[at-l] "Why" and "Purpose" - Long

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

Rafe wrote:
>At the risk of spooking thru-hiker wannabees,
>I'd like to pursue this discussion.

Actually, I think it's a good thing to discuss - much better than cell 
phones or guns.  <G>

>As a failed thru-hiker, haunted ever since by
>that failure, it's a hot-button topic for me.

Uh - I'm not a believer in "failed" thruhikes.   Anyway, you might want to 
read this:
http://www.spiriteaglehome.com/Th%20what%20if.html

>Sloe and Jim O. seem to feel I don't get it, and
>that's clearly the case.  But neither of them have
>done much yet to enlighten me or set me straight.
>Their arguments, to my feeble mind, feel like
>linguistic/semantic sleight-of-hand.

Sorry - didn't mean to be mysterious, but it's not usually all that easy a 
thing to talk about.

>One thing I know is that mine is by far the
>majority experience.  We all know the stats.
>For every ten starters, only one or two finish.
>Thru-hikers have something special.

I tend to think of them as "intrepid".  It means - too stupid to quit.  This 
URL is something I wrote some years ago - actually just before the end of 
our CDT hike - while we were still on the trail.  It's been published in 
several places and it has some of my thoughts about a thruhikers mindset.  
It's NOT universally true - but in some ways it's close. Anyway - the URL - 
http://www.spiriteaglehome.com/cdt%20thruhiker.html

>I know that in '90 I completely misjudged who
>would quit and who would finish, including
>myself, most disturbingly.

After all this time - I can't predict that with any real accuracy either.  
You're not alone in that.

>I shed more tears, leaving the trail in Blacksburg
>in 1990, than at any other event in my adult life.
>
>Mind you, I still love to hike, still love the trail,
>but apparently in smaller doses.

Not everyone is a thruhiker - not everyone "should be" a thruhiker.  Good 
thing cause the Trail could get real crowded, real fast if everyone wante to 
be one.

But I'll bet you'd have a really hard time "not hiking" now.

>So someone tell me, really, what it means to "live
>in the moment" and "mind the miles."  Call me
>cynical, but these just sound like platitudes.

They're not just platitudes - they're mental attitudes.  Or maybe mental 
"states".  To be in the moment - means that your mind is where you are - 
right now. It's not back home with your cat - or the parakeet - or a wife, 
girlfriend or mother.  It's not in the office, it's not at the beach or in a 
movie theater.  It's right there with you on the Trail - and while it may 
wander sometimes, the Trail world is the only real focus.

>What gets you through the pain, hardship,
>loneliness, and sheer boredom of a thru-hike?

Straight answer? - my mind, my training, my attitude.  I don't depend on the 
scenery - or the wildlife - or a radio or MP3 or any other externality.  I 
"absorb" the scenery and wildlife - or, more accurately, I let it "absorb" 
me.  I let my mind become part of the trail world.  But that world, in and 
of itself, will not always be sufficient.  For some people, poetry is their 
refuge - or literature.  For me, it's a form of meditation - of just "being" 
- and allowing myself to pass through wherever I am, leaving no trace (or at 
least as little trace as possible).  Sometimes I'm absorbed by the physical 
trail - climbing, breathing (or was that wheezing).  I'm seeing and feeling 
and hearing and smelling and touching the world I'm passing through with all 
my senses.

The pain - Life is pain.  That's an "attitude" - it's also one of the basic 
Zen teachings.  I've lived with one form or another of pain all my life.  I 
have a very high pain threshold.  Both physically and mentally.  All I can 
tell you is that emotional pain trumps physical pain every time.  And that 
emotional pain can be drowned/submerged in physical pain - but only 
temporarily.  The physical pain involved in thruhiking is much less than 
some of the emotional pain I've had to deal with. It's real. And it's 
transitory.

Hardship? - I learned from my family.  Uncles who went to work in the mines 
at 15 - and worked 16 hour days, 6 days a week.  A mother who worked at a 
bakery for 10 cents an hour to support her mother, father and 5 siblings 
during the Depression.  A father and uncles who spent several years - as  
one of them said - walking from North Africa to Berlin, meeting new people 
along the way and killing them.  If you think the Trail is hardship, think 
about the lives of your forefathers who gave you the opportunity to have and 
enjoy the Trail. Not that the Trail isn't hard - but it's a lot easier than 
the way my family - and probably yours - lived in the past.

For the loneliness - I went through some of that - but it's hard to remember 
it now.  I'm lucky - because my lady is a thruhiker.  And we will again - 
together.

And then there's - boredom.  I want to say I've never been bored on the 
trail - but that wouldn't quite be true - I was bored sometimes in the 
Southern California desert on the PCT.  Not often, but enough, along with a 
lot of frustration, for me to develop a bad attitude for a while and bitch 
so much that Ginny complained about my bitching.  <g>

Beating boredom is a head thing - it comes down to either staying interested 
in externals, as Weary said, or having the internal resources to keep 
yourself entertained - or both.  What internal resources?  Hmmm - how about 
poetry?  Not my thing, but I have a friend who finished the Trail in the 
70's - and he's memorized massive amounts of poetry of all kinds.  For me - 
it's "thinkiing" - about the future, about the past, about the trail, about 
what I want to eat tonight and when I get to town, about the space program 
and nuclear physics and biology and Ginny and thruhiking and books I've read 
and books I'd like to read and my kids and ..... the list is endless.  And 
my mind is always running, drifting, sometimes going in circles - and 
sometimes in flights of fancy - and sometimes in straight line logical 
structures.

I can't tell you how to do that - I've done it since I was old enough to 
think - and remember that I was thinking. And that was younger than you mght 
think.   I suspect some of it is the way I was wired - and I had little to 
do with that.  And some of it is what I've put in my head and heart for the 
last 65 years.  For me, life is a school - a place to learn and grow and 
become something different/more and, hopefully, better, than what I am 
today.  That learning process keeps me very busy - both on-trail and off.  
And keeps me from being bored.

One other note - there are some apparent contradictions here.  For example - 
how can I be "in the moment" - and still be thinking about, for example, my 
kids or string theory or ...... whatever?  And the answer is that those 
things are memories or stream of consciousness - but not, at this particular 
moment, in this particular world, reality.  There is little, if any, 
emotional content - and those thoughts do not pull my mind back to the world 
in which they are reality.  There is no emotional pull to see or feel them 
because my "being," if you will, is immersed in the world of the trail - and 
is happy there.  And I know that soon enough, I'll be back with the kids 
(and grandchildren) and among those who understand the  languages that 
define the various worlds that I lve in - in that other, non-trail life.

Enough for now - I'm not even sure I've told you anything.  I'm not sure I 
want to read what I just wrote - it came too easy - and may well be total 
garbage.  I'll find out later.  But it IS - what my heart and mind dumped 
all over my keyboard - so you can suffer with it - or not.  That's your 
choice - it's ALWAYS your choice.

Walk softly,
Jim

http://www.spiriteaglehome.com/