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

[shane at theplacewithnoname.com (Shane Steinkamp)]

> There are lots of books of journals by
> "successful" thru hikers.  I think it might
> be interesting to hear from a few folks
> who tried and didn't make it.

OB posted something here once, and it really rang true with me.  He wrote,
"Your experience is your success."

With the exception of mountain climbing, I don't understand the made
it/didn't make it mentality.

If you want a piece of cake, have a piece of cake.  If you want more cake,
have another piece.  If you don't manage to eat the whole cake, don't go
away ashamed.  Just wait until you're hungry again.  Some of us are heavier
than others, and we can eat more cake in one sitting.  That doesn't mean
that its necessarily a good idea to eat the whole thing at once.

In my experience, hikers leave the trail for three or four reasons:

1.  They get sick or injured.
1A.  Poor sanitation (usually leading to illness.)
2.  They stop having fun.
3.  Pressures from home.
4.  They finish the particular piece of cake they were eating, and so it's
time to go home.

Injury and home pressure (somebody dies) isn't really something I had much
of, and I don't know if there's all that much to say about it.

The fun thing, though, is pretty predictable.

The vast majority of people who stop having fun - and so drop out of their
hike - stop having fun for one common reason:  They aren't getting good
rest.  I know that sounds really lame, but it's true.  Of all the people
I've seen drop off, it's usually because they aren't resting well at night.
Their bodies run down, they have a lot of pain, they stop having fun, and
they drop off.  Rest and sleep aren't the same thing either.

If you aren't sleeping well, you aren't going to have the physical,
psychological, emotional, or spiritual energy to keep going.  Of course, it
isn't just about sleep - you have to be getting good REST.  I have seen many
people sleep like the dead, but they don't wake up fresh and rested.  This
is the primary reason that I like hammocks.  If you don't have a good mental
outlook on the hike, you will come home.  If your brain isn't happy, nobody
is happy.

Next in line is nutrition and hydration, although they really aren't in a
line.  It's more of a triangle.  Your body only _needs_ three things.  Rest,
food, and water.

Hydration/Nutrition issues are especially important in the cold.  Most
people don't melt enough snow because they are lazy and wind up dehydrated.
If you're not well hydrated, you can't rest and heal.  If you're not well
hydrated, you can't take up vital nutrition.

Depression, boredom, loneliness...all states of mind.  All can be fought
with rest, nutrition, and hydration.

It is my frequent habit to sleep late.  I find that I get my best rest in
the morning.  Then I get up and walk into the early afternoon, so long as
there isn't anything to stop me, and then I stop for lunch.  I eat, and then
I hang my hammock and take a little nap.  Maybe just ten minutes.  Maybe an
hour.  Then I get up and walk some more.  Then I stop for dinner.  Then I
might just camp, or I might keep walking.  It all depends on how I feel.  I
pay attention to what my body wants, and I do that.  I don't let my brain
run the hike.  I'm not out here for my brain.  I'm out here for my body.

Poor sanitation is also bad.  Hand washing can be important, especially in
the beginning of a hike.  Once I got used to my own filth, I could skip it a
lot, but I never liked to.  Hand washing is one thing, body washing is
another.  Just to use the easy example - thigh rub.  From time to time I had
an issue with thigh rub - and I wasn't wearing nylon shorts or anything else
for that matter when I did.  I made a simple discovery.  If I just left it
alone and kept walking, day by day it got worse until it got so bad that I
could hardly waddle.  If, however, I bathed my thighs thoroughly every night
with simple soap (Ivory), my thighs improved after a day or two rather than
worsening.  All things being equal, keeping clean can mean the difference
between going on or going home.

Illness/Injury are, for the most part, related to all of the above.
Sometimes Injuries just happen.  Most injuries I have seen, however, revolve
around being tired and exhausted.  That's when falls happen.  That's when
bones break.  That's when an infection sets in.

I really believe that EVERYTHING comes back to proper rest.  People get
blisters because their feet get tired and they don't rest.  When they walk
sloppy because they are tired, their feet AND their knees suffer...  It's a
domino effect.  Tired people aren't going to drink enough water.  How many
times have you seen, or read in journals, "I was too tired to make anything
to eat.", or "I was too tired to eat, so I just went to sleep."  If you
aren't sleeping well, you aren't resting well.  If you aren't resting well,
you're tired.  If you're tired, you aren't eating or drinking well.  If you
aren't eating or drinking well, your energy suffers.  When your energy
suffers, your mood suffers.  When your mood suffers, your walking suffers.
When your walking suffers, you suffer, and I've never seen a sufferer make
any distance on any trail - or in life for that matter.

In complete truth, the key to successful hiking is successful resting.

While you didn't ask about gear, pack weight DOES have something to do with
that in the end, because obviously 70 pounds is going to wear you out a lot
faster than a 15 pound pack.

There is a core philosophical question that I use to help folks determine
when their pack is light enough:

"Are you hiking to camp, or are you camping to hike?"

That's a very good distinction.  I tend to fall somewhere in the middle,
though.  I like both, but from time to time I lean towards one side of the
question or the other.

In either case, I'm performing the core function of the sport of backpacking
for me, and that is to satisfy the wanderlust in me.  This comes back down
to philosophy - that whole Unified Theory.

I am a wanderer.  In the past, the wanderlust monster just appeared one day
and drug me off to some place I'd never been before.  When I hiked most of
the CDT, I didn't start out to hike it - I was going to hike somewhere else.
Then, I happened to find myself on the north end of it, and I said to
myself, "Well, now here's something interesting..."  BOOM!  I eventually
find myself very far away from where I thought I'd be.  In some ways the
wandering itinerant lifestyle is very liberating.  (In other ways, it's a
drag...)

On the flip side, I hate backpacking.  Lugging ANY pack across the
countryside will, at some point or another, completely suck.  Oh, but I just
can't stop wandering, and I need the pack to do it...mostly...

So that's my motivation.  Simple wanderlust.  The only other motivation is
the quest for special experiences, and one particular feeling, which Bill
Hicks summed up this way: "the heavens parted and God rained down gifts of
forgiveness onto my being, healing me on every level, and I realized that
our true nature is spirit not body, that we are eternal beings, and God's
love is unconditional.  There is nothing we can ever do to change that, and
it is only our illusion that we are separate from God or that we are alone;
In fact, the reality is that we are one with God, and He loves us."

Of course, words fail for such things...

I think that gear weight is only half of the philosophy, though.  Nobody
seems to be very interested in talking about the other half.  There must
also be a lightness of mind.  While my pack rarely runs more than 35 pounds
with food and water, I have in the past carried 80 pounds - and rarely 100
pounds when doing certain kinds of environmental work as a volunteer 'pack
mule', and carried it joyfully.  I know some people, however, who are
absolutely miserable with their 20 pound packs - not because of the weight
on their backs, but because of the weight in their minds.  "If I could just
save two more ounces..." That's not to say that you shouldn't lighten your
load - because you should - but you should also lighten the load in your
mind.  Some people THINK that their gear is heavy, and thinking makes it
so...

Backpacking is just like cooking.  When you first learn to cook, worry about
what to buy, you mess around with the pots and pans, fiddle with the stove,
carefully measure your ingredients, and eventually develop a meal.  You
haven't actually cooked, just followed a recipe.  Now, there's nothing wrong
with the meal, but most people can tell that something is missing.

Now, once that person gets some experience, and REALLY learns how to cook,
they no longer mess around with the pots, fiddle with the stove, or
carefully measure ingredients because they know that the recipe doesn't mean
a thing - they just COOK, and the meal is fine and delicious.  Much better
than when they first started, although nothing has really changed.

Well, one thing has changed - there is an extra ingredient.  Once they've
figured out that cooking isn't about pots, pans, stoves, or recipes they
discover that cooking is about something greater - and they start putting
LOVE in their food.  Real chefs cook from the heart, not from the head. Real
hikers are like that too.  They aren't just tourists, they've got it figured
out.

Open up and feel the love.  The gear is just a side issue.  I no longer put
all that much thought into it.  I just figure out where I'm going and take
what I want.

The last thing I will say is to cut down on any drama.  I'm speaking to
stress on the trail.  Sore knees are sore knees.  You can let that freak you
out, or you can be reasonable about it.  My wife is a primary example of
this.  If she spills a glass of water, you'd think it was the end of the
world.  I try to explain, "It's just water. Even if you do nothing, it will
dry up."  She doesn't see that she CHOOSES to lose her mind over something
as silly as a little water on the floor. I've seen people like that on the
trail.  They don't last long.  Everything is a drama.  It's one of the
primary reasons that my friend Bob didn't 'make it'. Everything was a drama.
That and he couldn't take the loneliness...mostly because I don't think he
was resting well.

Hmmm...  OK.  That's pretty rambling, Rafe.  I'm not sure if I'm answering
your questions or not.  Let me take a different tack.  Not everybody can go
with the 'faith' angle, and not everybody has a 'do or die' mentality.

In Law Enforcement training, one of the things I talk to my students about
is FEAR.  That is False Expectations Aren't Real.  It works in the hiking
world too.  If we have too many expectations that don't come true, then we
won't have much fun.  It's better, to my mind, to approach walking like a
story.  You can't anticipate the story too much.  You have to let the story
tell itself as your feet make the rhyme and meter of the poetry of your
walk.  Now Bill is going to say that's just literature, and I suppose that's
fair enough.  Our entire lives are built on various mythologies.  We all
live the lies we tell ourselves, so sometimes the best way to get through a
thing is to lie to yourself.

I think I'll leave that right there.

In that context, though, one of the key things that helped me with my mental
outlook on some days was to have a journal.  Frequently during the day I
take it out and make some notes.  I tend not to write anything bad.  If you
read some of my journals, you would think that I didn't have many bad times,
and that everything was a joy and a wonder.  That's the way it is in my mind
as well.

I just walk along and let the story tell itself, then I jot a few notes on
the good parts.  Easy as pie.

So, that's my five cents anyway...

Shane