It’s that time of year again and my thoughts are turning to thru-hiking more and more. It does not seem like four years have passed since my thruhike. I am deluged by flashbacks and I keep thinking of everyone who has started or will be starting soon.
DISCLAIMER: What follows is unsolcited advice from the heart. Please stop reading here if you don’t want to hear it.
A great piece of advice that stuck with me I read in a shelter register is “Hike whatever hike makes you happiest.” I met people who had been on the trail for a long time and that weren’t going to hurry no matter what. I met other people who had a goal of X number of miles per day and were proud of how fast they were going. I met others who never really thought too much about it. Their were happy and unhappy people in each of those groups.
My point being, your hike is whatever you make it. You can go as fast or as slow as you want. You can slackpack or not slackpack. You can carry a 10 pld. pack or a 65 pound pack (shout out to Flying Bear and his pack!) You can tent or tarp. You can avoid towns or live for them. You can cell phone or not cell phone. You can be nice to Wingfoot or tell him off. What matters most is that you are true to yourself. Do what you want regardless of what you might think other people are thinking.
One last unsolicited piece of advice from the heatmizer: Attitude is EVERYTHING. Much of your experience will be determined by how you deal with the things that happen to you on the trail. Some of my funniest memories were when bad **** happened to us like when we were offered a ride to a pizza place by a trail angel and we rode in the back of his pick-up in the blazing sun for 45 minutes to a pizza joint while passing 2 other pizza places on the way. Or the time a cornice fell out from under me and I fell 15 feet down in a shower of snow and tore my pack on a tree. Or the fact that I had to get off of the trail 400 miles from Katahdin for a month to deal with family tragedy. I could have been bitter or pissed off, but instead I tried to laugh and look at the bright side. I was still hiking and I could still hike. What a lucky SOB I was.
Be kind to each other and spread the love. Good luck to all and happy trails…
Heatmizer
Heatmizer
