[pct-l] Re: Trail Addiction

[jim at mccrain.net (Jim McCrain)]

>On Wed Mar 8, Paul Magnanti wrote: 
>
>Jim, I'd hate to think I sent you hate mail. Far from
>it. Expressing a different opinion is hardly hate
>mail. Then again, you don't seem to like opinions that
>are different from yours.

You didn't write anything that I could possibly construe as "Hate Mail."  But I never said I didn't like someone elses opinion, either.

>I am just asking you to not use your criteria for a
>successful hike and place it on someone else.

I have never said that Reinhold didn't have a "successfull" trip, nor that he didn't enjoy it.  I DID say that I don't understand his type of trip.

>Again, how can you say YOUR way is the only way to
>"enjoy the surrounding and ro experience what nature
>brings my way"?

Again, I have NEVER said my way was the "only" way.  I DO say that it is the only way that I understand, or could possibly do to enjoy the wilderness.

>I don't trust people who say their way is the one,
>correct path.

Neither do I, and that is why I am so taken a-back by all the fevered messages I am recieving.  I have never seen such open hostility on this newsgroup, nor the narrow-mindedness that I am encountering on this subject.

>... Is my way worse than
>yours? Is my enjoyment less? How can you tell me that
>my hike was not enjoyable?

Once again, I have never said that "your way" is worse than mine, nor that you did not enjoy it.  I HAVE said that *I* could not enjoy it that way, and that I don't undestand how anyone else could.  If you read that last statement, and fully try to understand it, it is not saying that I am right and everyone else is wrong.  It simply states that YOUR way isn't MY way.  Perhaps I should have used the internet language (of not using full or actual words) and typed "HYOH."  Perhaps that would have prevented all of this anger directed at me.

>To say that my form of wilderness experience is
>somehow inferior to yours is insulting to me, to
>peopel who do less mileage than you, to people who do
>more than I.

For the (I hope) final time, I have NOT said that any other way of hiking is "inferior" to mine.  It IS different, though, and I still don't understand how someone can hurry through such a beautiful place.  Sorry if you think that I was insulting you, but if you will read the words again, you will see that I really didn't.

Jim McCrain
HYOH  (Hike Your Own Hike)
YMMV  (Your Mileage May Vary)
DEYS  (Don't Eat Yellow Snow)