"addicted" to hiking

[buff_jeff]

How do you guys handle this "problem"? I have no desire to do anything but hike right now. I feel like my hike this summer has "ruined" me, and I know the same thing will happen after my next hike. It's just a totally insatiable desire. I've fallen off on school work. I don't care about pursuing a long-term career. I've just been totally indifferent to everything. What helps you guys get through the day when hiking isn't an option at the moment?

[CrumbSnatcher]

How do you guys handle this "problem"? I have no desire to do anything but hike right now. I feel like my hike this summer has "ruined" me, and I know the same thing will happen after my next hike. It's just a totally insatiable desire. I've fallen off on school work. I don't care about pursuing a long-term career. I've just been totally indifferent to everything. What helps you guys get through the day when hiking isn't an option at the moment?

welcome to the club. wait til springer fever hits your butt. good luck with that

[Mags]

welcome to the club. wait til springer fever hits your butt. good luck with that

Indeed.

Here's a quote from a guy who asked the same question...

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever
and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. ... In other words, I don't improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.
-- John Steinbeck, TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY

(Good read, BTW)

If you want to read how I have (not) coped with it..point your browser over to here:
http://www.pmags.com/joomla/index.ph...ost-trail.html



I gave a slideshow about the Colorado Trail this past weekend. A "short" hike. But just talking about those 3 weeks gave me itchy feet. I am working a very lousy swing shift right now as well (12n-9pm), which does not help.

In March 2009, it will be two years since my CDT (and post ski bum) time has ended.

Time to plan the next journey....


So yeah..if you find a way to recover from the addiction, many of us want to know.

[CrumbSnatcher]

MAGS,it might suck for you when your not hiking. but your site is a blessing for alot of hikers,thanks for all the great info on the colorado trail. me and the ole' lady need to get our butts out there since we live next door.

[Mags]

MAGS,it might suck for you when your not hiking. but your site is a blessing for alot of hikers,thanks for all the great info on the colorado trail. me and the ole' lady need to get our butts out there since we live next door.

Thanks for the kind words.

You should come to the Rockies Ruck in March:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rockies_ruck/message/197



Great way to meet fellow hikers!

I take pride in the fact that our hiking weekend is probably the most active hiker weekend, too. Of the ~25 people who go, I'd say about 20 do an outdoor activity. If you want to snowshoe, ski or snowboard in the beautiful Colorado Rockies...it is a great chance.

[kyerger]

butt...i think about hiken all the time too. im a nurse at a nursing home and bring my stuff in for them to see. i also am planing a fla. thru hike in Jan. that helps. i want to do a thru hike on the AT 2010 that keeps me going. it also helps to get your gear out and play with it all the time too. go out and take walks and smell the air. hiken is truely a disease that we all get, there is no cure,

[TheTank]

There is no way to handle the "problem," you just have to embrace the addiction and go with it. The only way I have been able to do anything other then hiking is by telling myself I need the money to support future hikes, which is not a very productive outlook, and not always very satisfying in dealing with the craving to hike. Therefore making money to hike should be used sparingly and always combined with some sort of periodic hiking plan, even if it is getting out on weekends between vacation time, in turn between extended periods of not working at all to hike.

Yes, hiking addiction is a common problem, and as was said there is no cure. Just give up all hope now of ever doing anything else, you are a hiker.

[River Runner]

Sounds like you've joined the 'hiker trash' club. I think that's how they fondly refer to themselves - those addicted hikers who have enough guts (and the right circumstances) to work to hike, hike to live.

Becoming a photographer or author might help. Then if you are lucky, you can use your hikes to make a living.

[buff_jeff]

Thanks for the insight, guys. I guess I'm just going to have to live with this. Best diagnosis I've ever received.

[garlic08]

And remember, a career is a job that has lasted too long.

[TOW]

How do you guys handle this "problem"? I have no desire to do anything but hike right now. I feel like my hike this summer has "ruined" me, and I know the same thing will happen after my next hike. It's just a totally insatiable desire. I've fallen off on school work. I don't care about pursuing a long-term career. I've just been totally indifferent to everything. What helps you guys get through the day when hiking isn't an option at the moment?

this too shall pass

[Mrs Baggins]

Hooked hooked hooked. My husband and I think about it every single day. We didn't accomplish our thru-hike last year but we are ALWAYS planning "the next time." When I clothes shop I find myself looking for things I can hike in when I need to be finding something to attend a real dinner in. In the grocery store I am ALWAYS on the watch for new, lightweight food items that would be easy to cook on the trail. Don't fight it.

[Gray Blazer]

I get on White Blaze and look at the photo galleries.

[A-Train]

How do you guys handle this "problem"? I have no desire to do anything but hike right now. I feel like my hike this summer has "ruined" me, and I know the same thing will happen after my next hike. It's just a totally insatiable desire. I've fallen off on school work. I don't care about pursuing a long-term career. I've just been totally indifferent to everything. What helps you guys get through the day when hiking isn't an option at the moment?

I dealt with very similar issues for years. After the AT I wasn't cured and still wanted to hike, hike, hike. Finished college, and worked to save up for the PCT. Did that and I still wanna hike, hike, hike.

A couple years ago I was seriously comtemplating a long-term thru-hiker life style, that is hike for 5-6 months a yr, work for 6-7 months, wash and repeat. However, as much as I thought I could pull this off, it didn't seem sustainable. I worried: what will happen if I break a bone, get very sick, something happens to family, etc. and I can no longer hike. What happens when I get sick of this lifestlye and decide in 5-10 years I wanna plunge into a career but have gaping holes in my resume and limited working experience.

For me, I'm working to craft a lifestyle that includes both a full-time career and free summers for hiking. Seems like a good combination.

You've gotta do what's best for you. If hiking is the most important thing to you NOW, well that's what you should do, assuming you can afford to. Just have a back-up plan

[buff_jeff]

I dealt with very similar issues for years. After the AT I wasn't cured and still wanted to hike, hike, hike. Finished college, and worked to save up for the PCT. Did that and I still wanna hike, hike, hike.

A couple years ago I was seriously comtemplating a long-term thru-hiker life style, that is hike for 5-6 months a yr, work for 6-7 months, wash and repeat. However, as much as I thought I could pull this off, it didn't seem sustainable. I worried: what will happen if I break a bone, get very sick, something happens to family, etc. and I can no longer hike. What happens when I get sick of this lifestlye and decide in 5-10 years I wanna plunge into a career but have gaping holes in my resume and limited working experience.

For me, I'm working to craft a lifestyle that includes both a full-time career and free summers for hiking. Seems like a good combination.

You've gotta do what's best for you. If hiking is the most important thing to you NOW, well that's what you should do, assuming you can afford to. Just have a back-up plan

I've been leaning towards inner-city teaching. I think it would be relatively fulfilling to do something that a lot of people want no part of, and money isn't the biggest issue to me. The biggest hook is that I'd have summers off, though. I think that's the balance that I need to be looking for.

[A-Train]

Tis a very noble profession, but don't get into teaching for the summers off, because the other 10 months will still be brutal if you don't love it. Working with children is a demanding, difficult and at times frustrating, tedious job!

If you are serious, you should look into programs like Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows programs once you've finished college.

Good luck!

[Tipi Walter]

This has been discussed off and on for years and here's my tired response: If you have a deck or porch, lay out your pad and bag and sleep out every night. If you have a yard, set up a permament tent and go to it every night, rain-snow-drought-wind-whatever.

Move out of the city and find a town close to some mountains(there's hundreds of small towns to pick from), find some people that own a few acres of rural land(or a hundred acres), ask their permission to explore and live on their land and find a spot on the most remote part to set up a permanent tent or tipi or hogan or wickiup or wall tent or igloo and cut a trail to it and have at it. Ideally, there will be no rent involved and no running water or electricity, so your bills will disappear overnight, practically.

Find a place to park your old car or truck or moped and hump in everything you need over time along that wonderful trail you cut and switchbacked up to your shelter-lodge. Let the adventure begin and pray for snow. Or buy an acre in the middle of nowhere and begin, just make sure you can't drive and park right at your tent/shelter/tipi, otherwise you won't be hiking in everyday with a pack on your back.

OR: Find a national forest and set up for two weeks(sell your car)and then move for another two weeks and keep doing this until you completely run out of money. Or find a one-day-a-week job and hitch from your camp to work and back out again.

It's all about your intent, and I don't mean you being in your tent. What's your motivation? If it's to hobnob with the hiker scene along some long trail, or to scope out the opposite gender wearing similar gear, well, find out now and save yourself some grief. If you intent is to experience the four seasons up close and personal, and to be smote by a mean midnight blizzard at 5000 feet, well, Miss Nature has a full arsenal of tricks in her bag and she might give you a big shot if you give her half a chance and place yourself as a good target in a pristine environment.

She's a hard case but can be worn down over time with persistent returns and effort. Eventually, she'll say, "Where the heck is buff_jeff? I set this whole place up just for him and he's not here to enjoy it!" She becomes your "wife" and you'll be a deadbeat Dad if you don't go back to live with her children: The wind, the cold, the snow, the toads, the shoats, the rain and the trees.

[buff_jeff]

Tis a very noble profession, but don't get into teaching for the summers off, because the other 10 months will still be brutal if you don't love it. Working with children is a demanding, difficult and at times frustrating, tedious job!

If you are serious, you should look into programs like Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows programs once you've finished college.

Good luck!

I absolutely will. Both of my parents are teachers and I've love to get into the profession. Summers off are only part of the allure. I owe the Army 4 years after college so I do have a secure job immediately following graduation. It's really just a question of what to do after that.

[superman]

You'll know when your addicted to hiking when they make you stand up in a group of hikers and you say "Hi, My names is buff jeff and I'm a hike-aholic."

[Mrs Baggins]

I've been leaning towards inner-city teaching. I think it would be relatively fulfilling to do something that a lot of people want no part of, and money isn't the biggest issue to me. The biggest hook is that I'd have summers off, though. I think that's the balance that I need to be looking for.

I was watching a new Food Network show, "The Chef Jeff Project". Chef Jeff was in prison for drugs, learned to cook, became a very successful pro chef and now takes kids who had similar backgrounds and are interested in cooking for a living and shows them what it's like. I was thinking how rewarding that would be - to get kids who have never been out in the woods but are willing to try it (I'm not interested in dragging hoodlums into the woods against their will) and teach them how to backpack - the confidence it can instill, self-sufficiency, being out of "the city" for awhile.