Date: 2018-01-31
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Miles today: 0.0

Leo Tolstoy¢s novel, Anna Karenina, starts with a proposition: ¢Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.¢ For a family to be happy, it must solve all of a series of critical attributes, such as finances, sexual attraction, religion, in-laws, and parenting. There¢s only one way to have a happy family ¢ solve all of the critical problems, but there are so many ways for a family to be unhappy ¢ simply fail to resolve any one of the issues. Sociologists and psychologists can debate this, but what has become known as the Anna Karenina Principle has found its way into such disparate fields as statistics (the ¢null hypothesis¢), ecology, business, and anthropology.  Remember Jared Diamond¢s book, Guns, Germs and Steel (1997), and his later book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005)? Diamond defines six factors that must each be satisfied in order for an animal to be domesticated, including that they be easy to feed, grow rapidly, breed in captivity, and not be overly nasty.  In his second book, Diamond asserts that societies must solve critical environmental problems such as habitat destruction, soil health, water management, and overpopulation or risk collapse. Ever the optimist, Diamond adds an additional four challenges facing the world today, including climate change and the buildup of toxins in the environment. Diamond¢s point is that success in domesticating an animal or for a society to avoid collapse depends upon solving every critical problem, not just six out of ten or three out of four. Failure in any single area can doom the entire enterprise.As a CPA in public practice, I worked with a lot of startup businesses. Startup businesses need to solve a series of problems including financial, human resources, production, and marketing to have a chance of succeeding in a competitive marketplace.  While good planning and adequate capital are essential, they are hardly sufficient to guarantee success. There are so many ways for a small business to fail, and my clients competed to find new ones. Failure in a single area could doom the venture. It is no wonder that most startup businesses fail and quite amazing that any succeed.  I don¢t know why Anna Karenina popped into my head this morning, but there she was. I had been thinking about writing about the dumb things I have done while hiking the Appalachian Trail. They are legion and the competition for the title of dumbest would be fierce. Confronting the deranged man with a gun in Pennsylvania might rise to the top. Or less dramatically, it might be wandering away from my tent on a moonless night without a headlamp or flashlight and spending the rest of the night seated against the trunk of a tree. Thinking of Anna or at least the opening sentence, however, caused me to wonder about the critical attributes of a happy thru-hike. My goal this year is not merely to succeed in my thru-hike, but to have a happy thru-hike. We all know families that stay together not out of happiness but instead out of misguided notions of Mutually Assured Destruction: I may not be happy, but if my spouse is miserable enough, the marriage may be worth saving. Or perhaps the delusion that raising children in an armed camp is better for them than having divorced parents.  It¢s often said that the chance of a marriage ending in divorce is about 50%. The odds of a successful thru-hike are even more dismal ¢ about three out of four end in failure, a figure so stark that we often define away the notion of failure, commending ourselves for having made a splendid effort, as though that were the objective all along. I¢ve seen many thru-hikers give up, abandoning a venture that required significant investment in gear and restructuring life to carve out the time.  I¢ve done it myself, in 2013, when my knees gave out. About a quarter of north-bound thru-hikers abandon their hikes before leaving Georgia. I recall a mother-daughter team in 1994, both obese and dressed in black body suits said to be slimming, cheerful and excited about jointly losing several hundred pounds, giving up on their first steep climb, Sassafras Mountain, barely 11.5 miles from the start. I¢ve seen a young man surrender in Vermont in 1998 after 1,700 miles, simply because he was out of energy. When he hit the Green Mountains after the relatively easy terrain of the Mid-Atlantic and southern New England, he no longer had the strength and stamina required. Many hikers find themselves in tears on the summit of Katahdin, a mess of conflicting emotions from the joy of having completed their chosen pilgrimage, that this remarkable period in their lives was over, and the sorrow in knowing that deep trail friendships were likely over as well. I¢ve also seen bitter tears on Katahdin and heard the words, ¢Now I can go home and never hike again. This was the most miserable experience of my life.¢ I don¢t want my thru-hike to be a death march, to be endured instead of being enjoyed.So what are the attributes of a happy thru-hike? When I think back to my happiest times on the trail, there were certain common traits: good weather, good health, good trail, good companions, and good food. Those days are memorable for their rarity and couldn¢t possibly be sustained for six months. Imagine how boring my journal would be if each entry read:"I woke up refreshed from a good night¢s sleep, quickly packed up, and walked 0.3 miles to the road crossing where I found a country restaurant offering a hiker special breakfast of three eggs, three strips of bacon, three sausage patties, home fries, endless buckwheat pancakes with Vermont maple syrup, cathead biscuits with hand-churned butter and wild honey, a compote of fresh berries with a yogurt honey sauce, fresh-squeezed orange juice, shade-grown organic coffee, all for $3.95! While I was eating, the sun rose in a crystal blue sky, and I saw a weather forecast promising a high of 68 degrees and a gentle breeze. The trail today was well-maintained with a nary a rock or a root and not a mud puddle to be found. My mind drifted off in meditation, leaving my feet to find their way. They brought me to an open glade with a piped spring at noon. I devoured an Italian sandwich on fresh ciabatta that I carried out from the caf© this morning. After gently rolling trail this afternoon, my feet delivered me to a brand new shelter just in time for the club¢s dedication celebration and feast. I even got to inaugurate the new moldering privy, complete with toilet paper in a mouse-proof container."In fact, all of the things in this imaginary entry have happened to me, but not on the same day, and not for $3.95. As a hiker, I might prefer that each day be filled with sunshine, trail that hikes itself, and abundant nutritious food, but that isn¢t real life, and it quickly become boring, especially for you as a reader. You would rather that I play Odysseus and have to have myself tied to the mast to resist the lure of the Sirens and to prove my cunning by escaping the cave of the Cyclops.  Perhaps my hike needs a mythic arc.  I recently binge-watched the first season of the Myths & Monsters series. It¢s very repetitious but the presenter, Nicholas Day, has one of those English voices that assures me a good nap. It served to remind me of Joseph Campbell¢s monomyth and the stages of the hero¢s journey, from the known world, into the unknown, and back again (The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)). Campbell described seventeen stages, condensed by Christopher Vogler to twelve stages in his guide for writers, The Writer¢s Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers (2007):   Departure   The ordinary world   The call to adventure   Refusal of the call   Meeting with the mentor   Crossing the threshold to the special world Initiation   Tests, allies and enemies   Approach to the innermost cave   The ordeal   Reward Return   The road back   The resurrection   Return with the elixirThere are many versions, and it isn¢t hard to apply them to the Odyssey, Tolkien¢s Lord of the Rings, Wagner¢s Ring Cycle, Frank Baum¢s The Wizard of Oz, C.S. Lewis¢ The Chronicles of Narnia, and even the New Testament. When I complete my thru-hike (note that I refuse to say ¢if¢) and can think of nothing else to do, perhaps I¢ll make the effort to restructure my journal as a book using this structure. There is the problem that in embracing the name Sugarfoot in 2001, I identified myself with an anti-hero, but I am no more unlikely a hero than Bilbo or Frodo Baggins.  I don¢t think it is possible to write contemporaneously in an heroic format. It is the same problem as defining oneself as a gentleman. A dear client had sufficient income from trust funds to assure that he never had to work but not quite sufficient for his desires. His French cuffs were always slightly frayed and his Rolls Royce was an older model. I asked how we should enter his occupation on his tax return. He suggested ¢unemployed,¢ but I didn¢t think that was accurate since he had never sought employment. I suggested ¢gentleman,¢ and he was aghast, exclaiming, ¢If I called myself a gentleman, I would lose all pretense of being one.¢ We settled on ¢not employed.¢ So the heroic arc can only be applied in retrospect, and doesn¢t help me in defining the attributes of a happy thru-hike.I¢ve reflected back on past hikes, both the good and the bad, and offer the following critical attributes for a happy thru-hike to which the Anna Karenina Principle applies. Failure to solve any single attribute may not end my thru-hike, but it will assure that it won¢t be a happy one.HealthI will start in good condition, near my ideal weight. My fitness program combines strength training, aerobics, balance, and flexibility. After just two weeks of hiking, my muscles will be weaker than when I start but will have adapted to the specific demands of the trail. I plan to continue my stretching and knee exercises on the trail. I will take precautions against ticks.TimingI¢ve chosen to do a flip-flop thru-hike, so I won¢t feel time pressure to get to Maine before Katahdin closes for the season or through the Smokies before the first snows of late autumn. A flip-flop hike also lets me avoid the crowds. I will start with low mileage days and increase my daily mileage gradually. I¢ll take zero days when my body or mind needs a break. I will try to take my time and be willing to walk a few tenths of a mile to enjoy a scenic view.  GearI won¢t obsess about gear. I¢ve refined my gear list over the years to be lightweight and functional, but I also carry things that bring me comfort.  NutritionI won¢t say no to food The only weight I don¢t mind carrying is food, so long as I eat it all before resupplying. I will seek out restaurants and gas station delis within one half mile of the trail and eat as much salad and fresh fruit as possible in town.  AdversityI expect adversity and will greet it with humor. The trail is usually a path of rocks, roots, and mud. I will embrace it, especially in the rain, and splash in the puddles.PerseveranceI will not quit on a rainy day or at the first pain or injury. If I am tempted to quit, I will wait at least three days. The weather will change. A rest day in town may be all that I need. Meeting someone new or having a good meal in town may restore my outlook.OpportunityI will say yes to adventure. Scheduling this hike in detail has been a good planning exercise, but it is also the greatest fiction I will ever write. I welcome side trips and seeing what it over the next ridge. I will rejoice in surprises.CompanionsI will seek out good companions and shed the rest. I have a problem getting rid of companions I don¢t like, but I¢ll work on it, being honest with myself. It¢s okay if I don¢t like everyone and if not everyone likes me. If exploring side trails and varying my pace doesn¢t work, then I may rent a car and sightsee for a few days, or even risk a direct confrontation.  It¢s now three months before I start my thru-hike, and that time will pass quickly. I start working half-time on Monday for the duration of tax season. Each day in the office means two bed & breakfast stays, and that makes it bearable. Working will impact my fitness program, limiting me to four days a week at the Y. It also means less time to write in this journal, but haven¢t I already said enough? There are many more stories, and revisiting places on the trail will help me to recall them. The strange thing about hiking the same sections of the Appalachian Trail repeatedly is that time starts to blur. It¢s neither linear nor circular but a gestalt - the trail I¢ll experience this year will be equal parts of this year¢s hike and memories of past hikes, so that the whole is more than the sum of the parts.  The Appalachian Trail is an old friend tor me, one that is always changing and surprising me at every turn. I¢ll let Leo Tolstoy have the last word, from Anna Karenina. ¢All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade."