Date: 2005-01-10
To: Hike Planning, Journals and Such
Miles today: 0.0

As part of my hike preparations, I joined ALDHA, the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association. They maintain a web site (http://www.aldha.org/), and many of the members also belong to an email list that functions essentially as an on-line trail community. I¢ve gotten a lot of great tips from this group, and some of the conversational ¢threads¢ have been especially helpful recently. One was the result of a new member to the list asking how long he should expect to spend hiking from Springer Mountain, the start of the journey, to the Georgia/North Carolina state line. The answer came back, and it was different from what I had planned. But it made more sense than mine. It was based on the respondent¢s own hike, and he noted that he had gone back to his journal to jog his memory. Other readers must have done the same thing, and some came back with an anguished wail to say that their on-line journal had disappeared! Gone. Vanished. Kaput. Major Bummer. There followed various bits of advice regarding the best way to save, and create, journals. What follows is my response to this particular thread: Friends and Neighbors:This thread could not be timelier. With a start date of March 14, I have reached the fifth level of Pre-Hike Purgatory ¢ you know, the one where you¢re desperately trying to get it all together, and the pile of stuff in the corner keeps growing, but the backpack just sits there looking at you saying: ¢Yo, Dude, I ain¢t getting any bigger, ya know,¢ and you just spent three whole days of your Christmas vacation planning which shelters to stay in and how many miles a day and how many mail drops between Springer Mountain and Waynesboro, and then you get this email that gives what you just KNOW is the right mileage per day for Georgia, and you say to yourself ¢FONTANA!¢ *   Now I¢ve got to go back and redo the whole thing!The fifth level of Pre-Hike Purgatory -- that¢s where I spent the night. The shelter of my mind was full, so I camped out on-line at trailjournals.com. May God bless each and every one of you who have opened your journals, and your hearts, to those of us struggling along toward the nirvana that lies in Maine. Please forgive me if I take comfort in the pain of your broken and bleeding feet, and solace from the 40 straight days and nights of rain that you endured. The point is that you DID endure, and that should be inspiration enough.   But wait ¢ there¢s more. There is JOY on the trail, and love, and peace, and awe, and simple acts of kindness that might go unnoticed back in the world but are treasured and remembered forever out there on the trail. Which brings me to memories of the trail ¢ not just how to create them, but how to share them and how to save them. Being ¢of a certain age¢, I did not grow up with computers. I use them, now, of course. They make GREAT typewriters. The keys don¢t stick, you never have to use white-out, and you don¢t end up with hundreds of balled up sheets of paper all over the floor when you¢re finally done with that paper for Mrs. Truckmiller¢s 10th grade English class. I like them, I really do. I just don¢t know much about them. So I¢ve come to worship people who build web sites like trailjournals.com. Only now, if I want to do this thing right, I not only have to learn about backpacking and hiking and filtering water and cooking on an alcohol stove, I have to learn how to use a digital camera, a web-site journal, and (the most recent addition to that growing pile of the stuff in the corner) a pocket email device. (May the Saints presarve him!!!)Just last week I was commenting to she-who-knows-me-best-but-still-loves-me about my record collection in the basement. I think we finally pitched the old AM/FM Radio/Stereo Record Player the last time we moved. The one with the adjustable speed turn-table so you could play either 33 or 45 RPM records. I¢m pretty sure we threw out her Betamax tapes of Johnny Mathis as well, but maybe those were left over from my previous wife. No loss. (I never really liked Johnny Mathis much either.) Point is, things keep changing. If I¢m going to invest a lot of time and energy and thought in a journal, one that I¢d like to share not just now, as it happens, but for all time, how am I going to do that? Best I can figure ¢ print it out! Several copies. The odds are better that way. Acid free paper is good. But even CDs ¢¦remember those five inch ¢floppy disks¢ we used to store stuff on? Remember those Betamax tapes¢¦ Paper. That¢s the thing. Great invention, paper. So many uses. Reminds me. I gotta go tell the kids to start saving the last quarter of the rolls for my hike.Stay tuned,Longhaul*   [Fontana Dam is the entry point of the AT into the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. This is a family channel, so I have to keep my language ¢clean¢¢¦.]