[pct-l] An odd experience I had here at PCT-L last Thanksgiving

[O.d. Coyote]

Greetings, folks,

I've just joined PCT-L for the first time, and this is my first post.  I
walked the Cascade Crest Trail in WA in 1973, completed the rest of the PCT
(and then some) in 1975 (I wrote a chapter for Chuck Long's book), and have
enjoyed other long walks since.  I generally don't join or post on lists or
boards as this one, although I sometimes read them.  But I had an odd
experience here at PCT-L last Thanksgiving, which is why I'm writing now.

I recently finished a wonderful 18-month, very leisurely walking traverse of
the US Pacific coast.  The odd experience which happened here, began on that
journey.  If anyone's interested, there is a walking route that can be
followed along the coast between Cape Flattery on the north tip of the
Olympic Peninsula, and Tijuana at the California-Mexico border.  Coastal
hiking requires skills and teaches lessons that mountain trails such as the
Triple Crown ones never do.

On the evening of Nov 24, 2006,  as I cross-countried up a steep slope from
remote, little-visited Paradise Beach near Pt. Sal CA, I met a man who
introduced himself as Reinhold Metzger, who quickly announced that he held
the unsupported speed record for the JMT.  He asked, "Have you heard of me?"
I'd heard of a German mountain climber with a similar name, but quickly
realized that wasn't this guy.  For some reason, speed hiking has always
been linked in my mind with speed eating, both being activities for which
speed isn't the thing why people do them, yet have been turned into
competitive challenges among a few people on the freaky fringes, in which
speed is the thing.  They share a similar absurdity.  So I also briefly
thought of that skinny little Japanese guy, Kobiyushi, who eats like 50 hot
dogs in 10 minutes, but I quickly realized he wasn't this guy either.  We
talked for an hour or so, sharing what I believed was a private conversation
in the middle of nowhere with no one else around, about various hiking
topics, one of which was the Triple Crown.  Then he left for his car at a
trailhead about 5 miles off, as I found a lea spot on the open coastal ridge
protected from the wind, to spend the night.

Three days later, Reinhold posted a letter on this list about me ("Ode
Coyote," Nov 27,2006), in which he did a very bad job of getting his facts
and details about me right, and containing a weird passive-aggressive
editorial against me (that I was "anti-establishment," unlike himself and
his presumed readers, apparently - whatever that means).  Finally, at the
end of his letter, he asked if anyone had heard of me - ostensibly, his
purpose for writing.

Within 2 hours of that posting, Bob Bankhead, with whom I enjoyed some great
conversations at early ALDHA-West gatherings, posted some kind words about
me (Thank you Bob, and thanks about Ishmael), and then Steel-Eye wrote that
he also remembered me from early ALDHA-West gatherings.

But other people here wanted to talk about issues/ideas Reinhold ineptly
attributed to me while mangling what I really said.  In his original post,
he couldn't even get my name right.  On Dec 2 , Reinhold posted to correct
another error about me in his original message ("Jon and Ode Coyote"), in
which he now referred to the "Ode Coyote controversy." In truth, his entire
letter was riddled with inaccuracies, and the "controversy" was fabricated
by Reinhold and some other equally sloppy-thinking list members who
responded.  In the course of that discussion, Ginny & Jim Owen (quite
properly) added a new idea  about the Triple Crown Award becoming "diluted"
as more people earn it - an idea I never mentioned to Reinhold, and Reinhold
never ascribed to me.  Yet in the next post, Ron Moak added to everyone's
confusion by linking my name with Ginny & Jim's idea in his title line, as
if it had come from me.  A few days later, Paul Magnanti wrote a post ("on
the Triple Crown", Dec 1) that began with his disagreement over the idea of
Triple Crown prestige being diluted, and ended with his cussing me out by
name (he wrote, "...a colorful dialect word that is still heard quite a bit
around those parts is on my mind to mr. O.D or whoever: "Va fungu!""
--Incidentally, that term, "va fungu," means "F* you.").

Paul - I never held that view.  You are one very easily confused and
excitable man.  Get a better grip than you've got.  You have more bad sense
than your friends have good sense.  And stop cussing out people behind their
back - it shows you to be a coward.

In between, various other members took shots at what I allegedly believe
(but don't), and posted jokes about it, at my expense, in what amounted to
an alley mugging of a stranger who was not able to explain or defend
himself.  This PCT-L list is supposed to foster a sense of community among
distance hikers; yet it was used by counter-productive members to alienate
this hiker from the community.  Who would appreciate having this cascade of
errors and innaccuracies being attributed to them, by people who believe
they're saying these things behind your back?  Reinhold is not an accurate
relayer of information, he is happy to orchestrate social confusion at the
expense of others for cheap amusement, and various of you are anything but
clear thinkers, besides being inconsiderate and thoughtless as well.  My
sense is that Reinhard, Paul, Steve Courtway, and other folks who took shots
at me and made jokes in that thread last Thanksgiving are basically the
distance hiking community's equivalent of gossipy little old
grandmother-biddies who love to make trouble by fabricating and spreading
malicious false gossip.

In conversations with some hikers, I've heard various criticisms that
distance hikers tend to be not too bright, suffering from short horizons,
over-full of themselves, and under-considerate of others.  I know there are
many smart, solid, considerate distance hikers that characterization doesn¹t
fit, and this list is shared by some of them.  But it does seem to me that
an entirely new element of bad-behaving, unjustifiably arrogant distance
hikers has followed in the wake of Ray Jardine's first book in 1992.  As we
enter another off-season's boredom, I hope members here grow up a little bit
and manage to avoid confirming that criticism again.

If anyone is interested, for the purpose of idea-sharing and civil
discussion, I'll be happy to speak for myself about my views on the Triple
Crown, which generated some smoke last year in my absence. (I consider it
the equivalent of a high school degree in distance hiking, many grades below
a prestigious post-graduate degree.  And it also suffers from a crass and
elitist origin.)  Or I'll describe what I was telling Reinhold about
skipping a small section of trail, an idea he was unable to communicate
correctly, which Steve Courtway and others couldn't seem to get their heads
around.  Or about America's West Coast Trail, if anyone is interested in
coast-walking.  Another topic that several people raised in that thread last
Thanksgiving was the matter of distance hiking fashion police; that is,
folks who look down on and chide those who carry more weight than they think
is necessary. (Fashion police were an obnoxious element in high school, and
even more obnoxious in the trail community.)  Or the absurdity of labelling
some means or methods or ideas about distance hiking as "establishment" or
"anti-establishment," and how anyone doing so is demonstrating themselves an
opponent of HYOH values, whatever they might otherwise claim.  Or how Ray
Jardine¹s poisonously snarky attitude toward others in his original book,
and the proliferation of other ³how-to distance hike² books, has created a
fundamental change over the last several decades in the type of people who
do this activity. Any of these topics or more - ideas or matters in the
public arena, I'll be happy to discuss.  All of this is better than seeing
some of y'all go and pick on another unsuspecting hiker behind their back,
this winter.

To repeat - I know very well that there are still plenty of good, smart,
considerate, well-behaved distance hikers - both here, in ALDHA-West, and
elsewhere.  So none of my barbed or critical comments are intended for
everyone.  But there is also an element of immature obnoxious people who
don't have their acts together very well, who spew a form of social
pollution, that one unfortunately must deal with, if they wish to
participate in the "distance hiking community." Folks like Reinhard have
even shown themselves happy to reach out and be obnoxious social polluters
to hikers like me when I'm not participating in the community.  They are not
a good element for PCT-L to enable or shelter.

My thoughts for now,
O.d. Coyote 
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