LOS RHODIES

How Humor Helps Handle Hardships

     We were in Washington in the fall and were shuffling up into the mountainous clouds, misty, cold and damp. We were burdened with the new weight of our resupply, having left the gas station at White's Pass earlier that day. Around mile 17, we'd had enough of the swooshing of our trash-bag rain-skirts, of slipping on slick rocks, of sliding on our asses in the mud. That last one is actually specific to me. Apple Butter, my loyal Eagle Scout, my dear bearded hiking mate, turned to me and said, “Camp for the night?” I nodded in relief.

      Unraveling the tent and the rain fly in a relatively flat area several hundred yards from the Trail, the gears of my mind began to turn. There was something less shiny about his pack. Something I'd gotten so used to seeing, hiking just behind him for more than a thousand miles. Apple Butter laid out the square-ish tarps and put his hands on his hips. He turned to his pack. He turned back to his tarp. I squatted down and looked up at him.

      “Where are the tent poles?” I inquired.

      Still standing like a question, he curled his lips into his mouth as if unable to say the answer: he didn't know. Nor did I, and thus we remained in this position, staring at each other blankly as the rain trickled down our backs.

      “What do we do?” I asked.

      Apple Butter was quick with a solution, nervous to have been questioned, and by a woman, at that. “We go to White's Pass. We search the gas station. We check the hiker box.”

      “Alright,” I said, a smile unintentionally washing over my wet face. It was already getting dark and the road was about 17 miles away in either direction. “But – what do we do right now?”

      I couldn't help it. As he stared at me with great concern, I started laughing, and I couldn't stop. Thank god I packed out an Eagle Scout, as he was quick to wedge a downed log between two standing trees and start tying off the rain fly awkwardly so that it might provide some form of shelter. And looking back, I must have seemed so unhelpful at first. Yes, I helped tie off the rain fly and set up camp, but I was laughing and joking to the point of insanity. But once we positioned ourselves under this ramshackle shelter, Apple Butter smiled and looked at me with big brown eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for not being mad.”

The tent on the evening we realized we had no tent poles (and no rope).

Apple Butter setting up a tent rope in lieu of poles, and doing a bully job!

      To complete a long distance hike, one must be mad, just not in that way. I have found the best possible tool in my survival kit to be super-ultra-light, space saving, cost effective, and if not life-saving, then proven at least to be hike-saving. Yes, a sense of humor is worth bringing. Hell, bring an extra!

Tent drying for the working woman.

What is a sense of humor, anyway?

      It can be defined as simply as the ability to be amused, and people of all ages, cultures, sexes and scenarios are capable of having one. It is, in fact, a human survival trait. The dictionary provides the antonyms “discipline” and “restraint,” also curiously important to pulling off a long distance hike.

      Hiker humor is often based on the observation of human and earthly nature, casting light on the hardships of the experience, and reminding us that we've chosen to endure them. As Hunter S. Thompson once quipped, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” Though friendships on the Trail can be fleeting, often never even learning the given name of a fellow hiker, the hiker community is tight. I feel the reason for this is that hiker humor is typically reflective. Whether one is pranking another, harrying herself, or being badgered by a buddy, the joke is truly on all of us. We share physical pain, mental burden. If it's raining, we are all getting wet, or at the least, we've all been there. There is so much on the Trail that is entirely out of human control, so throwing a fit just isn't worth it. What else can you do but to laugh?

Los Rhodies having a gas. Literally, probably a joke about having gas.

A good sense of humor eases tension.

      The star models of this sentiment were the “AT Trail Rats,” a name bestowed on a group of seasoned thru-hikers as an insult, but one which they turned upside down, repolished, and embraced with a comical air of indignity. Regularly donning formal ties over their Trail stained hiker shirts, this crew brought laughter wherever they went. Hikers often need to police each other when it comes to Leave No Trace (LNT) ethics, which can sometimes lead to defensive behavior and resentment. However, the so-called Trail Rats engaged groups of hikers in Leave No Trace education in a completely hilarious and unassuming way: by holding LNT confessions at the end of the day.

      Imagine this: 15 hikers sitting around a campfire chatting. One hiker stands up and begins pacing back and forth. Let's call him Billy Jack. “It's about 9 o'clock folks, and that means time for LNT confessions,” he begins, the aura from the fire somehow spotlighting him. “Maybe you saw a piece of trash and walked right by it. Maybe you just couldn't hold it when you stopped to get water. We have all been LNT sinners at some point in our hikes. Confess it tonight and be absolved. Who wants to start?”

      The shadows lift from Billy Jack's audience, the forum: open. There is silence at first, but for the crackling of the enkindled wood. The glow of a palm rises. “Yes,” says Billy Jack like a TV evangelist amongst his flock. “Confess, brother.” The hiker begins, “I was by the road trying to get a hitch, and I – well – I suddenly had to, ya know, poop. I tried to dig a hole behind a rock, but it was mostly tar. I couldn't wait. I built a cairn over it, but, I feel terrible about it.” Heads nod, chuckles bounce across the fire, and then Billy Jack shouts, “Absolved!” There is a noticeable wave of relief across that hiker's face from the knowledge that he is not alone. “Sometimes you cannot help it, but we do the best we can. Who else has sinned?” asks Billy Jack.

Letting this bunny play my banjo turned out not to be LNT.

      The confessions went on and on. They even got on the topic of purists who had yellow blazed, or people who had cherry-picked their favorite foods out of buffet salads. “Not really an LNT mistake, but absolved, nonetheless!” By the end, everyone was laughing uproariously. We discussed what else we could have done, how not to make these mistakes in the future, and even learned of some hiccups we might have done but had no idea were not in line with Leave No Trace!

A test of and testament to my faith.

      Even with such wonderful spirits on the Trail, having a sense of humor isn't always easy. The scenery does not always abound with amazing views. When you are in pain, one mile may feel like five miles: heavy information to carry there are ten miles left to town. Maybe you are lonesome. Maybe you are sick of your hiking partners. Maybe you are just sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. All I ask when you feel your worst is to remember this: the best is yet to come. For me, my foot pain was intolerable. My feet were infected. Each step was worse than the last. I held onto the hope that I could resolve the issue for around 800 miles, and when the issue was resolved, I couldn't hold in the laughter. I felt resounding joy at the new ease of walking. But I also found the fact that all that time, my shoes had been almost 2 sizes too large hilarious. It is embarrassing, but now it's over. And it's pretty damn funny.

Healing up and having a laugh at Ziggy and the Bear's, mile 210.8.

Shoes. Over and over again, I heard the same advice: for the PCT, get trail runners. Buy them a size larger than usual. Make sure they're lightweight. A pound on your feet is five pounds on your back. Well, the long path to decent shoes I am about to relate to you, dear reader, is going to make me sound like a total idiot. And an idiot I may be, but I deliver this message to you as a tale of caution for your benefit. Don't let this happen to you!

Trail Runners were Real Bummers.

In response to the popular advice I'd received, I bought Salomon Speedcross X3s. These shoes are trail runners, meaning they are as lightweight as a running shoe, but are a bit more rugged in terms of the sole and support. They were a size 9, as I am typically about an 8. I broke them in by wearing them at work, often stumbling because they were so long.

I began to have horrible foot pain the very first day on the Trail. I made it 15 miles before deciding my pack must be too heavy, or that I must not be conditioned well enough for a longer day, or, most hopelessly, perhaps I bought the wrong shoes.

As the days went by, every step was another hot spot. Every hot spot was another blister. Every blister meant more pain, more bandaids and gauze, and more struggling to keep up with my guys. I was determined to get to a place where I had cell service and a list of my mail drop addresses so I could order new shoes from L.L.Bean. Their “100% Satisfaction Guarantee” would ensure I wouldn't go broke trying to figure out how to fix what was becoming a famous foot problem.

At mile 109.5, Warner Springs, I took my first Epsom salt foot bath in the community center. In Idyllwild, mile 151.9, I used my trekking poles in town, just to alleviate any pressure on my feet. Mile 210.8, I found myself crawling into Ziggy and the Bear's, where I was given 2 seething hot foot baths and began an expired course of Cipro (an antibiotic) that Slack had given me.

Your shoes are too small!

I bought new shoes from Big 5 Sports in Big Bear Lake after 266 miles of denial. They were hiking shoes made by Coleman. I had felt every rock – no – every grain of sand I'd stepped on through the trail runners. I thought maybe a thicker sole would help after all. But I still went with a size 9, and was told by the associate there, as well as several of my compatriots, that, “Maybe your shoes are too small!”

I knew Coleman wasn't gonna cut it. I ordered a pair of Keen Low-cut Ventilated Voyagers. Size 9 ½. While we waited for the shoes to arrive, we went back to Lake Morena for Kick-off. It was a blast. An awesome trail angel gave me an antibacterial foot bath and bandaged me up. And most importantly (and most mentally challenging), I got to kick my feet up for about 4 days. They heeled up and were feeling pretty good.

Back on the Trail with my new “real” hiking shoes, I found myself back to square one by the tie we got into Cajon Pass at mile 342. Slack, Spirit Fingers and I decided to take more time off, this time traveling from Wrightwood at mile 369.5 to Los Angeles to spend a few days with one of their buddies from camp. He drove me to Adventure 16 where I picked up a pair of lightweight high-top North Face shoes in a size 8 ½, finally moving toward the right size!

Well, these high-tops hurt my boney-ass ankles. I tried so hard to modify the shoe to work for me. Alas, it just was not meant to be. I made it into the Saufleys with one boot and one improvised flip-flop made out of a shoelace and a cheap insole.

Hey! I've heard of you!

The next day, I rolled into the Anderson's at mile 478.2. If you need to rest them bones, there is no better place than the Hippie Day Care at Casa de Luna. A fellow hiker asked how long we would be there. “We're not sure yet, but Jambo needs to rest her feet,” replied Slack. “Something wrong with your feet?” a naïve hiker asked concernedly. “Oooh!” said Timon, one of my favorite AT Trail Rats. In his uniquely impassioned way of speaking, letting each word roll for an extra long time, each syllable emphasized as if it were the key, he spouted, “I've heard of you! The girl with the fucked up feet!” “Oooh,” everyone else nodded with the realization that they'd heard of me. “Some girl was here yesterday saying she wouldn't use the bin to soak her feet that you used!”

Great. I had a title. I was a celebrity of infamous proportions. Like a super villain. I had become “The Girl with the Fucked Up Feet.”

I was sick of it. I often found myself day dreaming about how magical life would be if I had no foot problems. I was envious of people who strolled by me during the day, like they were walking in clouds while I walked on barbed wire. Straight up – it sucked.

Finally, while walking the aqueduct, I pulled out my phone. I had service! I knew we were going to Tehachapi and I was unwilling to wait any longer. I called L.L. Bean and struggled in the wind to talk to the sales rep. “I'm sorry,” I shouted, “I'm in the desert!” “What? Honey, call back when you're inside, I can't hear you.” “NO! I can't! I'm in the desert!!! Don't hang up!” I finally managed to order the Keens I had tried previously, but this time I ordered 2 pairs: one was a size 8 and one an 8 ½.

I could barely walk the night we were in Tehachapi. I needed to use my friends as crutches, and it was starting to get old for all of us. Thus far I have spared you the specifics of the size of the blisters, the color of the goo inside them, and a detailed description of the types of pain I suffered. Suffice to say that this time, the pads of my feet were bleeding. 98% of my thoughts were dedicated to how I ought to navigate the intricacies of each individual step so that I might save myself just a little bit of pain, just to get one step closer to Canada, and how I might, just might, be able to resolve my problems with the next pair of shoes.

The post office said they wouldn't get UPS that day. They said they'd already received their delivery. They said the shoes ain't a'comin'. Well, I wasn't ready to take that as a truth. I posted up outside the large post office building in Tehachapi because it was a particularly brutal mile to walk in my condition only to hear the word, “No.” And I'm glad I did, because it wasn't long before UPS came chugging into the parking lot. I was so excited when I got my package, much to the postal worker's chagrin. I opened up the 8 ½ and tried them on. I walked around the parking lot for a bit thinking, well, these feel pretty good!

Then I tried on the 8s, just for fun. I though, oh shit. These feel pretty good. Still roomy, thick soles, not floppy. That's when I realized my shoes were simply way too big the whole time. I've been asked how I did not realize that. I don't really know. I think there is just a very big difference between trying shoes on and walking around a store or a parking lot, and hiking in a pair of shoes for 10 to 12 hours a day in the elements with 25 pounds of weight on your back.

What are 5 lessons I learned out of all of this?

1. Buy a shoe that fits you. Try to size that you are used to before you start experimenting with larger, smaller, wider or narrower shoes. Apparently, simply trying a shoe in the store isn't a good test.

2. Opinions are like assholes. Don't listen to the advice of others over your gut instinct. Because...

3. What works for them may not work for you. And vice versa! Bear that in mind when dropping knowledge.

4. If what you're doing doesn't work, try something else. If that doesn't work, try something else. If that doesn't work, try something else. If that doesn't work, try something else.

5. Denial will get you to Canada. The phrases "I can't" and "quit" should only be used together and in that order.

*BONUS LESSON*

Gear. A controversial yet ever popular topic on and off Trail. Every hiker has his or her own opinions, experiences, and most importantly, style of hiking that impacts the worth-to-weight ratio of each item in her pack.

I consider myself a frugal hiker, but in preparation for the PCT, I decided to upgrade some of my gear. It lightened my load and updated my hiking style, but not everything worked. Many items were sent home and a few were even picked up (usually out of a treasure chest - I mean - hiker box).

In anticipation of my 2015 thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail, I am once again evaluating my options. Should I ditch this heavy fleece for a lighter, highly coveted puffy coat? Do I stick with my old rain coat that kept me pretty dry, or spend a couple hundred dollars on a new Gortex coat and hope it serves me better? How heavy? How much? How packable? How am I going to carry all of this!?

Whew! Let's take it one item at a time.

Pack. I started the PCT with a Granite Gear Nimbus Ozone, a pack I picked up on sale in 2011 in Damascus, Virginia during my 700 mile section hike of the Appalachian Trail (i.e. a failed thru-hike attempt). I loved this pack dearly. I ended up bringing it another 700 miles to Kennedy Meadows in Southern California. It was essentially just a big ol' sack with two stretchy pocket on either side. No bells or whistles, but a very cushy hip belt, and the frame was padded by an inch of fluff stuff. It weighed in at just over 3 pounds.

Then came the bear canister. Required in the Sierra Nevada, a bear can is a large plastic container resembling the blue jug of water that sits on top of the bubbler at your office. It is cumbersome in that it is oddly shaped for packing and not compressable. As I was trying to determine the best way to fit the new challenge into my pack, the seams burst on my precious Nimbus!

I managed to sew up the split with some dental floss, but it didn't look like enough. So I took a look at the small automotive section at the Kennedy Meadows General Store. I bought some RTV silicone and slathered that on the seams. I also bought some silicone spray and prepped my banjo for wetter weather!

Contacting Granite Gear took some doing, but the kind folks there sent me a brand-spanking-new Crown 60 (grey and green) as an even exchange! It weighs in at 2 pounds 2 ounces, lacking much of the gushy cushy I enjoyed, but I love the simplicity of the pack. I find it very comfortable. What is most important? Well, the straps on the front happen to be PERFECT for attaching an instrument by the neck! Spirit Fingers - can I get an AMEN!

Granite Gear packs are very light and are going to be more durable than the super ultra light cuben fiber packs for much less the cost (especially if you are as reckless tossing your pack off at the end of a long day as I am). I give them a rating of 12 trekking poles out of 14 hip belts. You do the math.

Hello all!

Spirit Fingers here. I've been going by Sam more often now that I'm out of the woods and back in Rhode Island, but since we're all adventurers here on the internet, I still think its appropriate to use superhero names :)

This is actually my first post since returning to New England. Much thanks to Jambo to keeping things going during my hiatus! There’s a whole mess of good stories and photos yet to come, I promise. In my next posts I'll share plenty more stories from the hike, but before that I'd like to write a bit about my motivations and reasons. For perhaps more than any other question I've gotten about the trail is the incipient 'why?'

A few days ago, I spent the afternoon wandering through the autumn woods outside of Concord, Massachusetts. I walked for several hours around Walden Pond, both the subject and the setting of Henry David Thoreau's meditative masterpiece. I read many books while hiking, over twenty in fact, but Thoreau's Walden stuck with me more than most. And so, when I returned to the Northeast, I made a point of taking a pilgrimage to the site of Thoreau's inspiration.

For those who haven't read it, Walden is a book documenting Thoreau's solitary two years spent living by the shore of Walden Pond in a one-room cabin he builds himself at the beginning of the narrative. The book is a hodgepodge of intellectual musings, natural history, social observation, and pious argumentation. Each section offers seemingly disparate moments of clarity laid out like so many round stones on a lakebed, strung together by Thoreau's grand view of nature to form a cohesive whole. Walden is not a story, nor is it a chronicle or journal, though it has elements of each. I would argue that it is a manifesto. Thoreau sincerely wants to move you. He explains to you in marvelous prose how wonderful it is living in the woods, and how healthy and enriching solitude can be. But in the end, he hopes that you will be moved to take a walk in the woods and experience it for yourself.

While it is possible to tie Thoreau's asceticism to hermetic traditions of the past, at the time, in mid-1800's New England, his way of life was quite radical. His experiences at Walden Pond represent a particularly vivid turning point in the first truly, organically American intellectual tradition: Transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson may have written about the transcendental first, and arguably with more aptitude, but it was Thoreau who lived and embodied it in the countryside outside Concord. Every writer and thinker who has confronted nature since, from John Muir to Edward Abbey, has been in dialogue with H.D. Thoreau in one way or another. Agree or disagree: he cannot be ignored.

Now, as you can imagine, Walden is a magnificent book to read while thru-hiking. Here is a passage from his opening chapter. Anyone who has spent time in the wilderness should have made similar observations upon returning to the city and to civilization.

"Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be any thing but a machine."

If his observations on society were true when he wrote them in the 1850's, how much truer are they today? How many people live hand to mouth for their entire lives? How many never get the opportunity to watch the sun rise over a pristine mountainside, or share the morning air with birds and bees rather than exhaust and rumbling machinery?

Hang on a minute while I get off this high horse. I don't mean to preach, but I believe that we, as mammals with only 12,000 years of experience with sedentary living under our collective belt, *need* some nature in our lives. As endless strings of studies have shown, it’s good for us. It makes us healthier and happier. And its *fun*, if you let it be.

Spending time outside allows us time to digest, to escape, to reflect. To pare down life to its most essential. As Thoreau famously tells us:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

This is the 'why' of the PCT. This, for me, is what thru-hiking is all about.

However! You certainly don't need to build a cabin in the woods, or hike two and a half thousand miles, to experience your life, and the universe, face-to-face. You just need to take some time this weekend for yourself, a day or a few hours, and wander through the woods without a plan or a care. Anywhere will do: a local forest, a park, a beach, an empty field. What is important is that you do not try to accomplish anything in particular while you wander. Just look and listen and breathe. And it will be hard at first, and the worries of the day will poke and prod at you, and you will sweat, and you may stub your toes, and at first you may rush, and you may want only to get back home to the dull comfort of modernity. But next week, and next year, you will remember those moments that you spent outside vividly, even as the hours spent at work, surfing the internet, driving your car, paying your taxes, fade into a blur. Take a few moments for yourself to LIVE! You deserve it.

Thanks for reading! Scroll down for some photos at Walden Pond and thereabout. And stay tuned for more stories and photos to come! If this post inspires you to take a walk somewhere, let us know! 

Hugs and high-fives,

Spirit Fingers // Sam