[pct-l] Denatured alcohol...

[Catherine Worth]

-----Original Message-----
>From: Jon Danniken <danniken at comcast.net>

>When you encourage people with little to no backpacking experience of their 
>own to crowd the trail, holding their hand most
>of the way, you tend to develop the "Soccer Mom" mentality that you 
>frequently see on this list.


Hi Jon - 

Below I've pasted a couple encouragements J. Muir had for people to go outdoors. He clearly thought doing so would benefit not only them, but all of society. Please note that he failed to include small print reading, "This advice does NOT apply to those pathetic, obnoxious people with little to no backpacking experience of their own, or who need some direction or encouragement or help, or have some fears or uncertainties, or who question what stove they should use, or who choose to walk in a group or sometimes be social in the woods. YOU GUYS stay home."

Hmmm. Was Muir actually secretly an undercover soccer mom?! Dang.

-Katie W.
2007 pct attempter
and john muir groupie

"Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grasses and gentians of glacial meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings, nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature's sources never fail."

"Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean."

"Brought into right relationships with the wilderness, man would see that his appropriation of Earth's resources beyond his personal needs would only bring imbalance and begat ultimate loss and poverty by all."

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." 

"Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountain is going home; that wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life." 

"Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life."