[pct-l] What about the tedium and boredom?

["Joanne Lennox" <goforth@cio.net>]

Well, folks I have been ticking off my training miles about 10 miles at a
time, 3 times a week, and one thing is for sure: ya don't need a lot smarts
to truck on down the trail.  .  Experience and flexibility, and trail wise
good sense helps to make a truhike a safe and powerful and memoreable one. 
But many hours are spent looking at the same type of scenery, just walking
every day. My mind quickly seems to submerge into a porridge of daydreams,
schemes, imaginary conversations, and attempts to solve various mundane
problems.

Do not get me wrong, wonderful experiences do happen out there, but it is
not one exciting thing after another.  I do not find myself overly
stimulated by hiking hour after hour, and there definitely is a downside to
lots and lots of walking.  In fact, on a lot of trips there seems precious
little time to even eat or write in my journal sometimes. More and more, I
do things as I am walking.

And yes, being away from all that stimulation that civilization has to
offer, can relax the mind in a powerful way so that one is able to
sometimes see past one's individual mental habits and constructs.  To view
the world in a new way. But I don't think these moments can be forced, they
can be encouraged, but they seem to take their own sweet time.

What do the people on the list do to cope with the tedium and boredom of so
many hours of walking?

 Occaisionally, I resort to various meditation techniques (breath counting,
body scaning, chakra, and energy awareness, tonglen, etc.),thinking up
journal entrys, reciting poety, singing songs, or pondering certain
connumdrums of time and space (Would time exist without periodicity, can I
perceive the sun as a star during the day).  I often start the day reading
a particular philosophical system, and then go back all day in my thoughts,
and in my journal to what I read in the morning.  There have been periods
where I would memorize pieces of a particular book, that zerox page would
be in my pocket or hand all day. The interesting thing about the memorizing
is that I can remember exactly where I was for each piece.  Very much like
I can remember pretty much every nights campsite that I have used climbing
or hiking.  I don't use any of these things for very long at a time, but
return to them now and then to bring myself back to the present moment or
get out of the mental fog.

Sometimes, I wonder whether or not I will emerge from a thruhike in a
permanent state of mind - numbness, akin to what I saw in my mother who
died of Alzheimers.  If this is true it appears that at least some of the
people on the list have recovered<G>, and I only have to worry about that
one if I am on a bad genetic or physiologic timeline. What was your mind
like at the end of a thruhike of the PCT anyway?  

Peace 
Goforth
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