[at-l] Do hiker have more hunaity? was "women's" issues

[cballs@mindspring.com (Curtis Balls)]

Weary, I rarely find anything in your posts to question and I've been
reading your posts for years now.  This is perhaps more a point of
clarification or perspective than actual disagreement.

I think it's the "almost all" that gives one pause here in your response to
Jan's post and I didn't get the idea that Jan was saying that thru-hikers
are not remarkable people.  There are however many other kinds of
remarkable people who never set foot on a Trail.  Thru-hikers are not
somehow more remarkable simply for having walked the AT than all those
other remarkable people.  And as for more "naturalist" values, people hike
the AT for a lot of different reasons. I don't see that people who enjoy
hiking are necessarily any more enlightened about nature, its value, and
our place in it than are great many others who are working diligently to
save large pieces of it who never hike.  In some cases, even less so,
certainly with less vigor and commitment.  I meet some of them on my hike.

Someone on this list said it takes "ego" to hike the Trail. Well, yeah,
kind of.  But then it takes some sense of ego to do most anything else too.
I'm not sure what the poster was referring to or what his definition of
"ego" is.  This isn't what makes hikers or thru-hikers remarkable or
different.  Again, the essential nature of the experience may hinge on the
reason(s) for hiking the Trail in the first place.  Sometimes the intent
changes, sometimes it doesn't.  I didn't hike the Trail to conquer anything
or to brag about having walked so far or having survived it.  I walked the
Trail in the hope that nature would heal my care worn soul.  I wanted to
play in it, be absorbed by it, immersed in it, admire it, love it and be
reborn.  I didn't go to be with other people or to bond with some abstract
hiking "community".  I live in NYC and I don't want for friends.  People
was not what I needed, although I greatly enjoyed meeting and hiking with
many fine people on the Trail.  But my most intense moments, the peak
experiences for me, were when I was alone.  RockyTop, Tray Mountain in SNP
and The Bigelows were experiences that made me one with the moment, the
place, the beauty, the mystery of being alive, the interconnectedness of
all nature, the sacredness of these places, the joy.  I cried.  That is
what I went for.

Vine Deloria, Jr., Professor of Native American studies at the University
of Colorado says, "It is becoming increasingly apparent that we shall not
have the benefits of this world for much longer.  The imminent and expected
destruction of the life cycle of world ecology can only be prevented by a
radical shift in outlook from our present naive conception of this world as
a testing ground to a more mature view of the universe as a comprehensive
matrix of life forms.  Making this shift in viewpoint is essentially
religious, not economic or political."

Perhaps this is not the correct forum for it, but I hear much more of the
latter viewpoints expressed with any regularity on this list or among
people who hike than I do the former.

Curtis


----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob C." <ellen@clinic.net>
To: <at-l@backcountry.net>
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 10:49 AM
Subject: Re: [at-l] Do hiker have more hunaity? was "women's" issues


> "...I now have seen that hikers are just like any other group of people,
city
> dwellers or not."
>
>  That's pretty much true for day hikers and overnight packpackers, but I
did not
>  find it true for thru hikers.
>
>   Almost all of the thru hikers I met in '93 struck me as quite
remarkable human
>   beings.
>
>   Weary
>
>
>
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