[pct-l] old stuff in our closets

[Susan Virnig]

Thank you, David, for these musings… I am 72 and still have the 6 pound (!!!) mountaineering boots with which I summited Mt. Hood in 1976 and was turned back at 10,000 feet (Camp Muir) on Mt. Rainier by 90 mile/hour winds.  Ill-advised by a local gear shop employee, I hiked my first 100 mile solo on the North Cascades PCT in those boots.

How blessed we are that we’ve been privileged to spend this time in the mountains!

—Sunshine (Susan from Spokane)


On February 18, 2021 at 12:34:41 PM, David Hough reading PCT-L (pctl at oakapple.net) wrote:

> most of this stuff is just sitting in our storage bins and closets never to be used again  

Now that's an old man conversation for sure. One I'm engaged in often.  
My 12 point crampons and the boots that fit them. I'm not front pointing  
up anything now. I never did, actually, though I did use them more routinely  
a lot - 50 years ago. And my beautiful Simond Super D wooden ice axe.  
And my JanSport D2. And a whole closet of fishing gear.  
And all those white gas and Bleuet stoves.  

The odds are I'll never use any of this stuff again, but I hate the IDEA  
that I won't ever again have even the OPTION of using them again!  
Somebody will eventually have to deal with them, and I would do my heirs  
a favor by getting rid of as much as possible while I can.  
That's what my father did for me.  

And then I remember my Summits - about twenty years of Summit's heyday in the  
1970's and 1980's before the old ladies sold out and it got slick.  
I think they got thrown out, possibly by mistake, and it makes me sad because  
they would be worth something - but there was no way I'd every dig them out  
and reread them.  

In contrast, I at least yearly have occasion to look at the 1974 first edition  
of the Wilderness Press guidebooks to see how the trail evolved from a vague  
route and roads to its current much more complete state. There were huge  
gaps from Campo to Crabtree Meadow and Tahoe to Lake of the Woods.  
Does anybody ever try to rehike the 1974 route?  

Anyway I've decided the emotional content is not so much the throwing  
away of old things as the feeling of throwing away of the part of my life  
that they were attached to.  
These things were attached to my life.  
But my life was not attached to these things.  

Yet we old guys know we are all going to lose it all in the not too distant  
future.  
None of this old stuff means anything to my kids.  

David Hough  

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