[pct-l] The future of the PCT-L

[Jeffrey Olson]

I joined the 2016 Facebook group devoted to hiking the trail this year.  
I've been a member of the PCT-L since its inception, and have watched 
how social media has changed since 1995.

I scroll the Facebook posts for stuff that expands my knowledge of 
hiking.  Now, it's about gear and permits, and is much more social than 
the PCT-L, which tends to focus on topics rather than streaming 
questions, comments, blurbs and ads.  Persons make connections - if not 
to meet for coffee - to keep up with each other as they embark on their 
trail journey.  When you meet each other, you'll make the connection...  
So cool...

After a couple months I'm more knowledgeable about gear, and have 
lightened my load by a couple pounds - it's all on the dining room 
table, ready to be stowed for a CDT shakedown desert section hike. The 
"mass" of information appearing on Facebook requires 15 or 20 minutes a 
day to process.  I've gotten good at picking out stuff that is 
interesting to me.  Most of it isn't.

The people who seem to have "experience" on the PCT express themselves 
differently on Facebook than they do here.  Here we offer perspectives, 
and opinions.  Someone asks a question and there are a bunch of 
responses from people with lots of experience.  My guess is there are 
just as many on Facebook, but there is so much flow, individual posts 
and responses to posts.  I process twice a day now.  I feel like I'm 
separating chaff from stuff that I relate to.

On Facebook there are few experienced hikers who share their 
perspectives.  There is so much traffic that integrated perspectives 
become part of the flow of posts and responses to posts.  It's hard to 
drill down to comments on posts when there are so many posts. It's so 
much more emotion based, more a dance from point to point than a sharing 
of perspectives.  I'm a bit envious of the heady naievity and 
trepidation that courses through Facebook.

I've been spending time in the back country since my folks took us into 
the Marble Mountains in 1960 when I was eight.  Mules humped our gear to 
Cliff Lake for two weeks.  The next year we spent two weeks at Lower 
Wright Lake in the Marbles.  The year after that we actually carried our 
own gear into the Eagle Cap Wilderness in northeastern Oregon.  We spent 
three days under a 10' x 20' tarp while it rained.  A sheepherder put 
our packs on his empty mules once the storm passed, and we trudged, 
damp, tired and irascible to the car and home.  My mother tells the 
story best - how to keep three kids, 10, 9 and 7 - entertained for three 
days.

There used to be lots of posts here from new hikers expressing their 
excitement and anxiety.  I remember - not to far in the past - when long 
time list subscribers would tell a newbie to go to the archives to get 
the answer to their question.  I always thought this was a perfect way 
to turn people off from asking questions here.

Based on what's crossed the listserv this year, I think we've done a 
good job marginalizing ourselves.  Maybe it's a larger phenomenon of 
listservs dying in the face of more tech based social media.  For 
whatever reason, people who've asked questions here are far and few in 
between.

Maybe it's time to think differently about what we are doing here.

I'm a story teller.  I love to pull a memory out of the flow and 
fictionalize it - emplot it to have a beginning, middle, end, and a 
point.  My guess is that most of us have subscribed to the listserv for 
lots of years, have lots of experience backpacking, even if we're 
newbies, and have stories that can be crafted from those experiences.

Please, craft those stories.  Start out small.  Write a 500 word story 
about something that happened to you hiking on the PCT and share it with 
us.  What was it like the first time filtering nasty water didn't work?  
What was it like working up a 2000' ridge and finding yourself thinking 
more clearly than you had ever before? There are so many little 
perspectives that can form the nucleus of big stories - in 500 words, or 
less.

What was it like to meet someone you fell in love with, and over a 
couple months lose because s/he hiked faster/slower than you?  What 
piece of gear did you realize made no sense to carry, but you had an 
emotional attachment to?  What was it like to hike while a family member 
was dying of cancer?

There are a myriad of stories you all could share if you wanted to.

Let's make the listserv a vehicle of our perspectives, dreams, and 
learning from our experiences - a place to share story.  Write what the 
PCT means to you, an experience that illuminates a perspective, 
something you learned or felt.

 From my experience, not many of us feel comfortable sharing what we 
feel and think.  We haven't been encouraged to imagine from our 
experiences and formalize it in a story.

I started a hike from Lassen to Whitney - 750 miles - with my partner in 
1992.  We met the SOBO thrus and there was one guy who was so totally in 
love with the one woman hiking south (the herd was seven hikers) he 
shared his emotionality with us within 30 seconds of meeting him.  He 
had a shop in Bellvue, WA sending him his food. He was a 24 year old 
trust fund adolescent.

My girlfriend and I bought boots and packs  and stove from this shop, 
and the seven degrees of separation was reduced to one.  Jane and I were 
carrying two sets of fleece, and so much more that could have been shorn 
for a lighter weight.

We met the object of his love in Sierra city.  We spent the night in a 
second story motel room above a bar.  I could research this and get more 
detailed, but you can do this.

The woman wasn't interested in this guy, and the story unfolded. Another 
fellow was hiking solo, in this little group, and he too was in love 
with this really independent woman, but he was poor, had low self 
esteem.  My girlfriend thought his physical beauty and emotional 
vulnerability was really attractive.  The thru-hiking woman was so 
strong she shared how she felt for these two guys - their issues weren't 
hers.  She was totally focused on getting to Canada.  She did admit, 
during our trail-side/motel  conversation, that these two guys mooning 
over her actually strengthened her resolve to complete the trip on her own.

If what I'm suggesting captures you, feel free to send me a draft, and 
I'll read it.  If you don't have a high school diploma or have a PhD and 
don't feel worthy, know that I'll get it.  I'll meet you where you are.  
I want to be part of communities creating the world.  This begins with 
one person taking the risk to say what they've felt, learned, or thought 
about.

Trail stories are vignettes - little slices of reality - beginning, 
middle and end, with a point.  500 words.

Tell your stories here.  Or, send them to me and I'll critique and 
suggest...  But write them, regardless...  Write your stories....

jjolson58 at gmail.com

Jeff