Date: 2012-09-22
To: The Wrap -Up
Miles today: 0.0

I¢ve been back from the trail for over two months now and figure it is probably time to get some final thoughts down, as I¢d promised in the last update on summit day. I really had nothing to say at first. In fact, I had great difficulty talking about it. Everyone asked, ¢How was it?¢ They still do. I don¢t know how to answer that question. The thing is too big and too wide-ranging. My typical answers to the question are ,¢Well, it was big, ¢ and ¢That¢s a tough one - pretty wide-ranging, really. Do you have any specific question?¢   Anyway, I¢m still processing it all, but I think I am mostly done distilling the important stuff. What follows below is a group of micro-essays that cover some of the main themes and issues I attended to over the course of my walk. Though at times I may write as if I am being certain, prescriptive and directive, I¢m well aware that the AT experience is uniquely owned and controlled by the individual hiker. I certainly do not have all the answers.   This list moves loosely from practical matters, to those that are more personal and abstract. On Numbers of the Hike. The AT is 2,184 miles long. It links Springer Mountain, Georgia to Mt Katahdin in Maine via a wacky silly string of a path generally following the Appalachian Range. It took me 133 days to complete the trail. Of those, 123 were walking days. I enjoyed 10 ¢zero¢ days along the way: two ivo Hot Springs, NC with my friend Jonathan; one in Damascus, VA; two ivo Waynesboro, VA when my wife and kids came down to meet me; two in Canton, CT with my Mom, one in Bethel, VT with the family; one in Andover, ME to allow Pa Bert to reenergize; and one in Rangeley , ME to allow high rivers to settle so we could ford. This was two more ¢zeros¢ that I had planned to take, but it worked out. I started out in GA and NC doing 13-17 miles per day, and finished with 22 mpd being my ¢sweet spot.¢ The actual mileages varied however, as I tended to hike shelter area to shelter area. My daily average mileage for the entire trail, including zero days, was 16.4 miles per day. My daily average, just counting walking days, was 17.8 miles per day. I¢d estimate my average walking speed for the entire trail, regardless of terrain, at 2.8 mph. Hilly tough stuff would have me at 2 mph and flats (or the 10 miles before a Chinese buffet) would enable me to ramp up to about 3.5 mph. My pack weight averaged 22 lbs. I went through four pairs of shoes. I ate approximately 440,000 calories. I burned around 532,000 calories. I drank around 360 liters of water. I lost about 15 pounds or so.On Gear. I won¢t list all of the gear I brought, because it is indexed on one of the earlier posts. So, I¢ll just briefly discuss the good and the bad points of my AT kit:The Good--        I loved my Granite Gear Vapor Trail Pack. It is light, comfortable, easy to access, and generally bomb proof. The only casualty I had with it was late in the hike when I tore one of the elastic side pockets on a broken tree branch. This casualty is one of the factors that caused me to lose my tent poles in Maine. The other main factor is that I am an idiot.-        I used the Steri-Pen Adventurer Opti for water purification. I never treated tap water or spring water, only stream, brook, pond, and lake. I went through 2 sets of batteries (CR123), and never had any problem with performance.-        Leki Super Makalu poles worked well for me. I¢d recommend Leki because they are the easiest to service at the various outfitters along the trail. Plus their warrantee is great. I pole hard so these things became an extension of my legs and arms. Consequently I had to replace the metal tips 3 times over the journey. It was no problem finding support along the way.-        Darn Tough Socks (made in VT!) are super comfortable and more durable than Smartwool.-        I loved my Mountain Hardwear Compressor jacket (aka the puffy). It was part of my routine, every night. Down goes the pack and poles, off come the sweaty clothes, on go the thermals, puffy, dry socks, cap, and Waldies camp shoes. Good to go.-        Foam camp shoes. I used Waldies, but Crocs or some other generic are fine. They weigh next to nothing, are cheap, comfortable, easy to slip on and off at night, great for fording streams and rivers in Maine, and allow you to get out of your hiking shoes, which feels great after a day of pounding.-        I switched out my MSR Whisperlite stove for an MSR Pocket Rocket, in Hot Springs. It was a great move. Infinitely less ass pain to use, no maintenance, and much lighter. I loved the PR; and finding canister fuel was easy. I made coffee/cocoa in the morning and cooked hot at night. The smaller canister would last me 5-6 days with some to spare.-        I wore Underarmor 34 length compression shorts underneath my hiking shorts. I never chafed. Not once. The stitching on the inseam is not the greatest, though; so I burned through two pair, but still not bad at all.-        AWOL¢s Guidebook . Use this and no other. It is accurate and only gave me bad info on a water source one time. The ultimate planning guide. Great piece of kit. Some don¢t like the visual depiction of the terrain in it, but I did.-        I looked forward to my evening meal every day on the trail, and I never got sick of the combinations. Sometimes I had instant mashed, or ramen, but usually it went like this- cook some type of Knorr ¢Sides¢ dish, add a packet of either Spam Singles, Albacore Tuna, or Chicken Chunks, add a handful of almonds, add 1-2 tablespoons of peanut butter, add hot sauce. It is a hot pot of rich creamy, vaguely Thai, high calorie goodness, and all you have to do is rinse out the pot.The Bad--        My EMS Mountain Light 15 Degree bag was a disappointment. I do tend to sleep cold, but there was no way I should have been shivering uncontrollably in that bag in 25 deg temps, which I experienced once in Georgia, and once in Virginia. A silk liner helped. I used the one bag for the whole hike. It smells and I really should wash it.-        I was really unhappy with my Big Agnes Insulated Air Core Pad. I have a bad back so wanted a nice, sturdy inflatable. I chose the BA because it received good reviews. The pad developed a slow leak in NC that caused me to awaken three times per night to reinflate it. A pain in the ass. And the hips. So I called BA   (fantastic customer service, btw) and they arranged to have another pad sent to me free of charge to Damascus. I picked up the pad in Damascus, and the same thing happened beginning about 150 miles south of Harpers Ferry. So, I ditched the BA in Harpers, bought a Thermarest NeoAir, and moved on. The Neo did great. No problems for the rest of the hike. -        I bought a Granite Gear Top Cover/Brain for the Vapor Trail. The material they use to manufacture it was weak and tore after about a month of trail use. It¢s a good idea because that lid is something the VT lacks, but they need to do a better job making it.-        I started with a Sea to Summit sil-nylon pack liner, to add a layer of waterproofing to the system. It wasn¢t waterproof. Or resistant. Not even close. I was very disappointed. Thankfully I had all of my stuff in dry-bags, else I would have been in trouble. I got rid of the pack liner and started to use very thick-ply contractor bags for the same purpose. Never a problem after that.On Having a Successful Thru. I have a buddy who is a Navy SEAL. I was going through one of my Navy schools in San Diego back in ¢87 when he was going through BUDS (the basic SEAL school). He told me the stories of mental and physical trials they had to endure, and that there was a 75% attrition rate from the program. Well, turns out that the attrition rate on the AT is the same. Only about 25% of people who start the thing make it all the way to Maine. Shocking, really. So, given my experience, and what I learned before, on and after the trail, I came up with some tips to maximize your chances for success (at least they did for me):1.        Start Fit. Strap on a pack and get out there and hike some training days. Do some overnights on a familiar trail and try to establish a routine. Get aerobically fit. Go long and slow with your pack, on a Stairmaster or elliptical. Run some miles on hills. Grind your core. You¢ll increase your fitness, gain confidence, and get your body used to the punishment to come. Most of the people who dropped out in Georgia did so because they were not physically prepared to get it on. So do the work, feel good, and be successful.2.        Read & Research; then Research & Read.   Do your homework. Get perspectives from people who made it and those who did not.   Study the guides. Try to estimate your daily mileages, food requirements, resupply stops etc, and to map out your entire hike. I went through the process 3 times and funnily enough finished pretty close to my final estimate of 130 days. There are so many books out there. Many are great and very useful. Others, like the well known Bryson book, AWITW, will make you chortle, but really misrepresents and trivializes thru-hiking. Take a look at YouTube, as well. There is some really solid content out there. And of course the good lore found on TJ and White Blaze cannot be overstated.3.        Plan To Stay Light. An affinity for planning will help you greatly. For this you will need a fully developed prefrontal cortex. This doesn¢t normally occur until age 25 or so. And you can see it on the trail. The younger set (I¢m generalizing) has neither the desire nor the inclination to plan much at all. It makes for hilarity and pity. Ten days of food for a 4 day leg? Why? Toting 3 liters of water everyday? Why? Planning with a great deal of precision allows you to keep your pack weight at a minimum. And that low weight translates into more miles with less pain. Use the AWOL book to lock in all of your future food stops. I¢d always have my hike planned out for the next 12 days, which included about three resupply stops. Each resupply stop included precisely enough to get me to the next one. A successful plan had me walking into town with absolutely nothing to eat in my pack apart from an emergency protein bar. Food is heavy. Take just what you need. Same with water. This will rankle some people but I¢ll tell you that for 99% of the trail and in 99% of conditions you¢ll experience, you do not need to carry water. I would plan my day out so that I knew exactly where the water was, and when I hit it, I¢d ¢camel up¢ to capacity, and that water would keep me hydrated to the next water stop. I would usually drink 2 liters at every stop, and that would keep me hydrated for 5-8 miles in moderate conditions.4.        No Entangling Alliances. The AT is a social experience if you want it to be, and you should ¢ at whatever level you need. I like friendships and partnerships to emerge spontaneously. I started alone and would have been perfectly okay to finish that way. As it happens I linked up with Pa Bert for the last half of the thing and he turned out to be a solid comrade and companion. Though very differently composed from myself, we had each other¢s backs; and that was good. Still, if either he or I needed to speed up or slow down, and break company with the other, it would have been perfectly fine. I met more cool people than I would have imagined and I value all of them.   Some I hung out with. Some I did not. I walked a couple hundred miles with Famous, nearly a thousand with Drop and Gold Bond, and the end game with Pa Bert. But when I say ¢walked with¢ what I mean is ¢planned to end up the same place every night.¢ Stories and laughter at night and a few goodbye grunts in the morning was enough for me to cherish; and I still do ¢every day. Most of the walking was done alone.   I saw many groups on the trail either disintegrate or turn into a walking cage match.   Of all the 2012 finishers I met, the vast, vast majority were the ¢non-aligned.¢ Of all the groups and partnerships I witnessed, about half of them fell apart. 5.        Zero to Avoid Weather. I can see how weather can force a body off of the trail. We were very fortunate with weather this year. I can only recall three distinct episodes that were made miserable by the weather. One was a late-April snowstorm. Another was a four-day rainfest in PA. The last was three days of non-stop cold rain in Western Maine. Though I never had the inclination to quit, I can definitely see how being constantly damp, chilled, bruised, and muddy over many days can sour your attitude enough to throw in the towel. You will become obsessed with the weather. It will be the subject of countless conversations. Forecasts along the AT seemed to be pretty reliable, so you can believe what you hear, for the most part. If you are in a town, due to leave the next day, and know that you have four days of precip in front of you, don¢t be ashamed to hang around for a while. Don¢t be so locked in to your plan to force yourself in to being soaked and sad when you don¢t have to be.6.        Enjoy Towns. Town stops are a ball. They have real food, comfortable beds, 40s, opportunities to rest your weary back and feet, and time to decompress in a ¢normal¢ social environment. Make the most of them. Enjoy yourself. Present yourself in a manner appropriate to being a thru-hiker. Demonstrate respect for the townfolk. Try to keep your inevitable thru-hiker elitism and cockiness in check. Don¢t let your pride develop into hubris and become an asshat. 7.        Banish Katahdin from Your Mind. Walking 2,184 mile is a beyond huge undertaking. It can be intimidating and will easily psych you out if you let it. Don¢t let it. I literally did not think about Maine with any real attention until I was in New Hampshire. Sure, it was always there in my mind in some way, I suppose. But it was vague, misty, and dreamlike. I did not focus on it at all. My focus was on the near term. It is much easier to have your next resupply down the road as a goal, than it is to have some mountain an unimaginable distance away. Break the hike into chunks. Enjoy the chunks. Many chunks equal success.8.        Meet Your Loved Ones Along the Way. My family came down in April and met me in Virginia when I was just South of SNP. I wrote enough about that at the time but suffice to say it was a tonic to come off trail for a couple of days and just be with family. It was the hardest goodbye of my life when they left and I had to start walking again, but we all got through it. Two days with my great friend JJW in NC was awesome, a couple days with my Mom in CT on the way through was also fantastic. Those times help a great deal. Plan some in.9.        Take Time to Absorb. It is easy to become a mile slave out there. You can be all about getting your distance in for the day and forget the more romantic or aesthetic reasons you are out there. I felt myself getting into this trap from time to time. Treat yourself to a nice long stop. Hang out by a stream and wash your feet. Smell the forest (and roses if they are there), listen to the birdsong and see if you can discriminate species. Take off running if you feel like it. Scream or holler and witness the sound being absorbed into the dense woodland. Count toads for an hour. Take time to realize exactly what you are a part of.10.        Have Adequate Finances. The top three reasons people get of the trail, in my experience were: (1) Physically unfit (they drop early), (2) Loneliness and boredom (they drop by DWG), and (3) Ran out of cash (they drop between PA and VT). I went through $6K; I think you can have a good hike with $4K in hand. Save your money and don¢t leave until you have enough. You don¢t want the financial anxiety hanging over you the whole trip. 11.        Don¢t Use Mail Drops. Except for maybe a couple when necessary. It¢s a pain, it doesn¢t save much money, and it forces you to make stops in places where you may not have to go anymore, even though you thought you did when you initially planned. This will frustrate you. There are plenty of stores, towns, and roadkill along the way. You won¢t starve. Maximize your flexibility. Synch your resupply stops to the pace you are actually doing. On the Big Epiphany. Before I stepped off of Springer, and in the days, weeks, months leading up to it, I thought a lot about having what would be the Big Epiphany. I really wanted one. After all, I was at a time in my life where the Big E would have been nice. Just having left England after nearly 10 years there, retired from the military, at just the age (50) when I could conceivably do something different professionally and give 15 or so years to it, newly arrived to a beautiful home in Vermont. I was secretly wishing for big special moment of illumination that is incandescence more than glow. I sought the kind of clarity I imagined could happen when all angst, bias, detritus of a shamelessly consumerist society and its symbiotic warped value structure were blown away in a brief and violent gust of insight. I told my good buddy JJW about this on the way down to Georgia and he gave me some great advice. He said, ¢The hell with that shit. Don¢t think about it. It probably won¢t come anyway, but it definitely will not come at all if you dwell on it. So, stop.¢ I love that guy. Well, I didn¢t have any great epiphany, but I did get some insight, some clarity, and a lot of satisfaction along the way.On Being Inside One¢s Own Head. Really. I mean think about this. If you walk 18 miles a day at about a 3 mph pace and throw in an hour or so for lunch, rest stops, water and snack stops etc, then you can expect to be out in the woods between campsites for 7-8 hours per day. If you prefer, as I do, to walk at your own pace, then most likely you will do it alone. You will be in your own head for this time. You won¢t be in a cubicle working on some project, paper or program. You won¢t be roofing a house. You won¢t be driving a car or sitting at a bar. You¢ll be alone in the woods walking. That is a daunting thing.   It is not something normal people are accustomed to. In fact, I believe it is the inability to tolerate the loneliness of inhabiting the unified self that many people get off the trail.   I basically had 6 different modalities when I walked. (1) Focused thought ¢ I would choose a hard question or problem to work on, and then I would concentrate on it, hopefully getting answer; (2) Quasi-zenstate-this is a weird one that would just happen occasionally, and it began after the first 500 miles or so. The mind just gets into a zone where it looses itself to the moment and the natural rhythm of stride and heartbeat; and the next thing you know it¢s two hours later you¢ve banked 6 miles wondering how it happened ; (3) Audio-I carried an iPod and gave myself 2 hours of audio per day. Folk music, soundtracks from old musicals, audiobooks and podcasts were my favorites; (4) Connectivity-I would look around me and try to work out the various interdependencies and connections between all of the rich animate and inanimate beauty surrounding me; (5) Technical ¢ this one involved nuts and bolts hike-related stuff such as looking for the next water stop, finding a place to snack, considering what I want for my next resupp, obsessing about the twig or stone in my shoe, thinking about the evil demon who positioned all the tree roots, gear repairs etc; and (6) Conversation ¢ this is actually walking with someone and usually involves chatting about this or that issue or absurdity. I did this occasionally (only about 10% of the time), and when I did I had a great time. It was always with Gold Bond and Drop, and the convos were as far-ranging and feisty as you can possibly imagine, including such topics as vegetarianism, ethical theory, animal rights, Unitarianism, Episcopalianism, DMT, Peruvian hallucinogenic holidays, the biology of chafing, the Trail, trees, Charles, running, women, alien intelligences, snakes, grad school, special operations, literature, slavery, the sad, slow decline of the US, the coarsening of our culture, and nut-kicking Justin Bieber, ad infinitum.On God. I spent quite a lot of time on this one. I won¢t go into all of the deep, squishy and largely impenetrable (even to me, and I¢m the one formulating them), arguments. I will only lay out the basic framework.   I should start to say that I started the trail as a frustrated agnostic. Agnostic because I believed that no sufficiently justified knowledge claims could be made about the existence of any kind of God(s), and frustrated because I want there to be one, I want to know It, but am open to the idea that there is probably not any such entity. So, that frustration should cue you to the fact that I am already, at the start, biased toward being a believer of some type. [My antipathy towards the so-called New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, and the recently mortal coil-less Christopher Hitchens) is another matter altogether. I find them to be na ve, strident, pedantic, condescending, and mean-spirited. But their arguments have the force of reason behind them and should be listened to and accounted for. Notice I did not mention Daniel Dennett. That¢s because he¢s a stud.] So, the question(s) really became: (1) Is there a God that my Reason can apprehend? (2) If Yes, what can I say about that God? And (3) If the Yes is qualified, then is it rationale to believe?   The answers I came up with are Yes, Not Much, and Yes. As I said, I have no intention of diving deep with this.   You can research, think, read, and come to your own conclusions. Instead, I want to throw down several bullet points of ideas I churned through. Taken in total, knitted together in some creative way, these ideas point me to a conception of God that I can deal with, and largely convince me that it is rationale to believe (even if it turns out to be Nothing you are believing in). I will warn you that the kind of God which results is not the jealous, mercurial, immanent anthropomorphized Abrahamic God of old. Mine is more meta-physical, meta-liturgical, and simple. It is one I¢d like to discuss with Plato, Russell, Quine, G¶del, Hypatia, or Spinoza over strong beer, at a dark tavern, with dusky and buxom Mediterranean daughters of cheesemakers teasing us with their eyes, from across the room. Here are the highlights: 1. Where the hell did Math come from? Is it discovered or invented? It is outside time and space and it is discovered. Its truths are eternal. Logic¢s too. How¢d it get there. Maybe God.2. Abstracted being. What do a apple, a wart, a slug, a rock, Falstaff, ale, and a cudgel have in common? They exist. Existence is the ultimate universal. Maybe it¢s necessary, too. God as Being. Being as God.3. Quantum Mechanics. The Copenhagen Interpretation says that the observer, upon observing, collapses the probability wave, and we see whatever it is we see. We don¢t see what could have been. So very counterintuitive. But what if God is the observer, not us? Still nutty and cool, but at least we know what collapses the waves.4. The problem of consciousness. How is it that inanimate components of physical reality can give rise to animation, experience, and sentience? Magic? No. How about if some form of consciousness or capacity to experience is embedded within fundamental particles and consciousness emerges from an accumulation of that. Consciousness as a fundamental component of matter. Nice. And not so supernatural.5. Pascal¢s Wager. There are four potential outcomes in life. 1. You live a good life and there is a God ¢ you go to heaven. 2. You live a good life and there is no God - no harm, no foul and you lived a good life. 3. You live a not so good life and ¢sin¢, and there is a God- you could go to Hell (or Florida), and 4. You live a not so good life, and there is no God ¢ you had fun. Smarter to live a good life. The risks in not doing so are very great, indeed. The wager is weak, I know. But it is still worth considering.6. Prayer and me. I have never been a religious man. Yet, I have experienced times of grave trauma twice in my life. Both times, inexplicably, I found myself on my knees in prayer and in tears. Both times my prayers were answered. Post hoc fallacy? Could be. Or may not be.7. Spinoza and Plotinus. I love these guys. Their metaphysics focus on the primacy of the One, the single, the unity. All else, to include plurality could not exist without it. God is found in that unity somewhere. And I refer you back to #2.8. An attraction to orthodoxy. I can¢t explain it, but I am absolutely mesmerized by orthodox believers. They glow in some meaningful way. Their spirit is present to me as a palpable thing, sometimes. Whether a Hassidim, a shaman, Sufi, Coptic cleric, Franciscan monk, Lama, or big bearded Russian orthodox priest. I have no time for these mega-church posers who believe the fundamental challenge is to get asses in seats using slick marketing-speak.   I can spot authentic ones, and I respect them. I stand in awe and envy. I want to see and feel what they see and feel. 9. Religious people do better. They are happier, less stressed, less prone to depression, more materially satisfied etc. Plenty of scholarship on this.So I thought quite a bit about that stuff and came out with a conception of God which is based in Unity, Truth, Integrated Transcendence, Pure Being, and the primary object of my contemplation and meditation. Abstract, yes. Not as satisfying as Yahweh, probably also true. Good enough for me, though. And then from there, if you want, you can take a leap of Faith to Faith. On Ethics. I realized that it is nigh on impossible to lay out a single clearly stated principle which defines how one ought to behave. All meta-ethical theories are hobbled with their own problems of fact and consistency, and their acceptance in society seems to oscillate in history. I tend to be a Virtue guy. I believe that if intent and consequence of an act represent a reflection of a Virtuous man, then that act is ethically acceptable. I don¢t always know how to act, but I usually know how not to act. We all do, in some way. It is just a matter of how much we allow ourselves to do the wrong thing. Seems to me if we continue to not do the wrong thing , then this negativist ethos will have drawn us closer to some sort of shadow perfected Man.On the Flavors of Truth. I¢ve spent most of my life as a dilettante and constant, eager learner in the fields of Philosophy, Politics, and a host of other interests. I¢ve thought about Critical Thinking, Argumentation, Reason, Rationality, and have even taught it to adult learners, and enjoyed it. It is a very Enlightenment-inspired field of endeavor. But as the Transcendentalists raged against the Enlightenment, I began to rage against my own very, sometimes obnoxiously, analytic take on what we can call knowledge. Guys like Thoreau, Emerson, Channing and that happy bunch of 19th century frolickers were on to something in pointing out that Truth does not emerge only from the antiseptic, clinical, and linear pursuits of the logician or mathematician. Truth can be found in beauty, love, music, emotion, soul, action, and Nature. Imprecise and much more nuanced than the other to find, but it¢s there. And the honest search for it adds richness to a life.On My Past & Future. My past is what came before and includes this very long walk I did. That whole (almost) 51 year old package of experience has defined what I am, what I do, how I think, who I care about, where I go, and what I determine is Good and Bad. Overall, I¢m pretty happy with it. I¢ve done stupid things, made really bad decisions, and took a few wrongs turns; but, at this point in the journey I¢m very satisfied where I have ended up. As for the future, well¢¦.I have learned a lot from the time I got back from the AT until now. I learned that I miss public service very much. I learned that I probably do not have the stomach to be an entrepreneur. I learned that I am not ready to retire fully. And I¢ve learned that I tend to worry about the potential collapse of our society far too much. So, I am actively searching for something meaningful to do here in Vermont. I¢m interested in education and emergency management. I plan on walking the AT again, sometime in my ¢60s.This is my final post. I am so moved by the fact that so many people read my ramblings and then weighed in with supports and comments of their own. Thank you very much for that. It was a hell of a journey. Now it is your turn. Find a challenge. Decide to do it. Prepare. Do it. Be well.