[pct-l] did you enjoy it ?

[chwillet at indiana.edu (Christopher Willett)]

Why? It was a beautiful thing.
Enjoy?  Every last moment.  Except for maybe when I was put to labor in
the Antelope Valley.

Chris

On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Joanne Lennox wrote:

> When I was traveling along the trail, especially with a horse and
> especially on the Continential Divide where people rarely have seen any
> species of thruhiker(or rider).  Upon find out my intention was to go from
> Mexico to Canada, the first question was generally:  "Why would you do such
> a thing?'"
> 
> Since I thought I was doing it for a whole slew of reasons, and in the end
> probably did not know precisely why anyway, I developed a repertoire of
> answers that were partially right and that I thought would satisfy the
> questioner.  None of these answers included an answer like "to see if I can
> get there".  Basically for me this is an inward journey that has an outward
> metaphor and I am interested in the "spiritual aspects" of a long journey,
> not just getting to the end or another place.  This is why I keep going,
> why I haven't got there yet.
> 
> The second question that comes up is: "are you enjoying it?"  This always
> stops me dead and I am mystified on how to answer because of the chasm I
> see yawning between us.  I explain that I would not attach the word
> "enjoyable" to the experience as a whole although there are enjoyable
> moments. Interesting, experience, learning, expanding, powerful, process,
> etc. are words with a better fit.
> 
> So.  Why do the rest of you "do such a thing" and "do you enjoy it"?
> 
> Goforth
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----------------------
Christopher Willett
Department of Mathematics
Indiana University
831 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN. 47405-7106
(812)-855-1883
chwillet@indiana.edu
mypage.iu.edu/~chwillet