way I saw it -- probably because it is
either so different from individual to individual or
possibly just so foreign to our everyday world that it
is difficult to describe to someone (and have them
understand) who hasn't seen the complexities become
simplified for themself.

Then, early in my thru-hike I was lucky to have met up
with someone, a thru-hiker with considerable
long-distance experience, who was able to add more
insight to this whole idea of perception and awareness
on the Trail. Not to disclose all of the elements of
the experience, but they put it to me like this at one
point; it was said there would come a time during my
thru-hike where I would notice how thru-hikers would
communicate with each other without having to
verbalize ideas directly and out loud. That
non-thru-hikers might perceive this as aloofness of
thru-hikers, not wanting to pal up with other hikers
who weren't thru-hikers, being seen as shunning others
not in the thru-hiking crowd. And yes, I did get to
see that happen frequently, substantially further up
the Trail than what I probably should have had I been
watching closely for it to come about. An economy of
motion and effort when communicating with and between
thru-hikers. To talk and communicate and parley with a
non-thru-hiker at the time seemed to require so much
more...well, effort to get the same idea across,
requiring so much more noise and motion. I chock that
up to having senses become acute to the point where,
when communicating with thru-hikers, the senses all
contribute simultaneously without the confusion
normally associated with the daily, sensory overload
of society. That!...is such a marvelous, beautiful
thing to experience. You wonder sometimes if that's
not what Astaire and Rogers had together...or Montana
and Rice. Something...God, here I am trying to explain
it too. Ha. Very difficult to capture in a verbal
world...

3) The acceptance of how things are and will be. A
flat-out golden relief of stress this ends up being!
But to get to that point...whew, what a chore and
pain! The most common way this is expressed by
thru-hikers seems to be the acceptance of how the
Trail is laid out. The acceptance of why the Trail
goes up the side of the steepest slope at Lehigh Gap.
The acceptance of why there are bare rocks under the
treadway of the Trail when, if the trail designers
would have just moved the trail over another thirty
feet, the trail would have been soft and
gentle...rather than harsh and brutal. It is this
crushing of resistance and the subsequent recognition
of the futility of the fight against the realities of
'The Given' that leads, eventually, to the freedom of
experience and thought so many past thru-hikers
describe of their experience on the Trail. Again, the
way in which effort and energy are economized,
naturally directed toward the path where the most good
will survive, not toward where the motion will be
wasted.

So...my thoughts for the evening. Whew, glad I got
that off my mind.

Datto


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