[pct-l] New danger on PCT -- on Pyrenees not PCT

[River Malcolm]

Thanks to both Brick and JMT for your intriguing responses to the poem about maps.  I too found Your book recommendation helpful and fun, Brick.

 It touches on a lot of topics that fascinate and haunt me -- including belief in satanic cult abuse -- but I also am a skeptic about rationality as an ultimately reliable way of mapping the universe. I think rationality too has great limits and that it too has its fundamentalists and true believers.

How does this relate to the PCT? Maybe the balance between serendipity and planning -- rightly or wrongly, I had the sense in my first short section hike that I couldn't have completed it (or even survived it) without a certain amount of luck and grace (including of course the kindness and help of trail angels and other hikers). This leads me to believe in and trust in a mystery not knowable via reason alone. And yet I'm enough of a skeptic to want a version of the mystery that isn't totally incompatible with reason. Maybe the trail itself with its ups and downs, twists and turns, its not entirely predictable weather and water and fire conditions--and its magic--provides a metaphor for that mystery. 

Coming down from the San Jacintos I felt I was literally wrestling with the wind -- made me think of Jacob wrestling with God. I wondered if wrestling with God felt a bit like wrestling with wind. Something bigger than myself, powerfully present, but mostly invisible except for its effects. 



*****

He, he, he,....got you Brick!!
Say, that sounds like an interesting book.
I think i will buy it and read it.

JMT Reinhold
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<reinholdmetzger at cox.net <http://mailman.backcountry.net/mailman/listinfo/pct-l>> wrote:
> /  This is unquestionable, undeniable, indisputable proof that maps, even of a
/>/  different mountain, are worth their weight in gold to lost hikers, and
/>/  can show  them the way.
-----------------------------------/
Brick wrote;
That map worked the same way religious books or prayer does.

They don't actually do anything, but rather, simply provide hope, and
with hope, people can achieve great things on their own.

This book is interesting about that topic
http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscience/dp/0716733870

Sent from my iPhone