Back-cracking

With all the stresses and frustrations that the school year has brought by the end of first quarter, summer seems miles away. It’s crazy how much can be felt in just the span of some nine weeks, but I guess it’s longer than we think it is. So, perhaps to try to regain some of my summer piece-of-mind, I am going to revisit those sunnier days.

This summer (such a typical start to a story), I went to summer camp (omg even more classic), the same camp that I’ve been going to for the last four years pretty constantly. The camp--Merrowvista--is an outdoor adventure type of thing, and so as you get older, you are never really at camp, instead you go on longish biking, backpacking, and canoeing trips. This past summer (my last as a camper), I went on a 16 day backpacking trip on the last 115 miles of the Appalachian Trail. Before I go on, I always hesitate to talk about “summer camp” too nonchalantly, because I don’t want it to seem like it’s a privilege that I take for granted. I recognise how much of a luxury it is to be able to go to summer camp, and I am grateful that I have that privilege.

Backpacking. Leading up to the trip--and even before that, I had this kind of odd sense of myself in relation to outdoor activities. You know when you see a commercial or ad for athletic gear and the people in it look sweaty but hot, sporty yet contemplative, and spontaneous but appreciative of the nature around them? That was sort of what I expected going into the trip. Not really, obviously, but I definitely had this idealized picture of backpacking, even though I had done it before some years ago. Needless to say, that was not what backpacking was like. I knew coming into the trip that I liked to hike. I had vague memories of backpacking being hard; but all I was remembering was the top; the view of lakes sprawling out beneath and peaks in the distance.

Obviously, my expectations were unfounded. Backpacking was f****** hard. Fifty pound pack + uphill + tiredness made some days frankly horrible. Adding to that, although my group hiked pretty fast (on some flat-er days we pumped out like 9 miles by lunch), I was one of the slower hikers. That was really hard for me at first, because I felt like I was holding the group back--but gradually over the course of the trip I came to accept my relative slowness and even enjoy it. It allowed me to chill in the back of the pack, and actually have some very meaningful conversations with other people.

Even with the hard work of going uphill, we didn’t always have a view at the top. We would be in the midst of thick trees and a small sign would proclaim: summit of X mountain, X feet. That was the reward. No view, nothing special. But that also was good, because much more often, the effort of painstakingly climbing upwards and getting to that summit became the reward in and of itself--that challenge. One other kind of unrelated thing that surprised me was that even though the region itself was so isolated (I mean it’s called the 100 mile wilderness), I felt a strong sense of community throughout the trail. We were hiking at a time when many through-hikers (those who do the whole trail, from Georgia to Maine) were finishing the whole trail, and so at every lean-to there was someone new with interesting things to say. Everyone had a trail name that others had given them--the rule being that multiple hikers had to agree with it--and it usually fit something about them. One guys name was Rennaisance, another woman’s was Wired another Sunshine. Sometimes when we ran into someone on trail, they would already know who we were, via other hikers who had spread the word. All in all--despite the hardships--backpacking will be something I do for the rest of my life (and maybe I’ll through-hike someday!).

        

photos of my group + mountains