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

[shane at theplacewithnoname.com (Shane Steinkamp)]

> 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.

Your post makes me very sad in a strange, wistful sort of way.  I am not a
thru-hiker.  Until I came to this list, I had never heard the term used so
frequently.  I think there's a strange mindset at play in that regard.

I am a long distance hiker - or I used to was, and I will be again - and as
a long distance hiker, I can say something cruel.  Long distance hikers are
all fruitcakes.  Every single one of us.  We're not normal.  Just look at
the variety on this list.  Nutjobs all.

Maybe you just aren't enough of a nutjob.

You ought to thank God every day.

> I know that in '90 I completely misjudged who
> would quit and who would finish, including
> myself, most disturbingly.
>
> I shed more tears, leaving the trail in Blacksburg
> in 1990, than at any other event in my adult life.

Then why did you leave?

"In the previous ages, children did not cry. They did not cry because the
Earth Mother cradled them, and the Great Spirit sang to their souls.  The
Earth Mother and the Great Spirit have not forgotten this, but the children
no longer go to them."

> Mind you, I still love to hike, still love the trail,
> but apparently in smaller doses.
>
> 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.

Not really.  They are philosophies.  Like Felix, I am too stupid to
understand 'mind the miles'.  I think I understand it, but it isn't a
philosophy that I would personally use.  Miles mean nothing to me.  Miles
are lies.  What is a mile?  A certain number of feet.  What is a foot?  A
certain number of inches.  It's an arbitrary thing.  For me, 'how far is it
from here to there' is measured not in miles or steps, but in laughs and
joys and wonders.

While I'm sure that it's a sound philosophy for those who use it, I don't
think that way.  Or maybe I do...  I don't know.

Everybody has a different kind of goal.  Goals...  I'm supposed to have
goals?  I never knew...  I was always out avoiding responsibility.  Is
avoidance of responsibility a goal?  Hmmm....

Living in the moment is a real and vital mindset for me.  Very simply, it
means not having regrets for the past, nor fears for the future.  You can't
carry the past.  It's too heavy.  The future hasn't happened yet, and in the
distant future I will be dead - so why should I worry?

I have tried to say this many times, but I always seem to dick it up.  The
heaviest weight you carry on the trail isn't in your pack.  It's in your
mind, and thinking makes it so.

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

Hardship, loneliness, and boredom...oh...my...

Pain is pain.  It's a message.  It means stop.  I'm not sure if you're
talking about physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual pain.  I've had
plenty of all.

For physical pain, take rest.
For emotional pain, take comfort.
For spiritual pain, take solace.
For mental pain, take large quantities of barbiturates mixed with alcohol.

Well, the last one didn't work so well for me.  Maybe you should find a
better solution.

Since I'm never in a hurry to be anywhere - or at least I wasn't - I never
hesitated to take a rest on any front.

Hardship...  Hardship isn't real.  It's a state of mind.  It's feeling sorry
for yourself.  You should never feel sorry for yourself.  You should have
compassion for yourself, and that's something much harder to do.

The mountain goes up, and the mountain comes down.  It isn't the mountain
that wears you down, though; it's the rock in your shoe.  Stop and take out
the rock.  The mountain still goes up, and the mountain still comes down.
If it's a hardship for you, slow down or go around.  Nobody is holding a gun
to your head.

"There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a
sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But
doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet.
When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though
you still get the same soaking." - Yamamoto Tsunetomo

"An optimist is a man who gets treed by a lion, but enjoys the scenery." -
Walter Winchell

I don't see any part of being out in the world a hardship.  What hardship?
You're walking around looking at pretty scenery all day, eating snacks,
sleeping whenever you want to...  When I'm in the wilderness is the only
time that I feel like everything is going to be OK. It's the only place I
feel safe.  Darkness and loneliness are my dearest friends.  My danger isn't
going home early, my danger is never going home...because I am home...and
the house is just some kind of abomination.

Loneliness...  Loneliness I can't help you with.  I don't much like people,
and prefer my own company exclusively.  That way I only have one asshole to
deal with.

Boredom...  I am never bored.  I have never been bored.  I can't imagine
being bored.  The world is too full of wonder to be bored in it.

You have asked a question, and in asking it, I am pulled to answer in
another way.  In a way I do not usually speak, and it isn't my intention to
bother anyone, so take this next part as a sincere expression of my simple
faith and not an attempt to ruin any other.

I go out into nature, because nature is my religion.  The wilderness is my
Bible.  It doesn't have chapters and verses.  It has trees and fish and
animals.  The sky is my father, and the earth is my mother, and all the
living things with feet or wings or roots are my brothers and my sisters.
My walk is a prayer.  Every step a chant.  Every moment a chance to come to
the place where wild horses thunder wild and free across the plains of my
soul.  A true walk turns my heart into the drum of the Great Spirit, and
causes it to beat in time with eternity. My skin, my muscles, my bones, and
all my sinews are made from the ashes of our ancestors, and they will cry
out and reveal ancient secrets to you if you know how to listen.  You cannot
experience this truly while wearing any kind of mask to hide behind.  The
freedom of being human, without shame, amidst the vast creation in the
presence of the Great Spirit is a way to restore the lost wisdom of the
heart of the Earth.  It is a way of returning to the truth of all the
Universe, of all peoples, of all our relations. You should be what you are.

Walking is a simple prayer.  I do not think that a prayer is something that
you say, I think that a prayer is something you are.  A number of trips ago,
in Black Creek, the river daughter gave me a double handful of gravel and a
lesson.  I became a walking altar.  I came home and began the lesson I was
given.  To everyone I knew, I gave one of the pebbles and said, "I want you
to know that I am thankful for you."  Some wanted to know what it was, and I
said, "It is an ordinary piece of gravel." Some got it and some didn't.
Some were touched, and some weren't.  Knowing or not, though, they all
became walking altars.  Not just sacred beings, but sacred places in their
own selves.  Holy, Holy, Holy, is this, and I am thankful, thankful,
thankful.

There is only one way to pray this prayer.  You must know yourself.  You
seem to know yourself well enough to have figured out that you aren't enough
of a fruitcake to be a LDH...

So...thank your God every day...and enjoy who you are.

Tonight, Virginia and I were outside watching the sunset.  She said to me,
"Daddy, why is the sunset so beautiful?"

And I told her, "It is so beautiful, because it isn't something you can
keep.  It's something that you see, and your heart goes out because you know
that soon it will be done, and you will never see it again.  Tomorrow you
may see another, but this one will be lost forever.  The sunset means the
end of this day, a day we will never see again.  It is beautiful because it
is a moment of our lives in which we give thanks."

Then she said to me, "Oh, daddy, I think it's beautiful because of all the
colors."

"Perhaps, my child, perhaps."

"Thank you, sunset.", she says.

And then I carry her inside, and we watch television.

Shane

***

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand.
- William Butler Yeats, "The Stolen Child"