[pct-l] through hiking universals

[David Hough on pct-l]

Tom Reynolds back in March (I have a lot of unread
backlog):

=====
> My view about thruhiking, then and now, is that a
thruhike is a social event, not a wilderness event for
many people. Reading the journals and reviewing the
posted photographs of thruhikers both before and after
the first ADZ, it appeared to me that a thruhike is a
sprint from town to town where all could gather for an
all-you-can-eat food fest that desirably pissed off
the proprietor. What was important to thruhikers was
the interaction between other thruhikers as evidenced
by their photographs, largely of people not scenery
and their journals which recorded their burning desire
to reach town as opposed to camping on the trail and
enjoy the wilderness and recorded food fests not
waterfalls. The goal seems to be finishing the trail
as opposed to enjoying the wilderness
=====


You can see the same thing on the Camino de Santiago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtgz4pAvLi4

Except for the occasional cathedral, it looks just
like a bunch of PCT town stops.

As for me, I found on both Camino and PCT that I like
to walk together and apart, alternating.     From the
PCT I do have the option of going south from Campo
or north from Manning if I really want a wilderness
experience (south/north from CDT even more so).
Or I can take the Sierra High Route instead of the
JMT if I have time.     Or I can do a southbound PCT 
through hike instead of a northbound one.
These are options in principle
more than in practice as long as I am working though.
But having these options means no need to berate
those who choose to start at ADZ in a herd.
(On the Camino the corresponding freedom is to
emulate historical pilgrims by walking back from
Santiago to wherever you started from.    It's much
harder route-finding 
and almost everybody flies home from Santiago.)

I do take exception to one of Tom's comments: 
at the end I think
most long distance hikers and pilgrims are more sad
than
happy, whatever their original motivation was,
and my current theory is that it's sadness
about having to go back to the real world they left
behind.     For most of us, long distance hiking is an
artificial vacation kind of experience because we
are consuming more wealth than we are producing.
Obviously it's not possible for everybody to be living
that way all the time, but fortunately, most people
don't want to.