Why do we backpack?

**envirodiver** · 01-23-2008, 01:05

The last couple of days there has been a lot of effort spent concerning the Wild Cowboys claim. Personally I don't see what's the hurry.

My backpacking goal is to be in the woods, walk carrying all that I need, stop and camp, eat, relax, listen to the sounds, feel the clean air. It's a very cleansing experience and when things are tough the woods are where I need to be. There is no place that I can think and figure things out like when I am walking.

Maybe I don't get it. What's the purpose of turning this last bastion of non-conformity into a race or rite of passage. It seems to me that folks who's only purpose is to finish are missing a great opportunity.

Then again I could be the one that doesn't get it.

**River Runner** · 01-23-2008, 01:37

My thoughts are that people backpack for many different reasons.

Mine is more for getting away from it all, but also a bit to physically challenge myself, since much of my job is not physically demanding.

And I'd eventually like to hike the whole AT, but I do want to take time to smell the pine trees.

**envirodiver** · 01-23-2008, 01:43

I do agree with the physically demanding part. Nice to push yourself past the point of where you think you can go.

**fiddlehead** · 01-23-2008, 03:11

Can only speak for myself. I do what i do cause i like it.

Life is priorities. If you have a job you don't like, quit. Find one you like.

Same with hiking, and trails, and partners, and when you go, what you carry, how fast you go, how slow, etc.

It's just your own life's priorities. (why try to make it into something else? )

**Lone Wolf** · 01-23-2008, 06:40

Originally Posted by envirodiver

Maybe I don't get it. What's the purpose of turning this last bastion of non-conformity into a race or rite of passage. It seems to me that folks who's only purpose is to finish are missing a great opportunity.

Then again I could be the one that doesn't get it.

a thru-hike IS a race and hardly non-conformist

**TOW** · 01-23-2008, 07:28

what about losing one of your upper front toothies?

**highway** · 01-23-2008, 07:35

It's the journey that is important, more than the destination

**warraghiyagey** · 01-23-2008, 07:36

It's an attention grab for him. Otherwise he'd just hike it and relate his stories like the rest.

**HIKER7s** · 01-23-2008, 09:13

To be "out there". That all its really ever been. Because its on a river, path or mountain that gives me that natural high so to speak

**nitewalker** · 01-23-2008, 09:24

i do it becuse it is what i like to do. nothing beats siting out in the middle of nowhere listening to the wind blow, trees sway and creek, animals scurrying around and watching the good ole sunshine....

**Rooster** · 01-23-2008, 10:31

I love being in the outdoors and enjoying all of those special moments as well, but I have to wonder if that would keep me going for five or six months. My motor runs on a fair bit of belligerence. That sounds like a hateful way of approaching the world, but I don't feel that way. Whenever my feet hurt and my knees ache and I think I can actually see the smell lines coming off me I grin like a lunatic. Anyone can have fun when you are sitting around the fire or sitting in a sunny field. I like having fun when every aspect of the hike seems to be asking, "Are you sure you want to be doing this?"
That is what gets me up early each morning and makes me eat oatmeal when in my heart I know I hate oatmeal. I'm not a glutton for punishment, but I think Dostoevsky was a smart guy and understood man's essential binding to suffering.
That said, one's personal philosophy is, I believe, tied to the person they are. I consider myself stoic, but I don't consider non-stoics to have an inferior mind-set. Some people just aren't the stoic type and that's cool. My point here is that while you are sitting and enjoying nature and you see someone march at double-time by understand that you two are enjoying the hike differently. Also, know that they are not trying to piss you off by hiking faster than you.

**dessertrat** · 01-23-2008, 10:40

Originally Posted by envirodiver

The last couple of days there has been a lot of effort spent concerning the Wild Cowboys claim. Personally I don't see what's the hurry.

My backpacking goal is to be in the woods, walk carrying all that I need, stop and camp, eat, relax, listen to the sounds, feel the clean air. It's a very cleansing experience and when things are tough the woods are where I need to be. There is no place that I can think and figure things out like when I am walking.

Maybe I don't get it. What's the purpose of turning this last bastion of non-conformity into a race or rite of passage. It seems to me that folks who's only purpose is to finish are missing a great opportunity.

Then again I could be the one that doesn't get it.

For all people, I think, hiking is a mix of what you describe and exercise/fitness. It used to be that fitness was more incidental, I think, whereas communing with nature was the primary purpose. Today-- partly because so many of us are unfit in this modern culture-- exercise and endurance seems to be gaining some sort of prominence. People used to mention fitness as a side benefit of hiking, not as the primary goal. I hear people today talk all about miles and calories, and never mention a view or an animal or plant seen.

I do hear people who think they need to thru-hike the AT to be a "real hiker", which I think is nonsense. A thru-hike is not a "race" in the traditional sense, but it is in a sense a race against the time available to the hiker, and the weather (unless you sneak into Baxter and up Katahdin without getting caught, which seems unlikely, or get yourself a cold weather permit far in advance), if you are going north.

I'm not going to tell anyone else how to do it, though.

**ki0eh** · 01-23-2008, 11:10

Why We Hike by Tom Thwaites

Excerpted from source: http://hike-mst.org/brushwacker/2003spring.pdf

Hiking is the best possible exercise. Hiking is a low stress activity on joints and hiking enjoys the largest possible age range from toddlers to refugees from wheelchairs. But one could get many of the same health benefits from mall walking and even treadmills. The boredom of treadmills can be forestalled with videos, probably of the out-of-doors.

Why do large numbers of hikers venture into the wet wild woods with biting insects
and stinging nettles on trails lined with roots and studded with rocks? There is something different and deeply appealing about hiking in the out-of-doors. The wilder and more beautiful the land, the better the hiking.

Perhaps a few quotes will give us a clue.

From a proposal for the Garby Trail; “Much of what is so incredible about these wild places is the sudden appearance of something so amazing and profound that its shadow remains with us for years after we return from the adventure.”

From the Navajo Indians of North America:
“Beauty is before me, and
Beauty behind me,
Above me and below me
Hovers the beautiful.
I am surrounded by it,
I am immersed in it.
In my youth, I am aware of it,
And in my old age,
I shall walk quietly the beautiful trail.
In beauty it is begun.
In beauty, it is ended”

Found in a trail register in 1993: “A single red leaf spirals gently to the ground; it glows among stones; touch it and your world will change.”
“What is it about a narrow trail and the sound of wind that brings true honesty between two friends?”

From Secrets of the W Trail: “Even the most unpromising trail must be hiked repeatedly in various seasons over a period of years if we are to learn its secrets.”

Clearly these experiences are spiritual. They are not available in malls or on treadmills. But in our secular age they are also embarrassing. Years ago such experiences would have been hammered into the prisons of organized religion but now they merely mark one as odd and possibly dangerous. So one doesn’t talk about them. This is why hiking is such a private activity, some say as private as sex and is the reason hikers refrain from using trail registers. It is the deep but bright secret of hiking. But spiritual experience is essential to our well being so hiking remains popular and can never be replaced by treadmills and malls.

**dixicritter** · 01-23-2008, 11:21

Why do I backpack? Well for me, and me alone, it is to be out there with my family, enjoying time with them. I have zero desire to do a thru-hike. I'm happy to take the short hikes that I can with Rock and the boys. I'm not out there to prove anything to anybody, just to soak up the scenery.

That's why I go backpacking.

**warraghiyagey** · 01-23-2008, 11:22

Originally Posted by dixicritter

Why do I backpack? Well for me, and me alone, it is to be out there with my family, enjoying time with them. I have zero desire to do a thru-hike. I'm happy to take the short hikes that I can with Rock and the boys. I'm not out there to prove anything to anybody, just to soak up the scenery.

That's why I go backpacking.

**High Places** · 01-23-2008, 11:31

Last year when I thought I was actually going to do the AT. I sort of plan and map out what I would like to do each day on the trails. So I told my friend who has a whole lot of experiences than I do being on the trail. He look me in the eyes and said "why rush"? You will never experience what really out there if your goals is to rush from one point to another. So I will admit that I was being naive. Since things didn't work out last year for me. We are planning a trip this September to do a section of the trails. I will let him do the planning and I will just tag along. That way he can teach me what it really mean to be on the trails.

**High Places** · 01-23-2008, 11:34

Warraghiyagey,

Every time I clicked on your trailjournel, it give me a page not found message. Are you working on your journel or not aware that your link is down. Really like to read up on your journel.

**scavenger** · 01-23-2008, 11:37

Cause i can't find anything better to do.

**warraghiyagey** · 01-23-2008, 11:37

Originally Posted by High Places

Warraghiyagey,

Every time I clicked on your trailjournel, it give me a page not found message. Are you working on your journel or not aware that your link is down. Really like to read up on your journel.

Tell you what, I've been working on it for two years but haven't truly had the nerve to put it out in public because it's also my writing and it frightens me a little. So as you asked, I'd be happy to send you some sections, get some feedback, then maybe I'll have the nerve to put it out there.

**Almost There** · 01-23-2008, 11:41

I have always had a dream of prancing about like Puck and the other fairies of the forest. Flitting here and there, communing with the plants and fuzzy, forest animals.

......

Seriously, for me it's to recharge my batteries after spending so much time with teenagers during the school year. It's also not about the miles for me, it's about having a good time. I can do 25-30 mile days if I wanted but keeping it down around 15 is much more enjoyable. At this point, what do I have to prove? Besides, where else do you have the excuse to eat like a hog....and if you have ever seen me, the thought of me prancing anywhere!

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