[pct-l] On Hiker Privacy . . . and Safety

[Diane at Santa Barbara Hikes dot com]

On Nov 20, 2008, at 6:08 PM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:
>
> It's not so much the record keeping that I find troublesome, it's  
> what seems
> to come with it, the comparisons, disputes, and loss of privacy for  
> hikers.
> It becomes a horse race, with people betting on the side.

I'm reminded of when I was hiking up to Dicks Pass and met a couple  
resting on the trail. They spoke to me and were excited to find out I  
was a thru-hiker (well, I was at that time anyway.) They asked me  
where I was in the pack. I said I didn't know. They asked me when my  
start date was and estimated I was in the top 40. I told them that I  
was not in the top 40 because I had skipped 100 miles so I was ahead  
of where I should be. They looked so disappointed, like I had broken  
some kind of rule. You should have seen the change in their face and  
eyes as they looked at me.

Skipping 100 miles of the trail did not bother me at all and their  
response to me didn't really bother me, either. But something about  
it did bother me and I think it was the assumption that the hike was  
a race or sporting event. It was not a race, at least not for me. It  
was more of a journey, a quest, a life-long dream. And I did not feel  
capable of conveying that to people no matter how much I wanted to.  
All that walking and I didn't have many words at all about anything  
anymore. I walked so many miles all alone and I really wanted to talk  
to someone about how much the journey meant to me but I couldn't seem  
to do it. The attitude of that couple sort of reduced the grandeur of  
my experience to some kind of ultramarathon. It seemed disappointing  
that to some people that was all my journey was.

Not that it matters in the least. My hike was my hike. But I hope  
that made some sense as to why too much score-keeping bothers me.

>
> It became not so innocent when this guy made some inappropriate  
> statements
> to the female in their group, started waiting for them or leaving  
> notes for
> them at trail crossings and tracking their whereabouts --  literally
> stalking them.
>
That's just creepy and validates what I always tell people whenever  
they asked me if I was scared of bears or whatever. It's humans that  
we should be scared of. It's so-called civilization that is  
dangerous, not the wilderness.

~Piper