[at-l] rough trails (longish)

["Paul Miller" <jeanpaul@iname.com>]

i find it funny, i have got many comments from trail mantainers and other
about how the tuscarora trail is a bit rugged and unkempt in places.   let
me straighten up my thoughts on this jsu tin case people might be confised
and maybe you can see some logic in my statments .

i think it is  a great thing that the trail is so rugged.  i woudl hate to
see that all trail are as close to being paved as the AT.    it is good to
know.  imagine a trail that did nto rightly exist but people only found a
usable path on a moutains and it was only marked on a map and no signs of it
were actually off the map no bare areas no marks on tree no ducks or cairns.
think if the experience you coudl get from a trail like that.  it would be
only a few steps from jsut walkgin in the woods without a path or trail at
all.   that wopuld e a great adventure for anyone that was able and willing
to attempt such a feat.

more trails like that shoudl exist.. i know of one that is of only a dya
hike length in maryland near gambril state park actually just out side of
the park ... i knwo of it from a map  i own and it is a unmantained unmarked
trail that leads to a peak that is not named on the map it is nto a huge
mountain but it is not small either.  image the wonder on that mountain
image the experience.  i think one weekend if i am in the area i will
attempt to go on the trail. it will be a greater thrill in many ways then
seeing any trail built by man.

i spent much of my childhood wondering in the woods aroudn my house the
paths were worn by many childern foign the same thing in the area.  they
were rugged to say the least and i remember many spring days me and chris,
my good freiend, spent hour pulling thorns and ticks off our body and
clothing becasue nature had taken back our trails suring  the budding new
year.  i miss that fealing alot.  i wish i could wander back there still
but what have seen of it is now either townhouses or trash pits.  people
suck!  i remember many summers spent fishing in the streams and wandering
around finding little trinkets and odds thign that little boys live for
skulls of anumals and mice and a rope swing over a wide section in the
stream .  and here you thought that suburbia is all houses and people.    i
would spent many and hour searching for crawfish and salamanders and god
knwo what else.  learngin to lite a good fire from wet wood and shoot a
sling shot.  what were we doign esacty what were we trying to accomplish.
NOTHING we were jsut wondering aroudn wasteing away our time. and i think
that was the great part.  we woudl walk deeper and deeper into the woods as
we got older and bolder.   i am amazed as i drive aroudn the area and
reconize areas we once walked to . i am amazed at the distance we walked and
scrambled over and under rocks and bushes.  i think i hike to get this
feeling back.  it is a feeling that was an important portion of my childhood
and life.  and it is all but lost in the work and school world.

unfortainetly all good thigns must come to an end and me and myu friend
stopped wondering back there.  it is sad to think aobut now.   tv and
computers and nintendos replaced these odd wanderings. i wonder if i coudl
get my friend to wander amlessly aroudn the neibhorhood again.  i doubt i
coudl i think it grew up more than me and let me tell you he can have it  iw
ill keep what i have,  simple pleasures in life are the ones of most worth.

in essense keep the trail ruigged and hard to use and i will eventual work
up to them and the closer i get to it the more i relive my child hood
wanderings, feelings of adventure and being lost to the world.

i was walkgin on the C&O trail the other day and spoke to a man that walked
the same section of the trail everyday for 2 years during his lunch hour.  i
walked with him as he walked back to work.  i was telling him of the other
sectiosn of the C&O and it seems a shame to me that he has nto see the rest
of it.  if he woudl only wald the other direction south instead of north he
would be in a complete diffrent world during his lunch break.

it seems odd that someone wants to spend so much time walking around in the
same place.  the woods i walked in as a child were alive and cahnged every
year the paths were not set in stone and grew over and one year it woudl go
left aroudn a bush and the next it would go right.  it was alwasy new and
interesting..  i think that if al trail were graded the same and had the
same surface and mantained "well" then exept for the little sections of
looking up at the views the trails would plod along like any other as you
watched for rocks all the same.

hard rocky hand over hand climbs, muddy paths, getting lost, that 4 hours of
no markers and dissapearing trails are what you remeber at the end of the
day not the well mantained straight boreing old sections of the trail.

wisperlite (or is that wisperlots :)

BTW it is funnny i answer to word bottleneck and it has come up in
conversations a few times and created odd situations i think i will be great
if i start answering to wisper light too... that will make the akward
situtation for the names i have been called...  paul, jean, john,
genius(jeanius), generic(jeaneric), bottleneck(botleneck) and basher(i dont
know why this one started) and now wisperlite. i will be the man of a
million nick names at this rate.

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