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Not all who wander ... · Mar 17, 01:22 PM

I’m going to hike the top half of the Appalachian Trail this summer; up until last week I hadn’t given it much thought, and was worried that maybe I wouldn’t get excited, that maybe my heart is fickle and no longer loves the hiking and the rain and the pain and the whisper of the trees.

There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail, knowing that everything you need is on your back. It is a confidence in having left the inessentials behind and of entering a world of natural beauty that has not been violated, where money has no value, and possessions are a dead weight. The person with the fewest possessions is the freest. Thoreau was right.

—Paul Theroux, The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific, 1992

But now my concerns are: will my shins or my knees give out on me? Do my size 16 New Balance 806s fit? How much more leg strength and aerobic stamina can I get from the Gainesville Health and Fitness center before I leave? Do I have the discipline to stay focused on school and research right now? If I make it, what will I feel and what will I think atop Katahdin?

Long distance hiking is not a vacation, it’s too long for that. It’s not recreation, too much toil and pain involved. It is, we decide, a way of life, a very simplified Spartan way of living … life on the move … heavy packs, sweating brow; they make you appreciate warm sunshine, companionship, cool water. The best way to appreciate these things that are precious and important in life it is take them away.
—Cindy Ross, Journey on the Crest, 1997

Over spring break I sat down to research the gear I would need to pick up; my heart has pulled the trail down out of the attics and dusted off the cobwebs. While I decided between a set of Frogg Toggs and the Montane Super-fly, between the Nike Usurper and Waldies, between the Montbell Ultralight Thermawrap and their down inner jacket—while I was making all of these decisions, I fell back into love.

Mostly, two miles an hour is good going.

—Colin Fletcher, The Complete Walker III, 1989

Last time I went for a long hike, I had a moderate amount of know-how, the kind that comes from being an Eagle Scout in a troup that camped once a month, every month, for many years—but really, I had no clue what I was doing. Now I have a grasp of a few of the finer points that 900 miles of consecutive walking teach: don’t carry a water filter; you only need one shirt; after you’ve lightened your pack by sending home everything you thought you would need, planning water stops is the key to keeping your load light; Nalgene bottles are over-rated and over-weighted; don’t wear your poncho when it rains, except to avoid hypothermia; food is fuel, and fat is the lightest kind; hot-water showers and cotton sheets are heavenly luxuries; and so on.

Most people are pantywaists. Exercise is good for you.

—Emma ‘Grandma’ Gatewood, at age 67 first woman to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail (1955), 1887—1973

But now—now I know what I’m doing; I’m going out with a silnylon tarp and a Tyvek ground-cloth, a pepsi-can stove and 10 oz. of denatured alcohol, and a fondness for the trail that has is at least five years old, sprung from a natural affection rooted deeper in my adolescence.

Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.

—Edward Abbey, US environmental advocate, 1927–89

Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee.

—Genesis 13:17

I took these quotes from Memorable remarks on trails topics, a compilation.

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