[at-l] Sawnie's challenge

[Pat Villeneuve <patv@falcon.cc.ukans.edu>]

I am the transcriber for Kinnickinic's journal on atml. I assume 
everyone here doesn't read it, so I thought I might share the following 
excerpt:

4/14 ~ OFF TRAIL
Tagalong arrived by noon, and from then until 2am it was chatter, 
chatter, chatter--shared experiences, information exchange, wonderment, 
late lunch at Calhoun's, supper in her room after 10pm from my trail 
food and the things she bought at Battles. There were also teary eyes 
over broken friendships with other women hikers over misunderstandings, 
put downs, and judgmental, angry behaviors. Do men go through this, or 
is this kind of "war" the peculiar realm of women? Maybe it comes down 
to the wisdom of Walkin' Jim's song about what a wonderful world it 
would be if we respected each other. What if we allowed ourselved to 
think only of the things we admire and enjoy in each other? For 
instance, I have many admirable qualities, but being a fast hiker is not 
one of them. Couldn't we just enjoy the good instead of equating my slow 
pace to something of low account? Why do we leave the structure of our 
adult social world where cattiness is not "politically correct" and 
revert to junior-high-school-level competitiveness among our "sisters"? 
It isn't that one thinks about this sort of thing as one hikes all day, 
each day, day after day. It's more as though one arrives at a state of 
mind in which this sort of candidness with one's own self can become 
possible.
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