[pct-l] Thru Hiker Mentality

[kenandeb at sover.net (kenandeb@sover.net)]

That night, around a small fire, we sat talking for hours trying to assess our 
position and how much further we had to go. When the conversation flagged, the 
extraordinary stillness and silence of the brooding mountains engulfed us. 

With the coming of morning the outlook was always more hopeful. Fear remained a 
lurking thing, but movement and action and the exercise of the mind on the 
daily problems of existence pushed it into the background. We were now, more 
strongly than ever, in the grip of the compulsive urge to keep moving. It had 
become an obsession, a form of mania. Like automatons we set out each morning, 
triggered off by a quiet ?Let?s go? from one or another of us. We just went, 
walking the stiffness out of our joints and the chill of the dark hours from 
our bodies.

Actually from "The Long Walk" by Slavomir Rawicz