[pct-l] Why hike the PCT?

[Bighummel@aol.com]

When asked why I wanted to hike the PCT (a VERY important question that you 
should all have thought long about your answer) I answered long ago that I 
wanted to do something huge that I would be glad I had done when looking back 
over my life at the end.  

"It is so easy to exist instead of live."

The following is an excerpt from Anna Quindlen's commencement address at 
Villanova.  It is a little long so pass if you're cruzin.   However, so much 
here is appropriate for long distance hiking and why we do it that I thought 
you all would hear some familiarity to it:

"You walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else 
has.  There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there 
will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living.  But you 
will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.  Your 
particular life.  Your entire life."

". . . So here's what I wanted to tell you today: get a life.  A real life, 
not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger 
house.  Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew 
an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?"

"Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a 
breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a 
red-tailed hawk circles over the water gap, or the way a baby scowls with 
concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first 
finger."

"Get a life in which you are not alone.  Find people you love, and who love 
you.  And remember that love is not leisure, it is work."

". . . Look around at the azaleas in the suburban neighborhood where you grew 
up; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black, black sky on a cold night. 
 And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business 
taking it for granted."

". . . It is so easy to take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen 
of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kid's eyes, the way the 
melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again."

". . . It is so easy to exist instead of live."

"No man ever said on his deathbed "I wish I had spent more time at the 
office."  I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island 
maybe 15 years ago.

"It was December, and I was doing a story about how the homeless survive in 
the winter months.  He and I sat on the edge of the wooden supports, dangling 
our feet over the side, and he told me about his schedule, panhandling the 
boulevard when the summer crowds were gone, sleeping in a church when the 
temperature went below freezing, hiding from the police amidst the 
Tilt-a-Whirl and the Cyclone and some of the other seasonal rides.  But he 
told me that most of the time he stayed on the boardwalk, facing the water, 
just the way we were sitting now, even when it got cold and he had to wear 
his newspapers after he read them.  And I asked him why."

"Why didn't he go to one of the shelters?  Why didn't he check himself into 
the hospital for detox?  And he just stared out at the ocean and said,

"Look at the view, young lady.  Look at the view."  And every day, in some 
little way, I try to do what he said.  I try to look at the view.  And that's 
the last thing I have to tell you today, words of wisdom from a man with not 
a dime in his pocket, no place to go, nowhere to be."

I sense that most of the people on this list already know this advice.

Best regards,

Greg "Strider" Hummel
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