Today’s To-Do List
- Walk from here to there.
Mark
Any other 2004 thru's looking forward to this?
system
#2
It’s going to look more like this:
5:30am - stumble out of sleeping bag in the dark to go pee.
5:35am - crawl back into bed shivering from the freezing cold. Try to go back to sleep while listening to the sounds of other hikers unzipping and zipping sleeping bags, or peeing in bottles.
7:00am - curse the chirping birds for waking you up so early.
7:30am - curse the hikers who like to wake up early for bumping around and making a bunch of noise while packing up.
8:00am - finally roll out of bed, start getting your breakfast, and packing up your gear. Curse mice who ate a new hole in your pack.
9:00am - set out hiking through the fog up the side of a steep mountain. Curse the pain in your quads, but encourage yourself by thinking about the wonderful view you’ll have when you reach the top of the mountain.
12:00am - reach the mountain top only to realize that the fog is actually a cloud, and it’s not going anywhere. Get wonderful views of the trees up to 20 ft away. Stop anyway to eat lunch–a snickers bar, or little Debbie snack cake because the thought of eating those healthy raisins and peanuts you brought makes you shudder.
12:30pm - start hiking down the other side of the steep mountain. Curse the pain in your knees, but encourage yourself by thinking about the highway crossing at the bottom where you can hitchhike to town and get some real food.
2:38pm - hunt a spot off trail where you can take a dump. Try not to think about how inadequate toilet paper is for the job it was intended, or about the fact that you’ve not bathed for five days.
4:00pm - stand on the side of the road with your thumb out wishing you had a girl with you. Not because you’re horny as hell–although you are–but just because it would make the people in the cars zooming past you less inclined to suspect you of being a serial killer.
4:30pm - finally get a ride with a guy who wants to tell you all about the weekend he hiked the AT as a boy scout and how he has always wanted to do a thru-hike because it was such a wonderful wilderness experience. Tune him out by thinking about pizza, taking a shower and clean sheets.
5:00pm - check into a hotel room. Ignore the rudeness of the desk clerk and the suspicious looks from the other guests.
5:15pm - take a hot shower.
5:30pm - take another hot shower.
6:00pm - raid the local AYCE buffet. Ignore the amazed looks of the other patrons as you make your fifth trip through the buffet line.
8:00pm - hit the local laundry mat wearing nothing but your rain suit and a smile. Ignore the gagging and wretching of the other patrons as you pull nasty clothes out of your stuff sack and put them into a washing machine.
8:10pm - wash clothes.
8:40pm - wash clothes again. Ignore dirty looks from the laundry attendant who’s calculating how long it’s going to take you to dry your clothes and whether you’ll be out of there by closing time.
9:10pm - put clothes in to dry.
9:40pm - pull clothes out of dryer and stuff them into sack, except for one pair. Put on clean clothes in laundry bathroom.
10:00pm - purchase six-pack and two bags of doritos on your way back to hotel room.
12:30am - fall asleep in bed watching TV, with empty beer cans and doritos bags littering the floor around you.
5:30am - wake up hung over and about to bust. Reflect on the wonderful splashing sound that a full stream of urine makes in a real toilet.
5:35am - Crawl back into your warm, clean bed and get some more rest before you have to get up and head back out to the woods to do it all over again.
Have fun!! :cheers
Skeptic
system
#4
What works for me - taking mental “baby steps” every day. I like/try to concentrate no further than my next resupply point. You get to that point and then you take some more “baby steps” to the next point. Enjoy each day and appreciate the positive or negatives you run across.
If you are going Northbound, appreciate that there are some thru-hikers who give up walking the access trail before they even get to Springer. When YOU get to Springer, pat yourself on the back and “check-off” that minor goal in your mind.
Keep hiking with that frame of mind. When you get to Damascus, realize that 25% of all thru-hikers do not go any further. When YOU get to Damascus, try to take a zero day, get a room for the night, and, again, pat yourself on the back.
Using these manageable goals helps provide for constant reinforcement as you hike. You don’t have to dwell on it - and you probably won’t - but the point is to have something positive on a weekly basis to offset the inevitable negatives that will also occur.
Brutus
system
#6
Hmmmm. Negatives can only exist if an experience is compared to an expectation of what ‘should’ be rather than what is.
dharma
system
#7
Day 1 - The normal day
5:30am -Wake up and have to go pee…fall 3’ to the ground as you fall out of hammock cause in your dream you where in you big comfy bed at home.
5:32am - Get up off the ground to find you are bleeding from the fall.
5:35am - Wonder why people insist on peeing in jars in the middle of the night as you whip blood off your knee.
5:45am - MAKE COFFEE!!! and proceed to near by look out point to enjoy the sunrise with a cup of coffee. Think about the girl who left you because you wanted to go hiking for 6 months and she thought you where insane. And how nice it would be to share this special moment with someone else.
6:45am - Return to camp and make fire for the process of making breakfast
7:00am - Supply hiker who i have woken up with my noise with hot water for coffee.
7:45am - Wonder why other campers keep looking at me like they are going to kill me as i eat my bacon, eggs, and coffee. Wonder why they all stop looking at me when the bacon is gone.
8:00am - Clean up camp and repack bag
9:00am - set out hiking to a wonderful day
9:30am - think about girl you passed on the trail, since you have enjoyed the company of a women in a month.
10:45am - think about the you passed on trail at 9:30am
1:00pm - Wonder if girl you passed on trail will be the shelter you stay at.
2:00pm - wonder when the last time the girl from 9:30am shaved
3:30pm - stop on side of trail and marinate dinner for the evening if eating meat at dinner.
5:00pm - stop at shelter and prepare dinner; wondering why people eating reman keep looking at me as i prepare my steak and potatos
5:30pm - enjoy dinner by sunset, think about girl from 9:30am
6:30pm - return to shelter to be greated by the girl from 9:30am sitting by fire.
6:45pm - after talking to girl from 9:30am you figure out she is really a he
8:30pm - set up hammock and go to sleep
DAY 2 - Why do days like this happen
1:45am - wake up soaking wet because when you went to sleep you didnt put the tarp over the hammock because it was a clear night.
2:00am - swear at self for buying a down sleeping bag that now has a weight of what feels like 50lbs because it is now soaking wet.
2:05am - throw tarp over hammock and grab pack and run into shelter that now has 12 more people then it is designed for huddled into corners.
4:00am - fall alseep sitting up in the corner because u have no sleeping bag and the best you could do to cover your self up was with the overly small towel you brought with you to save on weight.
4:02am - get woken up by fellow hiker who has rolled over in their sleep and put his head in your lap.
4:03am - roll guy with head in your lap off of you
4:10am - 5:30am - swear to self about all the hikers in shelter who are snoring loud enough to shake the earth.
5:35am - join the two other hikers sitting at edge of shelter who also cant sleep due to snoring
6:00am - consume a cold breakfast of oatmeal powder, fruit cup, and breakfast bar, because you didnt bring a stove and planned on using a campfire to cook by but its raining out so your f*****.
6:05am - repack bag which now feels like it weighs 80lbs due to soaking wet due to the down sleeping bag full of water.
6:30am - go hiking in the rain because you cant think of anything better to do and the 2 other people who are already awake are beginning to repeat the same story about there nice house 800 miles away that has a shower in it
6:45am - think about how much you hate the trail
7:00am - think about girl from 9:30am yesterday
7:01am - remember girl from yesterday was a guy
8:30am - become very happy when the rain stops
8:32am - take off poncho and put it and pack cover in pack.
9:00am - return to hiking, no longer in rain
9:40am - think about how wonderful the trail is
9:45am - start yelling at the sky because it suddenly started raining again.
10:30am - think about how much you hate the trail
11:00am - think about how much you hate the trail
1:00pm - think about how much you hate the trail
3:00pm - think about how good it will feel to get in your nice warm sleeping bag at the shelter and sleep
3:00.30pm - remember your sleeping bag is going to be soaking wet for the next 3 days because it is made of down.
3:01pm - think about how much you hate the trail
4:00pm - go insane pull off all your clothes and start jumping in mud puddles
4:15pm - regroup and put your clothes back on and think about how much you hate the trail
the story goes on and on like this for the next 4 months, with a few changes here and there.
Digital Ranger
system
#8
When you think you hate the trail, that should be a warning you’re not accepting the current conditions for what is happening in the moment. Not accepting “what is” leads to an unpleasant cycle of not getting what you want until you finally surrender to the moment – i.e. you’re stuck in a rut. By surrender I mean just accepting whatever is happening as just that. No labelling it as ‘bad’ because that infers you have an expectation. (back into the neverending cycle)
This acceptance breaks the cycle and then you can move on to create a different situation for yourself. This is what I’ll be learning on the trail as I hike this year. It is very different from what I do now.
dharma
system
#9
do people really pee in jars and bottles these days? times have changed! that is foul, foul, foul. i mean in a winter hike in the whites alone in a tent, it is wise. in a shelter…foul! i could not find serenity in that moment.
dharma bummed
system
#10
The descriptions of hiking the AT posted here are just as I have imagined them. I can hardly wait.
WarEagle
system
#11
2004’s! the hike will change your life, it will be boundlessly fantastic, brilliant, special, and something you dwell on so much that you spend hours daily posting on trailforums dot com and whiteblaze dot com like these hopeless cases! you have much reason to do the fancy balancing act of looking forward with no expectation to the grade-A present moments that will drift through your open mind. the future is yours! now is here, and soon will be on that 2000 mile artery of joy! and when you shape the present, shape it without pee bottles, for the love of dharma, thats wicked gross!
milo
system
#12
Thanks for the uplifting sentiment. I was hoping the trail would at least be better than working. 
dharma
system
#13
Negatives are not inevitable? Either you haven’t been alive very long, or you are simply arguing semantics for the sake of having something to post.
Some things ARE negative. I imagine you are just spouting a concept from a philosophy class/book, but I would like to see you try to pass that stuff off to parents who just had a child born with severe deformities, or to anyone on one of the planes hijacked on 9/11/01 when they realized what was going to happen.
I wouldn’t bother with this post simply to disagree with the two of you because semantic and philosophy debates have their place and I am not trying to silence you on that front. The issue I have is that what you both said was an unecessary and rude response to the post made by Brutus.
What Brutus said was fairly interesting, not offensive to anyone, and said to be encouraging and helpful to the readers of the forum. To make silly, unsupported, hair-splitting statements that are not particularly relevant to the main point of Brutus’s post, which was clearly offered in “good faith” and for the purpose of enriching the forum, is very petty.
I see a lot of useless, back-handed, thinly veiled slights being made on this forum, and it ticks me off. (However, I think the forum as a whole is great.)
P.S. I have never met Brutus and he doesn’t know who I am, but in case anyone knows how to ping the posts, we might show up as comming from the same area because we live 10 miles apart in a rural county. (I know this cause of one of his previous posts). I just don’t want anyone thinking he is writing this under a different name.
Amanda
system
#14
It’s just a lesson I learned on the trail. I bet Brutus can decide for himself whether or not he wants to hear a lesson learned from the wonderful adventure he is about to take.
I want to stress that I haven’t learned the power of positive thought and action from books, but rather through the experience of seeing my ideas -quite unfettered by mental blockades like you are trying to spread- come into fruition.
Let me share with you a bit of experience: While hiking through late-day snow at 13,000 in the High Sierras, I was so utterly transfixed on the beauty of King’s Canyon that it was if I were gliding over the snow and time had stopped. Only when I heard another hiker complain about the difficulties, I lost my balanced and plunged through the crusted snow sheet into the talus slope and nearly broke my ankle. As soon as I regained my attention (very quickly), I was dancing over even more rugged terrain.
It’s funny how you mention the examples about negative events. The first one is perfect. I have some really good friends, for whom I raise money when I do a long hike, that adopt children with birth challenges. They are the most positove people I have ever met hands down. They turn what some people call “negative” birth defects into a very positive, love-filled situation.
I challenge you to do something positive, by going to www.thawookie.com and making a contribution to the 501c(3)non-profit organization that my friends founded to turn help what some people only see as “negative circumstances” into something wonderful.
Also, I suggest that you go for a hike. I’ll see you out there:happy
Tha Wookie
system
#15
Nothing negative has ever happened to you? Learning/knowing how to deal with a negative situation is different than saying that negative things don’t have to happen.
Are you saying that negative things don’t happen to people with your superior attitude, and that people who have had negative things happen to them just aren’t processing things correctly? Since that time when you transcended normal human movement, and the human condition in general, through the power of your mind and were able to dance and glide past King’s Canyon nothing negative has happened to you?
I have a relative who has Down’s Syndrome. He is the sweetest, most wonderful person. He has brought joy to everyone in our family. His parents have done wonderful things with and for him, and never let his condition bring them, or him, down. We wouldn’t trade him or love and joy he brought to our lives for anything or anyone. Unfortunately, not all situations are like that.
My lifelong friend has a 15 year old brother who is both severely physically and mentally challenged. He has been in a wheel-chair since he got too big to carry, he can’t speak, can’t feed himself, he wears diapers 24/7, can’t work his arms (which are deformed), and can’t lift his head off his chest. Not to mention the added sadness and frustration that has occurred since he became sexually mature…something which he can’t understand or do anything about. He will be this way for the rest of his life.
Not only is he suffering (you can see in his eyes sometimes during his more lucid moments that he is aware to some degree of his condition), but the lives of every member of his family have been tremendously affected with much sadness and worry and heartache, not to mention the stress and strain and financial burden of the constant and considerable care they provide for him.
I feel bad coopting his/their burden in an attempt to show how foolish and pretentious your statement (and subsequent response)is, but I’ll respond to your challenge by saying that if you can convince them that his sad, negative situation could be overcome by thinking about it differently, or that their sadness and grief and burden as a result of his condition was not inevitable, but due to some sort of faulty thought processes, I will gladly give 501c(3) $10,000. It would be worth every penny to me if you could prove me wrong and “teach” them that the future negatives they think they will have to face as a result of his condition (continual round the clock care and supervision and diaper changes, etc., etc.) are not inevitable if they could only “learn” to think like Tha Wookie.
If you had fallen and broken your ankle, or worse, at 13,000 feet in the snowy High Sierra’s (which does happen to people in the High Sierra’s and other places), and ended not only that particular hike, but your hiking career in general, that would not be a negative according to you?
What if you lost your ability to communicate in any way, and were no longer able to self-agrandize through this forum, your academic AND private sector hiking course, www.thawookie.com, or anywhere else? You would feel no negative reprecussions because “negatives are not inevitable”?
The suffering and loss as a result of the recent earthquake in Iran, which killed 30,000 plus people - many after being crushed and trapped for days was not inevitable? The horrid
aftermath could have been avoided through “Tha Wookie Method of Positive Thinking”?
Amanda
system
#17
Apple Pie is right- if this is going going to be continued, you will have to include an e-mail for correspondence.
But in front of everyone, I must say that Newbie and I didn’t invent positivity, and we never claimed to be “superior” or anything like that. Such attacks are simplistic attempts at undermining the power of positivity. Positivity and negativity are nothing more than perceptions to stimuli. If you learn to control your mind instead of letting the media and other influences pump fear into you, then YOU control your perceptions, and no one else. Go ahead and write it off as some philosophical mumbo-jumbo if you wish, but it is the truth. I didn’t invent the truth, I’m just an observer. If you don’t agree, then email me intstead of dragging this incredibly entertaining thread any further into your well of suffering. 
Tha Wookie
system
#18
Well folks, this posting stuff has been fun, but today I must head out for a certain mountain in Georgia.
Hope no one really got upset about anything posted here - God knows I sure didn’t. Fascinating to read the perspectives of others. Hope to meet a one or more of you in the coming months. If I do, let’s continue the conversation then!!
“Happy Trails To You, Until We Meet Again”
- Roy Rogers televison show theme song
Brutus
system
#19
I can’t speak for Wookie, but my take on his original one-sentence comment wasn’t that negatives don’t occur, but that they’re not inevitable. In other words, one might fall and break an ankle while hiking, but it’s not inevitable. It may even be statistically true that a certain percentage of hikers will suffer broken ankles in a given year, but that doesn’t mean it’s inevitably going to happen to any given hiker.
There are some occurences which are inevitable in a six month hike: you’re going to experience some soreness; it’s going to rain; you’re going to have to hike up steep hills; you’re going to have to hike down steep hills; you’re going to run into people with negative attitudes; etc. One doesn’t have to treat those things as negatives, though. Anyone who considers those things negatives ought to stay home, because that’s at least half of the hike.
Another point to make is that one can anticipate negative situations and either mitigate or eliminate them. There are going to be days when it’s cold and wet, but you don’t have to die of hypothermia if you wear warm clothing and take proper precautions. You’re going to have those uphills and downhills, but you can mitigate their impact on your body by proper training and traveling relatively light (no 40+ lb packs).
Having 30,000 people die in an earthquake isn’t inevitable either. We have stronger earthquakes in the US all the time, but our buildings are built to withstand them. Birth defects are not inevitable. It’s not inevitable that any given child will be born with them, and it’s not inevitable that they will always be with us. It is possible–probable, if left unfettered by government restricitions–that advances in medical science will eliminate them.
Tragedies will occur, and they can’t always be avoided even by good planning or positive thinking. They are not inevitable for any given person, though.
Ardsgainee
system
#20
Have fun, guy! Think of us sitting here pecking away at our keyboards while you’re out there enjoying the great outdoors. 
Good luck! :cheers
Ardsgaine