How Did You Become A Wanderer

[HIKER7s]

HOW and where and why do you think you have become a hiker or an outdoor wanderer? What where the conditions and how did it evolve you.



Years ago, I mean I was in the fourth grade. I went on a fishing outing with my grandfather to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. That one trip, that weekend, I look at as the beginning of a lifelong urge to be within a wilderness or to just be able to wander through it.
Shortly thereafter I read a book called Trap Lines North by Stephen W Meader. (I helped create the site for it at http://traplinesnorth.tripod.com/. This book, a true story in that it followed a real trapping family through its existence in the early and mid thirties in northern central Ontario, was totally in the wilderness. I was hooked.


More books and more knowledge of the like and eventually long distance trails followed. I was determined that whatever the situation I would do the AT. In March of 78 (after already years of hiking the AT in PA and NJ) I began my thru hike in Georgia and although I was awed at the challenge I submersed myself in it. It took a couple hundred miles but I am glad I got into the mindset of "hiking my own hike". This way, I met many people and made many new friends AND was still was able to make my hike a solitary and rewarding accomplishment.



I kinda came of age however in the years since. I have hiked the AT again since, in sections. I finished my section hike in 2001. I have done parts of the PCT in Oregon, walked the Patagonian Landscape, Done the Long Trail
and many other hikes to numerous to mention and in several different countries (thanks to the US Navy).


I have evolved into this person who believes "church" is "out there".
I can’t go a month without getting gone for a weekend or so. I believe that the peace that I (we?)find in these endeavors directly affects how we do life, how we view life. You look at the whole spectrum of the way people perceive us. Did you ever get the comment “you’re crazy” doing this or that geared to being where we want to be “out there”.











There are people who we all know who will fuss about a meal or a guest bed done properly for the night or if their eggs are well done. The one’s who run from the car to the door in the light rain so they wont get wet for 5 seconds. How about the ones who speak of their doom in a thunderstorm or give you (the classic) the "your nuts" look when you say you've hiked 2100 miles in 6 months or have just kayaked a great length of some river. I love the way we look to some people simply because we represent (to them) an oddity because they can’t fathom why we do this and are so happy about it.


I volunteer for a local nature center and do two or three trips a year teaching LNT and backpacking/camping skills to mostly novice adults. I like to bring others to have some kind of appreciation to what WE do all the time. If I have to endure some of the wining that goes on sometimes about sleeping on the ground, eating from the pot, walking with a backpack, their boots hurt, etc. I do it because for everyone who ends up being the complainer I will get 4 or 5 who end up thanking me and even touch base to tell me about the later hikes they had done.

As far as a definition of the thru-hike, I have always held that slack packing and yellow blazing are cheating a little. Snow, rock or otherwise blocked passages with an alternate route are clearly the exception. The completion of the
Hike if it’s a national scenic trail or a formally routed trail, to me is every-step, passing every inch of the trail as defined at the time of your hike. Trailblazing is another thing- pick your points of interest and plot a plan. Those are the best hikes, challenge your wilderness capabilities.

[Lone Wolf]

i was born this way. i'm blue-blazing life

[Tipi Walter]

I'd say we share some things in common, along with a certain group of people who hold their church to be Nature. Robert Service comes to mind:

www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=305

www.internal.org./view_poem.phtml?poemID=295

Some of his short snippets:

"I was once, I declare, a Stone-age man,
And I roamed in the cool of a cave . . ."

Or
"To pitch my tent with no prosy plan,
To range and to change at will . . ."

And of course the most famous:
"There's a race of men that don't fit in,
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest."

I agree with LW, I was born 'this way", a nature-boy, but then again, when I was a kid, most boys spent their free waking moments outdoors. They grew out of it, I just never did.

My trip reports are full of references to the freedom of living out and to the wisdom of Nature, and I often rail against the current human tendancy to destroy all things natural. Edward Abbey has been a source of inspiration, too.

Anyone spending any length of time outdoors cannot help but to study Native American religious thought and especially their view of nature. Matthew King, a Lakota medicine man, said simply, "God is Nature, Nature is God", and this rings true in my mind. The Indians had/have a fully developed and rich world-view of wilderness and being out in wilderness, their idea of "walking in beauty" comes from this. The four main Lakota ceremonies, the pipe ceremony, the inipi(sweatlodge), the hanbleceyapi(vision quest)and the Sun Dance are all held outdoors, and there is a good reason for this.

I lived out of a backpack and in a tipi around the Boone NC area for 21 years, and a professor friend told me I was living 100 years behind the times, which I took as a compliment. To most others I was just a homeless bum, but I took that as a compliment, too. The funny and ironic thing, though, is even after all my years of tent time and bag nights, I've only sratched the surface. Let me repeat, I've only scratched the surface, and I still haven't come anywhere near getting enough of the woods.

[Thoughtful Owl]

Very interesting topic.

I to was first initated into the back woods experience by my grandfather.
He was an avid hunter and fisherman, but most of all he just simply liked getting out into the woods away from the hussell and bussell of everyday life. He taught me how to build a shelter to sleep under at night, how to lay a fire, hut, trap, find water, basically become self sufficient.

As I got older I joined the BSA and was in a very active troop. However, the troop didn't do a lot of backpacking. At the age of 15 I started working at our scout camp and taught such things as wilderness survival, camping, cooking etc. may of the "scout skills". I also met a young man, Greg (he was probably at least 6 yrs. older than me.) who became my mentor that first summer. He enjoyed backpacking, climbing, canoeing & kyaking. At the end of summer camp Greg was going to taking a two week long backpacking trip into the back country of WVA. Into the Cranberry Wilderness Area. He ask me if I would be interested in joing him. I jumped at the opportunity. I learned a lot about myself and much more and was bitten by the "bug".

I can't imagine living a life without being in the woods. Yes, many people think I am crazy because during certain times of the year I spend more time living out of my tent than than in my house. I sleep on the ground and not in a bed. I carry all my provisions on my back.

And on those weekends or weeks of vacation when I am not out on my own I am with a group of kids 12 to 18 years of age camping, backpacking, canoeing etc. Yes, I hear lot of whining and complaining about "another hill to climb, back aches, feet hurt, I got blisters etc" but I also here about how much fun they had. Not only are we teaching these kids to have fun, but also about basic life principles & skills; about citizenship & character. We teach LNT and so much more.

I believe to whom much is given, much is required. I have been offered so many fantastic opportunities and I am now in a positon where I can give back. So...lets go hiking!

[HIKER7s]

The work of Robert Service, "service" our interests well. I have several of his books. For those who dont know, his stuff is really worth checking into.

[Gaiter]

walking has always been a cure for what life throws at me, so i decided after four years of college, i needed to go for a long walk.

and on the semi-subconscience level, my nightmare that i always had growing up was of getting abandoned at a gas station with no way to leave. had a teacher who thinks this dream was a sign of my need to wander and my fear of being stuck somewhere

[Tipi Walter]

walking has always been a cure for what life throws at me, so i decided after four years of college, i needed to go for a long walk.

and on the semi-subconscience level, my nightmare that i always had growing up was of getting abandoned at a gas station with no way to leave. had a teacher who thinks this dream was a sign of my need to wander and my fear of being stuck somewhere

Your post reminded me of some of the terrible dreams I've had while livng out. In Lost Valley I set up a simple tarp-tipi camp and once dreamed a crappy Human Impact dream of some people putting an Interstate right thru the valley. Woke up spooked.

At the tipi I had a bad dream of the entire area being logged with a huge housing development set up. Nothing much worse than these kind of human impact dreams . . . And the sad fact is, they usually eventually come true.

[taildragger]

It started with deer hunting for me. I started pushing into the thicker woods and roaming around. I learned more about how the animals lived, their daily patterns, and how to find my way around in the woods. The drive for hunting had my living outdoors more and more each year, then I took up bowhunting which gave me an excuse to hunt from Oct 1 till Jan 15th.

Eventually (at about 13) I joined scouts to get into hiking. I didn't last long, I spoke the language of sailors, and in general, already knew more about the outdoors than my leaders. After teaching one of the leaders how to do some of the fishing badges, I still had to take the course from him, 3 months after I taught him, in order to get a badge for it. After about 3 months, and realizing that it would be about 2 years before I could do any real hiking with the troop I left (well, actually I was given a choice to clean up my language and do things their way or to leave. I decided that building a log cabin style fire and cursing fitted me better than building a tipi style fire and not cursing).

Cont'd to camp out while hiking and enjoyed the outdoors. Tried to setup a trip after college to hike the San Juan River and fly fish it with a friend, the trip fell through due to woman problems on his part.

Went through about a 4 year dry spell, then one of my friends asked if I wanted to do a week hike in NM. Seemed like a good idea, I pulled out my old equipment, mixed in a little bit of my hunting clothing, and we deemed it good enough for hiking. That trip was supposed to be around 120 or so miles, we got slaughtered by unexpected weather, dealt with it, didn't have a trail till the CDT section. I still have scars on my arms from getting cutup by the thorn trees that were growing where there had been a fire a few years before. I came out with an injured heel from pushing myself too hard, smelled horrible, hadn't been dry for 6 days, and I wanted to do it all again. I think that it was in the pub after leaving that I realized that this was something that I liked, and I started to make a commitment to do more of it.

Now, I'm trying to get some winter camping under my belt, maybe start some less technical mountaineering, and do a long distance hike on the PCT.

The bug really bit me when I worked for an oil company as an engr. I sat there as a desk jockey and realized that I have the gypsy's blood. I wanted out, I wanted to roam, and now I'm gonna go through life and deal with this, and unfortunately I got an education in Engr physics aka desk jockey 601, advanced computer staring techniques...

[Wonder]

I couldn't walk for a long time....now I can. I just prefer to do it in the woods

[Frolicking Dinosaurs]

I was born to wander, I have always wandered and will wander for as long as I can. Is there really life without wandering?

[taildragger]

I was born to wander, I have always wandered and will wander for as long as I can. Is there really life without wandering?

Yes there is, its called desk jockeyism, its usually followed my cigarrette boatism, bmwism, and baldism

[Spirit Walker]

I was born a gypsy wanderer. My folks loved to travel and lived in the Philippines for seven years. I was born there. I became an exchange student in high school and college (lived in France). Peace Corps followed (Senegal). I wanted to wander the world. But that takes money, so instead I started wandering close to home. I got into hiking as a way of dealing with some heavy emotional issues - I found that a few hours walking made anything bearable. I learned to love being in nature for its own sake. I'm happiest when I am outdoors. So I combined my natural wanderlust with that love of the outdoors and became a long distance hiker.

[4eyedbuzzard]

My father was disabled so my uncle used to take me hiking with his family. As I got older I used to help him with week long+ BSA outings with his troop(his son is 4 years younger than I). He could never get most of the scout's fathers to go along on week+ long hikes so I would go to help out.I really caught the AT bug the year we hiked the Presidentials and Mahoosucs - 1970?

[Bob S]

My parents camped from the time I was too young to remember it(they are still get out and camp now.), I joined the Boy Scouts and really enjoyed it. I have been hooked ever since. There was a guy that was a famous bum named Steamtrain Murray! (He was King of the Hobos) He would always make a point to come out to our local camp outs when he was in town. All of us scouts loved to spend time with him and he loved to tell us his stories. We would have dinner and sit around the fire. It may sound strange to idealize a bum, but to us he was adventure. I haven’t thought about him in years, brings back some good memories. He was the nicest guy you would ever meet. I will have to googel him.

I now get out and camp a lot with my Son, he loves being outdoors as much as I do.

[Bob S]

I just Googled him, (Steam Train Murray) here is the link for his guest book at his funeral, it seems he changed a lot of lives.
http://www.legacy.com/ToledoBlade/GB/GuestbookView.aspx?PersonId=19998369

[Lyle]

I have always been more comfortable outdoors. I grew up on a dairy farm, so the outdoors was where both work and play took place, year-round. My sister an I used to get up some mornings at 5 AM, sneek out of the house to take care of our "pet" mouse babies. Our playground was the woods and fields, no sidewalks or paved streets to ride our bikes on, we went cross-country or followed the cowpaths! Play time took us to the old apple/pear orchard to fall asleep in the branches after eating our fill of green apples, nearest drainage ditch or stream to catch tadpoles and raise them into frogs, or into the woods behind out house to explore. Friends and relatives would come from Detroit to "The Farm" to spend a few days and by the end of their visit we would have hay forts in the barn, tunnels and rooms cleared out of the thick willows that grew in the low lands, club houses built out of old pig sheds.

High school brought camping on some wooded property my folks owned near Lake Huron with the days spent on the lake, the nights in the woods. College found me taking off from the apartment at 5 AM to drive out to a biological research area to watch the sunrise over a beautiful pond shrouded in mist, wading hip deep in bogs while maping areas for a 'Habitat Analysis" course, or shuffling through knee deep snow doing squirrel counts for a "Poplulation Analysis" course.

After college is when I got serious about hiking and backpacking as pure recreation, first with my college roomates, then solo, then starting others. It is an addiction, but one that I treasure and feel I've been neglecting of late. 8 more years to retirement, then the fun REALLY begins!

[Bearpaw]

I grew up in the country and walked the woods in farm country all the time. 25 years ago that past Thanksgiving, I went on my first backpacking trip in Scouts.

I joined the Marine Corps, but got out because we just didn't spend enough time in the field. I hiked the AT after I got out in 99.

Then I got tired of the regular world of work and started working as a mountaineering instructor with NOLS.

When I got tired of starving and freezing as a homeless mountain bum, I got a job teaching that allowed me to still hike LOTS on breaks.......

[map man]

My experience is different in one way from every other post so far. It never occured to me that I might enjoy backpacking until I was in my mid-40s. My family didn't do any camping when I was growing up. My friends didn't either. I have always done more walking than most people -- I didn't own a car for large stretches of my 20s and 30s -- but it took a long time before it dawned on me that doing a lot of walking would be a lot better out in nature than on a city sidewalk!

I've been a bookworm most of my adult life and I arrived at backpacking through reading. First, it was a couple books about extreme outdoor adventures gone bad, oddly enough, that piqued my interest. Young Men and Fire, about an elite bunch of post-WWII smokejumpers who perished in the Mann Gulch, Montana forest fire. And Into Thin Air, about one summiting season that went very wrong on Mount Everest. You'd think that books like that would make a guy swear off leaving the comforts of civilization, but they didn't. The writers made the outdoor experiences described come off the page so vividly.

Then I stumbled onto some books about long distance hiking, and that led me to some on-line resources for hiking, and before you know it I had found WhiteBlaze and was devouring all the information I could cram into my head. I learned so much here (with some added info here and there) that it didn't seem at all odd to me (although it did to my wife) to plan a two week solo hike on the Superior Hiking Trail in Minnesota as my first backpacking experience of any kind. As it turned out, a couple other people expressed interest in going too, so I didn't end up hiking alone. That first trip was even more amazing than I could have expected. I found I really liked sleeping on the cold, hard ground (with no offense intended toward hammockers )! I had the most pleasant dreams every night. I liked the camp rituals -- looking for that perfect spot for the tent, eating dinner outdoors in the company of long-time friends or friends I'd just met that evening at the tent-site, or looking for that perfect bear-bagging tree. I liked every day -- even the rainy ones, even the sore-kneed ones.

So now with two years of backpacking behind me I believe I'm hooked for all the years to come until my body fails me (I hope that's not for many years yet ).

[Lellers]

Wow, Hikers7, I started out in the Pine Barrens, too! And I'm only a couple of years older than you are, so maybe we were both out chasing the Jersey Devil along the Batsto at the same time!

Actually, I grew up in a little town on the edge of the Delaware River opposite Philly International Airport. I spent a lot of time choking on refinery fumes, but I liked standing at the edge of the river and just watching the rolling of the water. If I headed east out of our small town, I ran into all sorts of fields and woods. I also grew up in a family of boys in a neighborhood that was overrun by high-energy boys. In the summer, we'd go down to the woods at the end of our street and just sleep on the sand next to the creek. It was a different world back then, and our parents knew that we were safe down there. My parents took us camping in a Coleman camper in the 1960s, and I even enjoyed that experience. I just loved being out in the woods. My uncle was an Eagle Scout, and our family outings included all of his old-timey scout wisdom from the 1940s, stuff that isn't exactly LNT today!

The summer between high school and college, I told my parents that I was going to spend some time at the shore with a friend, but what I really did was gather up some old boy scout gear from the basement (including a canvas tent with wooden poles) and drove to Front Royal. I had camped in SNP as a kid with my parents and heard about the AT. From that time on, I was drawn to the trail. I left the car on some side street down there, not knowing what else to do, and walked into the park. I covered all of the AT in SNP, solo, at the age of 18. Looking the way I did when I was 18, I found it very easy to hitch a ride back from Rockfish with a local boy who didn't mind driving me all the way back to Front Royal. Today I cringe when I think about my inexperienced teenage self doing that!

A few years later, finished college and desperately in love, I married a non-camping CPA. He's an indoor kind of guy. The only thing he likes doing outdoors is running.. Serious running. He's still running Masters track and field and putting up respectable times, but I don't understand expending all that energy to run in circles, and he can't fathom taking all day to walk 10 miles. Hiking incompatables.

Then the kids came along... two boys. I had no time to camp and hike. But once they became boy scout age, off I went! I became the first female assistant scoutmasters in a 90 year old troop. That was some 12 years ago. It's a different world, scout camping, but it's fun watching the boys learn how capable they can be in tough situations. These novice guys teach me a thing or two, also! AND, they're much stronger than I am, so occasionally, they have pity on an old woman and carry some of my gear for me, too!

Now the really sad part of all of this is that I carry a considerable amount of weight on the trail. None of it is detachable! Oh for the good ole days when i was much, much thinner! So, in preparation for a 100-mile AT hike this summer with my scouts, the little darlings are helping me go lighter by losing 50 excess pounds of accumulated fat. I kid you not! They knock on my door after school and ask if I've been to the gym, and offer to go with me. They've been a real inspiration (nags), and I've actually lost 10 pounds this month!

So if you see a slightly gray, mildly stiff-jointed, but very happy woman hiking with a handful of boy scouts in 2008, stop and say hello!

[warraghiyagey]

I've never seen my biological mother. The trail feeds me and guides me. I don't wander so much as walk with anticipation toward tomorrow.