Orange sherbet push pops are good. I dunno about you, but it has been too long (before right now) since I had a push pop. But that's not the purpose of this email. This email is supposed to be about talking trail. First, I shall eat my push pop.
So Laura called me before and after buying some hiking boots/shoes today and got me talking and thinking more about gear and planning. I pulled out the books my bro had given me/us and did some reading. The one book I've been reading a lot in is called "Long-Distance Hiking: Lessons from the Appalachian Trail" and it's this dude who thru-hiked with the intent to interview lots of people and did exactly that. He interviewed and surveyed a couple hundred thru-hikers about innumerable sorts of things. So here goes with information (random and of varying importance):
40% of women and 60% percent of men in one survey did not wear underwear on the trail (justification: shorts with one of those breathable liners.) question: Can/will we ever justify not wearing underwear?
Cost: About a dollar a mile. Meaning average around 2000 bucks in on-the-trail costs. He says plus about a 1000 bucks for the gear and preparations and travel. However, some people reported spending only 800 to 1000, whereas one dude spent 8,000. Let's not do that, shall we?? I think we will be lucky in that we can split costs, and really, his fancy chart that breaks down the average money spent shows that about 40% of it is total choice- restaurant food, hotels, hostels, "beer and fun." Let's drink some beer. But we can all be cheap dates :)
But the amazing part is that the whole trail is free. Amazing. As one woman put it (quoted in this book): "All these experiences and joys for so little money...God expects no rent."
On physical conditioning and such: Only found a correlation between previous fitness and how many miles hiked in the first month- after that, everybody averaged 16 miles a day basically no matter what their previous shape. Lots of talk about how while training is good, the trail will train us. Certainly, since we are going southbound, we will be hitting the hardest part first, so training will be especially helpful for us. He also didn't find any correlation between rate of injury and previous experience- people pay attention to their bodies, I guess.
Injuries: It is inevitable that at least one of us will become injured at some point. And we will all experience various aches and pains. But his conclusion in this section is: "It is toughness of mind, then, rather than toughness of body, that will lead to a successful thru-hike."
Change in shoe size: Devo, I'm sure you'll be thrilled to know that 80% of women report their feet growing between a half size and a full size while on the trail. Bring on those elevens!!
Hiking Dynamics: While 75% of the American population are Meyers-Briggs extroverts, the opposite was true of thru-hikers according to this psychologist who has extensively studied personality in thru-hikers. Following this stat, 75% of our foursome are introverts, with me being the weird mildy-extroverted one.
"Trail relationships present a strenuous intimacy. As noted by many hikers, not even in a marriage are partners expected to spend 24 hours a day with each other for months at a time. Sharing your life with another person--eating, sleeping, and walking all day long, six or seven days a week, through two or three season--is a togetherness experience unmatched in most lives....the long traverse can be stressful...in this survey, the hike brought a stormy end to several close relationships and planned marriages. On the other hand, for some staying together was more than a trail experience. Within the first years after their hike, four trail couples in my sample got married. The most successful partnerships are those of the long married couple, who have achieved an ability to compromise and have forged a bond of tolerance strong enough to survive the hundreds of daily interactions of a long hike."
In his study, there were only two threesomes and no bigger groups, but he talks about groups of twenty going together successfully with the director of the Appalachian Trail Institute.
My take on all this is that we can do it. Your friendships are to me on a sacramental, covenant level like a marriage would be. While I don't have any intentions to marry any of you, I do have every intention to love you and be your friends for the rest of our lives.
I am an optimist, but I also feel like I know us really well and I know we can handle this. We have all had intense and sustained community life this past year and previously together and I know we know how to do this. It's a matter of commitment, as well as the requisite patience, openness, honesty, and willingness to compromise. However, I think we also know the perils and pitfalls of community life and will recognize certain things that we will need to do to stay sane and loving. One of them will occur naturally I think, namely, having alone time.
This dude's statistics are revealing: "When hiking with friends, were you close enough to converse?" Usually 27%
Sometimes 53%
Rarely/Never 20%
And "How often did you meet with friends for the night?"
Usually 50%
Sometimes 32%
Rarely/Never 18%
My brother and the girl he started the trail with have stuck together the whole way thus far, and the way it has worked for them is that they are often not hiking together but always stop together for lunch and for the night. This makes sense to me. I think we will have days when we stay tight, and days when we don't. We will have solitude and community...you really need both to truly have either as I think we have all figured out. And we will have plenty of new and ever-changing company every night in the shelters to keep us from getting bored.
For longevity, I think what will matter is the commitment to stay together. Hopefully we will avoid any serious injuries and we can commit to bearing one another's burdens in the times when we're having individual struggles with a nasty blister, a sprained ankle, or sore knees.
Allrighty, well I got mucho mas here...plenty of stuff to say on gear, etc. But this is probably enough to get the ball rolling...go ahead, reply all :)
Oh yeah...blogging. I think it's not a bad idea to get ourselves one now even if we don't use it for much of anything just so we can have the name we want when we go. I checked and we could still get http://fearsome4some.wordpress
We also could use one of our old blog urls, which we still have and are as follows: middsuitehearts, middkids, and suitehearts.
love you girls,
Loo
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