Date: 2008-12-27
To: The Secret Life of Walter M. Longhaul.
Miles today: 0.0

Someone asked me recently about my trail name. Not the "Longhaul" part -- that's reasonably self-explanatory. The "Private 2nd Class Walter M." part. I told them the "Private 2nd Class" part came from the pre-hike fellowship that developed in preparation for my first AT hike in 2005. I'd picked up the email addresses of a bunch of fellow through-hiking wannabees from the Trailjournals.com web site, all of whom were planning to depart from Springer Mountain about the same time as me. I sent out a mass e-mail inviting them to be part of what I referred to initially as the "Mid-March Hiker Gang". I figured it would be good to get to know each other a bit before we set out, and maybe provide a forum for sharing our hopes and aspirations with someone other than our friends and families, who by then were growing rather weary of it all. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and quickly led, in turn, to our own web page, an AT trail map where we could post our progress, and a contest to come up with a more appropriate name for the group. The winning entry was "March Company" -- a moniker that quickly led in a military direction, with various hikers claiming ever more exhaulted rank and title. There was a Lieutenant Vision Quest, a Captain Tomatohead, a Major Stink, and a Generalissimo Break-a-leg, if memory serves. All in good fun, as the cast of characters making up this rag-tag band of pilgrims was distinctly more anarcharistic than any military I know would be willing to tolerate.   I had a rather opposite reaction, however, as MY intention for our little sojourn was to escape, as far as I possibly could, from all vestiges of rank and responsibility. The obvious and only choice for me, therefore, was "Private 2nd Class". Subsequently, after hiking successfully to Neels Gap, some 30 miles north of Springer Mountain, I seem to recall reluctantly accepting a "field promotion" to Private 1st Class. Following a series of disasters the very next day, however, involving a leaking sip tube on my camelback that dumped two liters of icy cold water into my drawers, and a rather unfortunate mishap with my alcohol stove that nearly burned down a shelter later that afternoon, I happily resumed my lower rank, and have maintained it thereafter, up until the present time. The Walter M. (for Mitty) part is a bit of a longer story, but a familiar one, I suspect, to many of you. It comes from the short story penned by the famous American humorist James Thurber, and first published in the New Yorker in the 1930s: "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." To refresh your memory (or for those of you who may have slept through Ms. Monahan's 9th grade English Class), here is a brief excerpt:¢We¢re going through!¢ The Commander¢s voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold grey eye. ¢We can¢t make it, sir. It¢s spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me.¢ ¢I¢m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,¢ said the Commander. ¢Throw on the power lights! Rev her up to 8,500! We¢re going through!¢ The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. ¢Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!¢ he shouted. ¢Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!¢ repeated Lieutenant Berg. ¢Full strength in No. 3 turret!¢ shouted the Commander.   ¢Full strength in No. 3 turret!¢ The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. ¢The Old Man¢ll get us through,¢ they said to one another. ¢The Old Man ain¢t afraid of Hell!¢ ¢Not so fast! You¢re driving too fast!¢ said Mrs. Mitty. ¢What are you driving so fast for?¢¢Hmm?¢ said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange women who had yelled at him in a crowd. ¢You were up to fifty-five,¢ she said. You know I don¢t like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty five.¢ Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. ¢You¢re tensed up again,¢ said Mrs. Mitty. ¢It¢s one of your days. I wish you¢d let Dr. Renshaw look you over.¢ Since the first time I read those words, I have identified closely with my old friend Walter Mitty. Thurber himself lived for some time in my home town of Columbus, Ohio, and worked for the Columbus evening "Dispatch" -- a newspaper I delivered, and sold on the streets near Ohio State University on Saturday afternoons in the fall when the Buckeyes were playing a home game. Just to date myself further, and as a part of this little nostolgia trip, I can remember hollering those famous newsboy lines: "Extra!, Extra!, Read all about it! Riot at the Ohio State Penitentiary!" But I digress...For much of my youth, I lived in my mind. My immagination kept me alive. I recall summers lying on my front porch "glider" reading. They used to have contests at the library where you would get, like, a paper log for every book you read, and you'd paste it onto a cardboard log cabin, and the first one to cover their log cabin with logs won a prize. I don't recall ever winning a prize, but I read a lot of books. Adventure books -- about early frontiersmen, and explorers, and cowboys, and WWII pilots, and spys for the secret service. I identified with all of them. In my mind, on the porch.And then it was off to college. And then graduate school. And then the world of work. Interesting work, traveling the globe, doing what I could to advance the cause of "development" -- whatever that means, especially in places where the political leaders are primarily intent on (a) maintaining power, and (b) acquiring as large a swiss bank account as possible in the least amount of time, but that's a different story. I figure I did SOME good in my 35 years of employment. But it wasn't exactly...well...heroic. Not at all heroic, truth be told. Not like, say, the Commander of an eight-engined Navy hydroplane flying through the worst storm in 20 years kind of heroic.Can you imagine the appeal, therefore, when I first heard about the Appalachian Trail? Just the thought of hiking for six months, through 14 states and 2,174 miles of mountainous terrain, facing untold dangers -- from winter storms to rampaging wild animals, sleeping in the woods night after night in the most primative conditions... well, you get the idea. The whole concept is just tailor-made for my old buddy, Walter. A friend of mine pointed out recently that there is one not-insignificant difference between me and Walter. "Walter," she said, "only fantasizes about heroic adventures. You've been out there living the fantasy!" "Well," I said, "you may be right. But he's just too much a part of me not to take him along. Besides, I might have to save someone's life who's been injured on the trail, or lead the search team that rescues a child lost in the woods, or face down a charging bear, with my friends huddled nervously behind me -- wispering among themselves: Longhaul will get us through! Longhaul ain't afraid of Hell!"