[at-l] Epilogue to Hiking/Reentry

[tmcginnis@ucclan.state.in.us (Thomas McGinnis)]

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: [at-l] Punchbowl to Waynesboro - Day 7 Epilogue
Author:  "W F Thorneloe; MD (Domain will change soon to attglobal.net)" 
<thornel@ibm.net> at ima
Date:    10/26/99 9:25 AM
<snippage of joy-of-town>
The family meetings and greetings are not as I had hoped and imagined.
<snippage of pain-of-reentry>
Liz is tired, aggrieved and angry over her loneliness and losses.
<snippage of grief-of-loss>
Physically, I feel great.
<snippage of personal reassessment>
One week may be too long for my family to be put asunder. Where does this 
trail lead?
<The Big Question>
Bill Thorneloe
Atlanta, GA 

****************************
     Well, OrangeBug....From my view (being wisps of straw to which I hold 
     with desparate strength), I would not connect "Where does this trail 
     lead?" with "Reentry Issues" which obviously can come up with section 
     hikers, and not just the vaunted "throughhikers." I would not try to 
     sully the simplicity of "Being In Hiking" with OffTrailness, and I 
     would not try to simplify the complexity of OffTrailness with the 
     long-view telescope of the Hiking Being.
     
     What gobbledegook. Let me try again.
     
     When hiking (and it sounds like your little trippie managed to fit in 
     about the full spectrum of a good hike's symphonic development -- 
     theme, embellishment, restatement/denouncement), your conscious 
     personal maintenance thoughts are reduced to 
     1) Where's the water?
     2) Where do I sleep?
     3) What do I eat?
     And not necessarily in that order. But that's Being in Hiking, and any 
     mental processing beyond that (and boy, there's certainly time for it, 
     huh?) is all a bonus. But those cares which get relegated to bonus 
     thinking time could also be the subject of that great 
     wisdom's-in-the-title book called "Don't Sweat The Small Stuff -- and 
     it's ALL small stuff." Water, Sleep, Eat, and everything else -- don't 
     sweat it.
     But that don't fit well with the life we mostly lead off of the trail. 
     (I'm trying not to use that viscious lie of a statement "real life.") 
     The OffTrail life tends to fill the available spaces with complexity 
     -- and if there's mental processing time left over, Hell, we'll just 
     watch TV and use it up. But unless we've specifically structured our 
     lives to be practiced as *exceedingly*simple*, these complications are 
     probably material, and *require* our attention. Like kids' life 
     events, spousal life events, our own life events.....if we haven't 
     *already* specifically integrated them into Being In Hiking, then 
     "reentry" is NOT a good time to start.
     FWIW, dive into your offtrail existence wholesale, and take care of 
     business. Don't connect trail simplicity with offtrail life at the 
     point when you are reentering offtrail life. Pain and anguish seem 
     sure to follow.
     
     Make even *any* sense?
     Sloetoe
     (working to simplify offtrail life, and
     *then* go hiking, thinking he's got the
     order of things right.)


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