[at-l] Sense of Wilderness and Town Stops

[kahley@ptd.net (kahley)]

At 07:39 AM 3/20/02 -0500, rick boudrie wrote:
>>A cell phone does no more damage to ones illusion of wilderness than >the 
>>trips to town every couple of days for a shower and comfortable >bed that 
>>many hikers indulge in.
>
>I think you are on to something with that.

Me too, before I learned more about the AT, I had a plan that is certainly 
not typical.
If it weren't for the food issue, I would never come to town.  I want to 
submerge.  I
don't want to step foot in a store. The Place, the jail in Port Clinton, 
the Doyle, a
couple other near Trail beds would suffice.  I can keep clean enough in the 
woods.
I don't want TV or Movies or partying.  Coming off Trail would be a BIG 
interruption
for me.  Personally, I don't know how people handle it.  Reading journals, 
I sometimes
think I spend more time in the woods per day and less in town than the hikers.
Of course, lots of people aren't looking for the same Trail experience that 
haunts me.
And since I have never done any LD hiking, I might find that I don't like 
it either.
But I think I will.
This whole thread is getting silly.  Jumping from Cphones to RVs is 
silly.  It's
become apparent, since no one is condemning radios, that it's a matter of "my
little tech tool tie to civilization is ok but your's isn't".  If the 
marginal possibility of a
expedited rescue is all that your illusion of wilderness hangs on, I am 
very sorry for you.
If you don't see that a radio brings more civilization onto the Trail than 
an unused
cphone, I don't understand you.