[at-l] Introduction (Read at own risk)

[lbooher at pure.net (Leslie Booher)]

I've been on the list since '98, I think it was.  No, I don't date back to rec.backcountry, but I've been on a long time.  

I began hiking (backpacking) in '89.  I had probably read too many British Gothic novels where the heroine did a quick six miles into town in the early afternoon, shopped, and was home again before supper.  I was overweight, and I began by walking a loop in the Vicksburg (MS) Military Park every afternoon, then decided that I wanted to walk "somewhere", rather than making endless loops.  I had decided to work on the AT before the infamous issue of National Geographic came out, but I was waiting for our son to graduate from high school.  Ultimately, he never did hike with me, but I began, anyway.

I've just turned 59.  I pretty much save my knees for the AT.  I don't do much hiking anywhere else.  I've done from Springer to the next road crossing above Fox Creek, VA (where Kinnickinick has just moved), Maryland and part of PA, and a few miles of Shenandoah.  I seldom repeat a section, but it has been known to happen.  Oh, and my husband and I and our youngest daughter hiked a good part of the Camino de Santiago de Compostella in Spain in '02.  Great trip!

I carry a Golite Trek, which I'm not really fond of, but it works OK; I still prefer packs with real frames, preferably external.  My tent is a purple Nomad lite.  REI Subkilo 20? sleeping bag.  Therm-A-Rest Prolite 4 pad---this is new, and I love it; I had carried a RidgeRest for the first 14 yrs.  Alcohol stove.  New Balance 804 shoes, but they're probably worn out, and I need to find something new.  I still carry too much food.  My pack usually weighs around 25 lbs.  When I first started hiking, my pack was 40 lbs., and I was sharing everything with a partner.  Now, everything I need is in my pack, no partner-sharing.  Times change.  Also, when I first started hiking, we made fancy meals on the trail.  Alone, I prefer the store-bought, just-add-boiling-water meals.  I carry more fresh food now, too.  

What else?  I hate to hike alone.  I hike slowly.  Eight miles is what my knees want to do per day; I can coax them into 10, if necessary, but not much more.  I don't like rain on my face.  I usually carry a novel in my pack, but I select them by weight.  How bad is that?!  

In my off-trail life, I'm a church organist, which wrecks heck out of week-end hiking.  My husband and I have been married nearly 36 years, and we have three grown, married children, two granddaughters.  We live in far southern VA, about an hour north of Durham, NC.  We make soap, too; our soap name is anklebear naturals.  

The anklebear is a tattoo on the inside of my left ankle.  The aforementioned youngest daughter wanted a tattoo when she was a sophomore in high school.  We told her that, if she still wanted one when she graduated, we'd all get one.  She did, we did, all of her friends did.  
  
anklebear