SavageLlama
04-20-2005, 16:55
Interesting notes from some of this year's hoosier thruers..
Trail mail: The hiking experience can be a culture shock
Journal Gazette
Fort Wayne, Indiana
April 17, 2005
Note: Eric Howell and Matt Brodahl of Fort Wayne began hiking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine on April 2. Howell is writing postcards from the Trail that will appear periodically in The Journal Gazette.
A blond woman's legs dance alone to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Her twirling white sequin midriff is the discoball.
I'm drinking a Budweiser in the corner, and this NASCAR-bleeding bar could be found anywhere in America. But after I walk down Highway 75 through Helen, Ga., and open my motel room, I know I'm in a trail-town.
The clothes, gear and smell of five thru-hikers envelop the double room. Our shower is draped with muddy tents and the drain chokes on grass and leaves.
On the Appalachian Trail, life sometimes seems normal, but oftentimes it's exotic.
Yesterday, after dinner in the southern sun, my companions and I craved ice cream. So, we hiked to a highway and hitched a ride to the nearest Dairy Queen.
Children are afraid of monsters in the closet, but out here, grown men wake up to the faintest crackle in the night. Five years ago, at a shelter in the area, a hiker woke up with a black bear straddling his sleeping bag.
Hikers almost always take working lunches - wrapping their blisters with duct tape.
No one wants to face a rainy morning. Last Thursday, I didn't want to open my eyes because that would have meant dealing with the lake forming beneath our tent.
Sitting on logs around a campfire with friends under a starry sky might as well be our second national pastime. We were doing just that Saturday night when an old man appeared through the trees carrying a camouflage knapsack and offered to cook us dinner. He fried fresh rainbow trout, onions and potatoes while preaching the imminent apocalypse.
That only happens on the AT.
- Eric Howell
Trail mail: The hiking experience can be a culture shock
Journal Gazette
Fort Wayne, Indiana
April 17, 2005
Note: Eric Howell and Matt Brodahl of Fort Wayne began hiking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine on April 2. Howell is writing postcards from the Trail that will appear periodically in The Journal Gazette.
A blond woman's legs dance alone to Lynyrd Skynyrd. Her twirling white sequin midriff is the discoball.
I'm drinking a Budweiser in the corner, and this NASCAR-bleeding bar could be found anywhere in America. But after I walk down Highway 75 through Helen, Ga., and open my motel room, I know I'm in a trail-town.
The clothes, gear and smell of five thru-hikers envelop the double room. Our shower is draped with muddy tents and the drain chokes on grass and leaves.
On the Appalachian Trail, life sometimes seems normal, but oftentimes it's exotic.
Yesterday, after dinner in the southern sun, my companions and I craved ice cream. So, we hiked to a highway and hitched a ride to the nearest Dairy Queen.
Children are afraid of monsters in the closet, but out here, grown men wake up to the faintest crackle in the night. Five years ago, at a shelter in the area, a hiker woke up with a black bear straddling his sleeping bag.
Hikers almost always take working lunches - wrapping their blisters with duct tape.
No one wants to face a rainy morning. Last Thursday, I didn't want to open my eyes because that would have meant dealing with the lake forming beneath our tent.
Sitting on logs around a campfire with friends under a starry sky might as well be our second national pastime. We were doing just that Saturday night when an old man appeared through the trees carrying a camouflage knapsack and offered to cook us dinner. He fried fresh rainbow trout, onions and potatoes while preaching the imminent apocalypse.
That only happens on the AT.
- Eric Howell