AFFLUENT DEPRIVATION

I wonder if this is some kind of convoluted envy: Sometimes I feel mild contempt for hikers who spend thousands of dollars on the latest high-tech feather-weight gear to make it more comfortable to go out and live in the woods scraping by with the minimum essentials for life, including not enough food (thru-hikers usually lose about 20 pounds en route.)

Spending thousands of dollars on bare essentials seems a little paradoxical.


Recently I spent a great weekend in Gettysburg, PA at the annual ALDHA (Appalachian Long-Distance Hiking Association) Gathering. I went to a couple of workshops on lightening your load. One of the things that was said again and again was, "This thing (pack, jacket, tent, whatever) only weighs X grams and is well worth the cost." A variation on that was "The savings in weight is worth whatever it costs." Or, "It's only a couple hundred dollars and you'll never regret it."


Plus, they've somehow quit their jobs for 6 months.


It's growing on me that deliberately living on nothing and being hungry all the time while hiking in the woods is essentially a sport for the affluent.


Affluent, I ain't. Our main income is my husband's retirement income, which isn't all that much (certainly less than our two professional incomes were, and actually less than his alone.) We supplement that by working in campgrounds for a free site and (usually) minimum wage or close to it. It's our choice to live this way so that we can travel the country. But we don't do it high-class.


I'm thinking a person doesn't have to backpack high-class, either.


Bare essentials are shelter, water, food, and warmth.


"Grandma" Emma Gatewood who became, at the age of 65 (more or less... accounts vary, just like the distance of the AT), the first female ever to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail end-to-end in one fell swoop, did it pretty much on the spur of the moment (not years of planning). She sewed up a denim duffel bag, put into it a change of clothes, a raincoat, a wool Army blanket, a plastic shower curtain for a shelter, and a modest supply of beef jerkey, cheese, and nuts, walked out the door carrying it over her shoulder and wearing a pair of U.S. Keds, and started hiking. She carried a little money so she could buy more nuts and crackers when she ran out.


No $300 tent. No $185 ergonomically-designed backpack. No $300 down sleeping bag. No $150 folds-into-itself super-hot-burning stove. No $75 Titanium pot (that's about the price of the one-pint size.) No $150 waterproof-breathable rain jacket and $100 matching pants, no $200 down jacket.


She made it. She said: "I thought it would be a lark. It wasn't."


I plan to carry a little more than Grandma did, but I'm not going to be able to go high-class. When I first started making noises about how much I'd like to do this, Steve said that he could work extra hours during the 6 or so months, to make up for what I wouldn't be working. (Now that's supportive.)



They say it costs about $1 to $2 per mile, not including gear and getting there, to hike the AT. So we're looking at $2000-$4000 dollars.

The low end if you don't stay a lot in off-trail motels and hostels and eat in restaurants a lot, the higher end if you do.

I haven't added it up, but I'm sure I'd be incurring $2000 in living costs in 6 months even if I stayed home. The main difference would be in not earning an income during that time.

I repeat: My husband said he'd work two jobs so I could do this.

I'd been thinking about this post, or maybe series of posts, before Jack brought up a few days ago about winning the lottery to afford the hike.

Some of my next posts will be on gear -- affording it vs. just going out and buying it as apparently a great many of the hikers do. The ones who go first-class. I'm going economy.

A HIKER BY ANOTHER NAME

I returned today from another overnight backpacking trip, during which I met some hikers walking from Georgia to Maine, as I had hoped to. My readers may or may not realize that long-distance trail hikers, especially AT thru-hikers, often go by a "trail name," sort of like a CB handle. Some people make up their own, or even use their real name, but fellow hikers often replace these "temporary" names with something else, generally representative of a characteristic of the person, or spawned by some memorable event, and you just hope it's not too embarrassing because it's likely to stick and be the name by which all other hikers know you.

I went into the woods Against the Wind, and came out....

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Begin "Hallelujah Chorus" here....

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MacGyver!

This came about at an Appalachian Mountain Commission-maintained campsite/shelter where I spent the night. With 5 guys :-) (There are 5 tent platforms, so we each had our own.)

We were all eating our suppers together, and one of the guys, trail-named "Spock," was intrigued, or impressed, or amused, by my homemade cooking equipment. My cooking pot is a practically-weightless, no-cost, 1-lb coffee can, with a tight-fitting pot lid made from aluminum foil reinforced with foil tape, supported over my soda-can stove with tent stakes, and.... this was the final straw for Spock.... a pot-lifter/handle that is, in fact, a dog-grooming tool, a shedding blade.

It's a flexible metal blade with a sawtooth edge, a leather handle at each end, and a fastener to hold these together so that the blade forms a loop. I had been using it for Journey one day and suddenly looked at it and wondered, "I'll bet that would fit my coffee can." I tried it. It did. It's perfect. No more carrying potholders or trying to use a bandana for one. I roll it into a tight circle and store it in my coffee-can pot. So Spock saw me pull all this stuff out of my pot, and gaped at the shedding blade, and said,

"Please tell me that's not a pot handle."

"It's a pot handle," I said, fastening it around my pot to show him.

"What is it made to be?" he asked.

"A dog-grooming tool," I explained. "See this sawtooth edge? You pull it along the dog's coat and it pulls out the dead undercoat. I was using it on my dog and had a lightbulb moment. I figured I can use it as a saw, too."

He threw back his head and laughed, "Your name's gotta be MacGyver!!"

I love it!! I'm crazy about it! Especially since Spock has made a lot of his gear, too, including his backpack (which is awesome), and his calling me MacGyver showed appreciation for my ingenuity.

"Against the Wind" has been great for marathoning, and triathlon, and Ironman. It sounds like pressing on through challenge and even adversity. But it's kind of long to use for a name I'll actually be called by, and it's maybe a little pessimistic, always struggling a little.

MacGyver... the secret agent who sees a new use for something, rigs up something improbable from something ordinary, rises to the occasion, gets out of scrapes by being inventive.

A Trail Name that I love, bestowed like an award by a thru-hiker on his way to Maine, a seasoned hiker of many trails.... how good can it get?

I love it.