Re: [at-l] compass

[Rick Bombaci <rpb@eoni.com>]

At 10:23 AM 12/22/99 -0500, Chomp wrote:

>... When we got to the AT, I
>thanked him, took my backpack and he was off - with my hiking stick.
>
>What proceeded now was a bad rendition of Pee Wee's Big Adventure where I
>spent the rest of the day searching for my hiking stick. I hiked down off the
>ridge, hoping somehow that I would just magically find this man ( I knew his
>first name, and that he was a foreman ). Unfortunatly, while the road up was
>in poor condition, the road down was a perfectly smooth paved road. My
options
>at this point were to walk back UP the ridge and along the AT, or walk the
>road in search of a store or a phone...

Great story, Chomp.

Reminds me of the time I drove into Portland (Oregon) to visit friends,
with my walking stick--companion since 1974, cut from the woods behind my
boyhood home in Connecticut--in the back of my truck.  My friends were
doing a little spring cleaning, so we loaded my truck up with a bunch of
scrap wood they had laying around, so I could take it to the dump for them ...

At 7:00 that night, I had a hot flash.  At 6:00 the next morning, I drove
across town to the gigantic waste transfer station--three stories high, two
football fields big, earthmoving equipment roaring around.  I actually dug
around for a half hour in the huge piles of scrap wood, looking for a sign.
 The guys who worked there just looked at each other and shook their heads...

Oh, well.  "It was only a stick," I tell myself, not very convincingly.

As for compasses, I've always carried one, rarely had to use it out of
necessity, but of course it was invaluable when I needed it.  It's small,
light, cheap life insurance.
* From the Appalachian Trail Mailing List |  http://www.backcountry.net  *

==============================================================================