[at-l] Digesting Lots of Things

[icw at esisnet.com (Clark Wright)]

After wading thru a bunch of digests, I needed to do some thinking out 
loud - fancy that! :)  About that fateful tree in PA, all I can say is 
that I shared a lot of the emotions captured in the reply threads, but 
the most important feeling in response to me is that life is precious, 
and possibly short - so go for it while you can, and realize that you 
can't ever "watch out" for something as incredibly once-in-a-million as 
a falling tree . . . I have had two huge ones come within 20 feet or so, 
and there was no way to predict, move or stop either . . . we all have 
our potential falling trees around our paths - the main thing is to keep 
on enjoying the journey in a positive way for so long as we each have . . .

Reading about the hiking herd in Duncannon made me smile - the one thing 
those friendly locals could do is remind all the hikers who continue 
straight at the Doyle that they are one block off the blazed AT, and (if 
they are wantin to walk all the right stuff) that they need to backtrack 
to the Doyle and go one block up to stay on the Trail! :) 

All those posts about the GSNP being ugly made me chuckle - both because 
gatlinburg looked down right sexy to me when I got a ride into there 
soaking wet and cold around 3/30/01!  I also had to laugh thinking that 
a TN tourist town could give the entire 1,000,000+ acre park a bad name 
- just goes to show where most folks are coming from (i.e., the car 
window instead of their own two feet!)

Not sure how this fits in, but I'm reading another kewl book these days, 
called "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" . . . it's about, of all things, 
quantum physics, but it also rocks your world about God, Man and our 
relationship with nature and such . . . pretty amazing thoughts can go 
thru yer mind while reading this one . . . it looks like everything does 
"matter" after all! :)

thru-thinker
[off to bed!]