[at-l] My Last Shot re Genuineness of Contemporary Thru-hikes

[icw@xxxxxxxxxxx (Clark Wright)]

somehow my points must have not come thru - your response is exactly my
point!!!  I was just using a personal definition as an example and then
trying to say that it doesn't matter how you hike it, but it does matter
more how you then describe what you did to others - that's all . . .

Jim Bullard wrote:

> At 08:23 PM 1/4/2003 -0500, Clark Wright wrote:
>
>> If you are hiking NOBO and take the southern blue blaze
>> entrance to a shelter located 5 tenths off the Trail, you return to the
>> Trail via that same blue blaze [as opposed to taking the northern exit
>> out and thereby missing up to a mile of actual, white blazed Trail]; and
>> if you hitch into town, you get a return ride to the same spot you got
>> off, not the next road crossing up the way.  But, again, I close with
>> the same dose of humility - even if you do all of the above, you have
>> not hiked every step of the AT - nobody has and nobody ever will.
>
>
> Not even the original thru-hiker, Earl Schaffer, hiked past every blaze
> (markers back then).  When he did it the trail was in such bad shape from
> neglect that he often couldn't find it and just went where he figured it
> should be.  Why all this angst over doing it in a way that even the
> originator of thru-hiking didn't manage?
>
> To me all this discussion of purity is way off the mark anyway.  'Did you
> hike past each and every white blaze?'  I frankly don't care.  I hike for
> the experience of being out there, smelling the air, hearing the sounds,
> seeing the sights.  I hike for the trip, not the trail markers.  The
> genuineness of my experience depends on my going from point A to point B
> (in this case Springer to Katadhin) and taking it all in or as much as I
> can.  The blazes are just road signs that hopefully will keep me from
> getting lost and ending up Albuquerque (although that might be fun
> too).  Tying myself to 'I gotta do it this way or that way' sounds too
> much
> like a job.  I go hiking to escape and to do what *I* want to do
> instead of
> what someone else thinks I ought.
>
> Saunterer
>
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