[pct-l] Bear canisters

[Gary Wright]

On Oct 1, 2010, at 12:38 PM, Austin Williams wrote:

> OMG.  Until I saw the "fully tongue in cheek" remark at the bottom, I was
> about two inches away from passing out and falling out of my chair in
> disbelief.  That was hilarious!
> 
> Funny thing is, I've had people seriously ask me about doing just that.  Not
> even joking!!!  :)

Yep. When I told tell people about my long-distance hikes I often got questions that suggest that the trail existed in some some parallel-universe where I was cut-off from civilization for the duration of my hike. In that world, a gun was needed to fend off predators, hunt for food, and to protect myself from the crazy mountain-folk.

I'll admit that prior to my thru-hike my thoughts about the 'wilderness' were certainly out of whack with reality.

Andrew Skurka, who just finished a 4,700 mile hike around Alaska, had some great comments about what 'real' wilderness is like:

> Humility. The most remote and inaccessible section of the trip was across the Yukon Arctic and the eastern Brooks Range (also known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). During that stretch I went 650 miles without crossing a road and 3.5 weeks without seeing another human being. That’s true wilderness. It may sound romantic, but frankly it’s frightening—was completely on my own, entirely dependent on the space between my ears and the contents of my pack (12 pounds of gear and up to two weeks of food), traveling across an environment that is hardly conducive to life: it has big rivers, big storms, big wildlife, big swamps, and small but prolific bugs. This new level of self-dependence caused me to tap into a primal, ancient, and mostly lost, sense of humility that dates back to when humans were really just another wild animal on this planet, not a higher or elevated species, when overcoming Nature’s challenges and making it to tomorrow was a noble and fundamental goal.


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