Things My Mother Needs to Know

As far as I can tell from her comments, my mom really needs to know how I think that I’m going to find myself though hiking. She posed a few questions in her recent comment, which I will endeavor to answer honestly. Oh, and here’s a song for the day.

Are you finding yourself through acquisition of camping gear?
No, probably not. Though it is quite fun to acquire the camping gear, and time consuming enough for it to be a decently distracting hobby.

Starvation?
Goodness, I hope not. During Survival Living I found that not eating is not as bad as I thought it would be: not nearly as bad. And there are lots of cases throughout history of supposed enlightenment through fasting. That is not my plan. Although, to be honest, I am kind of excited about the prospect of enlightenment of my body (so to speak). I anticipate losing some weight on the trail.


Severe physical fitness?
Can’t hurt, right? Well, yes, it can. I’m a little worried about shin splints because of my history of them, as well as knee problems. I’ll probably dig out my good old chopat knee straps (can you say sexy?) for the trail, and I’ve also invested in some trekking poles, to be discussed later, which should help with the strain.

Isolation? The leaving of the information overload (but how ironic to be blogging about stepping away from that particular aspect of modern life).
No, it’s not for isolation at all. I will, after all, be with AJ throughout. I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time so intensely with a since person, so that should be pretty interesting. While we will be able to get away from each other to some degree while walking (at the moment, since we can only see each other once a week, it’s hard for me to imagine wanted to do it anytime soon), we will be sleeping in one teeny tent each night, and we’ll only have one of a lot of stuff, like one pot for food, etc. On the other hand, it is partly for a way to slow down the pace of life. I’m sick of being frantic. The idea of waking up when it’s light, walking till dusk, and then eating and sleeping without having to worry about a deadline and make intricate plans for managing every 15-minute chunk of the next day sounds highly appealing. We are thinking about not bringing watches and just relying on the sun.

Things to come:
Poles and Undies (by popular demand)
Philosophical Things
Spiritual(ish) Things
The Unending Dilemma of Boots