[pct-l] Why Hike?

[Lonetrail at aol.com (Lonetrail@aol.com)]

I hike 
 
 Its in my  genes "Part man part beast"
 
Lonetrail
 
 
In a message dated 11/20/2005 12:18:38 AM Pacific Standard Time,  
yogihikes@sbcglobal.net writes:

I hike .  . . . . . . 

. . . . . . . because the voices in my head tell me  to.


yogi
www.pcthandbook.com



Marion Davison  <mardav@charter.net> wrote:Shaw Manford wrote:

> I adventure  travel, and now hike, because that is where freedom is at. 
Here in the  sedentary world of American Dreamland, we spend most of our days 
re-acting to  other peoples agendas and desires. On the trail, all of that 
carefully  designed prompting and manipulation is gone, allowing us to live every 
day as  nature intended and enabling us to take back the ownership of our  lives.
> 
> 
>
This relates to my feeling about  wilderness travel. I sum it all up in 
one word--freedom. 
I like to  hike at least 50 days of every year, and I also like to take 
long road  trips all over the country. Road trips are fun because one 
can make  impulsive discoveries--restaurants, hitherto unknown national 
monuments,  but on a road trip you are never free from "the man". You 
gotta watch your  driving, watch out for the other lousy driver, watch 
out for the speed  traps, and think about where to spend the night 
without getting rousted at  midnight. So you find a friendly truck stop 
or pay some obscene price for  a parking place in a campground, or get 
lucky and find a cheap camping  spot in a National park or forest. You 
have to deal with gas prices and  breakdowns and the lousy neighbors in 
the campground with the boombox and  the cooler full of booze that party 
until 3 am.
But in the wilderness I  am free of all those things. Once I leave my 
rig at a relatively safe  parking spot I leave it all behind. No paying 
for camping, no neighboring  campers, no speed traps, no breakdowns, no 
gas..... I think of wilderness  hiking as the real world. In that real 
world, if I want to talk to  someone, I can't pick up a phone. I have to 
go find that person. If I  don't want anyone to find me, well, they 
probably won't. If I want to go  somewhere, I will have to walk. If 
it's raining, I will be wet. That's  reality. The simplicity and the 
freedom are what appeal to me, because my  "normal " life is so stressful 
and dependent upon computers, phones and  automobiles. That "normal" 
life seems very artificial. When I return to  work life, I don't think 
of it as coming back to reality. Quite the  opposite.
This is precisely why I don't like to hike in places that have a  high 
presence of backcountry bureaucrats (aka rangers). They remind me too  
much of CHP, waiting to pull me over and give me a hard time, enforcing  
rules that don't make sense to me. If I had ever needed their help I  
might feel differently.  
llamalady
_______________________________________________
pct-l  mailing list
pct-l@mailman.backcountry.net
unsubscribe or change  options:
http://mailman.hack.net/mailman/listinfo/pct-l

_______________________________________________
pct-l  mailing list
pct-l@mailman.backcountry.net
unsubscribe or change  options:
http://mailman.hack.net/mailman/listinfo/pct-l