Fwd: Re[2]: [at-l] Seriously Speaking....

[spiriteagle99@hotmail.com (Jim and/or Ginny Owen)]

Weary wrote:
>The fact that the question has to be asked, illustrates the absurdity of 
>the ATC "rules." It's obvious that the rules were drafted without any 
>thought.

Uh ---- Bob?  Maybe you weren't there, but other people were.  There was a 
lot of thought given to those rules.  And they were a specific answer to 
Wingfoot's charges that the ATC was lax about the standards for thruhiker 
awards.  In fact, the rules were drafted at the time that WF was claiming 
that Earl Shaffer wasn't a thruhiker cause he hadn't met Windfart's standard 
for thruhikers.  I was asked for an opinion about the wording when I went to 
Harpers Ferry at one time. If memory serves, this was in the winter/spring 
of '99.  They weren't published right away though. And before they were, WF 
let his alligator mouth overload his canary ass and publicly admitted that 4 
of his thruhikes had failed to meet his own standards.  The "rules" were 
finally published while we were on the CDT --- and WF immediately went 
ballistic and recanted his "confessions of impurity".  I got the story a 
couple days later while I was in Twin Lakes CO. I remember it well cause it 
was so damn funny and I really needed a good laugh at the point.

The rules - were specifically crafted to cover Earl Shaffer's first 
thruhike. I don't personally think they're all that great - but they're 
workable. Except for those who get anal and take them too literally and 
start hair-splitting.  To answer someone's question from yesterday - I don't 
know what I'll do when I hike the trail again - maybe the rules will change 
- maybe I won't care - maybe .... whatever.  That's in the unknowable 
future.  I can promise you this though - a lot of those who today claim they 
won't ever sign that paper if they don't "deserve" the patch by their 
ultimate "purity" will someday change their minds.  That's also in the 
unknowable future.  And whether any of them actually do so or not isn't my 
business - or anyone else's.  As someone once said - "Frankly, my dear - I 
don't give a damn."

Hell - as long as we're here -- someone suggested that the ATC get out of 
the award business.  Sounds good -- but -- then how are you gonna know how 
many thruhikers are out there?  And how many finish?  And how to plan for 
the crowds - and what facilities will be needed in the future - and... 
and... and....  There are at least 30 questions that require the number of 
thruhikers as an input to the solution.  And knowing how many pass through 
Springer and Harpers Ferry is only one part of the answer.  The "semi-final" 
answer is - how many apply for the patch?  "Semi-final"?  Yeah - there are 
people who wait 20 years or more to send in their applications.  If it's 
important enough for people to finally do that after 20 years or more -- I 
think it may have a little more importance and deserve a little more respect 
than some of those on the list are giving it.

A lot of the crapola that's been dumped here this week is a residue of atml 
- and a lot of those who have been on at-l since Adam was a pup talked this 
stuff out and rejected it a long time ago.  That was one of the differences 
between this list and atml.

Bottom line - if you can't respect someone else's hike - regardless of how 
they did it or what they believe - the you just might not be too happy here. 
  Someone once said of me that I'm extremely and militantly intolerant of 
intolerance.  They were right.


>This group -- or someone -- ought to mount a campaign to straighten out the 
>confusion, as opposed to trying to finagle around the absurdity.

Cool - Quit bitching about it and ---- Just Do It.

>What, the hell,is the ATC trying to say? I suspect, ATC has no idea. 
>Someone spent 30 seconds drafting something that no one in the organization 
>has seriously thought about since.

I think we covered that - it took them about 6 months and a lot of argument.

>Jim seems to think it was Wingfoot who forced the ATC to adopt these silly 
>requirements. I doubt that. But Wingfoot is not now a serious ATC player. I 
>hope that will change. But regardless, he isn't now.

And we covered this one, too.  Like some other people, ATC thought WF would 
have more staying power.  They should have paid more attention to his past 
history.

>The basic problem is that neither thru hiking nor 2000-miler status are 
>very high on the ATC screen. The ATC spends its time dealing with 
>intrusions into the trail corridor and viewshed, battling NPS bureaucrats, 
>trying to raise the funds needed to keep the organization afloat, figuring 
>out how to protect the trail with buffers....

To a very large degree that's true.  They put a little more time into the 
thruhiker thing than you believe, but not enough.

>And rightly so. I wouldn't engage in this distraction, if I thought it 
>would take more than 20 seconds of rational discussion to correct.

As I said - Just Do It.  Come up with proposed rules - if I think they'll 
work, I'll back them and I'm sure others will as well.  But be prepared for 
the same kind of nitpicking discussion that y'all have given the ATC rules.  
THERE IS NO ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL RULE THAT WILL FIT EVERYONE.  There never is.  
One-size-fits-all fits only one person -- the one who thought it was a good 
idea in the first place.

But you're sure welcome to give it a shot  :-))

Walk softly,
Jim





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