[pct-l] Trail gifts and caches questions? for those of us not on the trail!! <smiles>

[calliger at infolane.com (rjc)]

In life, we have savings accounts, r401ks and insurance policies and so on.

We work (hard) to provide those.  Wells Fargo does not have a pot of gold 
waiting
for you in the desert if you run out of cash...Nor does B of A or US Bank last
time I checked. If I can't pay a bill there are consequences.

If you can't carry sufficient water or food or plan for it or cache it/mail 
it yourself,
can someone tell me why all these nice trail people are leaving
pots of gold for my bad planning or my ineptitude or my just plain screwups
or laziness? Can they do it for 1000 people? Of course not...

Isn't the natural consequence already pre-determined by Darwin and friends?

If you can't make it-- then you don't - you then quit or die-- don't we 
want a strong gene pool
and not a bunch of waders???  I hardly saw a soul nor did I ever use a 
cache not my own, and
counted on my wits and expertise..which I hopefully have passed onto my son.

A help list is fine, yogi's compendium is good, but aren't caches and other 
"freebies"
and "helpful" folks on the trail totally contrary to the spirit of the 
trail? Would John Muir
like to have a trail angel today?

Won't this go by the wayside anyway as the numbers increase to a 1000 or 
1500 per
year? How big of a water cache will we need then? 5000 gals of water bottle 
?? Would
they not create a flood of even more hikers (WOW-- this is easy-- carry a 
teaspoon
of water 'cause the next stop is a be-zillion gals of water? Sorta takes 
the challenge
out of it eh?

Wasn't/Isn't  the common purpose of everyone's HYOH just that- the 
spirituality and the
fortitude necessary to complete the journey As in life, if we are handed a 
free bowl
of money each week don't people get lazy and sloppy and careless and worst
of all, don't we get these massive expectations that "we are going to be 
saved" no
matter how dumb we are on the trail? (or in life- isn't that why we are 
headed to
more and more government handouts and welfare in life???)

R