Why Do You Hike?
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forestgnome
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View From The Trail
I love being in the middle of the forest.
Hiking is low-impact, high-intensity excersize without the gym air.
Photography is a big part of my hiking.
There's always an adventure to be had. There's always a story to be told after a hike.
I love being in the middle of the forest.
Hiking is low-impact, high-intensity excersize without the gym air.
Photography is a big part of my hiking.
There's always an adventure to be had. There's always a story to be told after a hike.
Ridgerunner
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Low impact ?
Excuse me for disagreeing, but hiking. for most of us who drive +/- 2 hours to get to a trail head, is far from low impact, because we pollute the atmosphere. Cycling is much better (but I don't cycle). When I bagged my 100 NEHH in just over 3 years, I had the nasty feeling that raising bonsai trees would be better for the environment...
Excuse me for disagreeing, but hiking. for most of us who drive +/- 2 hours to get to a trail head, is far from low impact, because we pollute the atmosphere. Cycling is much better (but I don't cycle). When I bagged my 100 NEHH in just over 3 years, I had the nasty feeling that raising bonsai trees would be better for the environment...
H
HikerBob
Guest
These are more eloquent than I'll ever be...
..and, of course, the 'Family'
..and, of course, the 'Family'
giggy
New member
like the challenge, views, time to think clearly, etc.. nothing more - nothing less.
sli74
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Ridgerunner said:
I think he/she meant "low impact" on the body not the environment?
sli74
Mr. X
New member
To escape the screams, praying for the end of this wide awake nightmare. Nah, I just do it to take it all in. The suffering at times, the acomplishment and love for nature is what drives me.
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Gris
New member
A Multiple Choice Answer:
a) the Views From The Top ("VFTT," the politically correct choice);
b) to stay young (the "SK" choice)
c) to experience the "wonder of nature" (pic yer poster)
d) escapism pure & simple (the "HK" choice)
e) all of the above (the "Gris" choice)
a) the Views From The Top ("VFTT," the politically correct choice);
b) to stay young (the "SK" choice)
c) to experience the "wonder of nature" (pic yer poster)
d) escapism pure & simple (the "HK" choice)
e) all of the above (the "Gris" choice)
Umsaskis
New member
For any and every reason. Not to get away from the crowds - I live right next to the mountains and always have, and maybe that's why - because it is my home and I love it. Because the mountains and their allies (the rivers and lakes and trees and sky and wind...) are perhaps the closest piece we can see of what God originally intended this world to be. Why would I surround myself with things that we've made, when I could instead surround myself with things that He made? They are infinitely better.
JohnL
New member
"We do not deceive ourselves that we are engaging in an activity
that is anything but debilitating, dangerous, euphoric, kinesthetic,
expensive, frivolously essential, economically useless and
totally without redeeming social significance. One should not probe
for deeper meanings." (Allen Steck, 1967)
My thoughts exactly.
JohnL
that is anything but debilitating, dangerous, euphoric, kinesthetic,
expensive, frivolously essential, economically useless and
totally without redeeming social significance. One should not probe
for deeper meanings." (Allen Steck, 1967)
My thoughts exactly.
JohnL
CaptainJim
New member
LONG... but check it out!
Inane Hiking for Diving
Webster's: void of sense or intelligence, silly, pointless
by Capt. Jim Hinckley
I grew up in Marlboro, Mass., at the time it was referred to as a suburb of Boston. Now it's simply called Metro West. Most of my boyhood hiking and diving experiences involved filthy ponds and lakes or, if we were lucky, Metropolitan District Commission reservoirs (if we didn't get thrown out by MDC Police). There my friends and I would spend countless hours hiking aroung the "Res", casting worm and bobber, hoping for the bite of a stunted sunfish or some mud dwelling catfish (we called them kivvers and horn pout). When we'd get bored we would swing from the tree on our rope swing, come crashing down into the water, then wonder why we weren't catching anything.
Our other big diversion was donning our Five & Dime (I am dating myself now) oval masks and snorkels with the diameter of a cocktail straw. This opened up a whole new world to me. We had no fins, we simply wore sneakers, because none of us wanted to touch bottom. The big fear was touching bottom, God knows what was under there besides abandon cars and broken beer bottles. If you stood up and got your sneaker stuck in the mud it smelled so bad you'd have to forfeit the thing. If not, mom certainly wouldn't let them back in the house, they were relegated to the back hall for eternity. Despite the obvious lack of aesthetics on these ponds, lakes and trails, we hiked there and jumped in often. After all, it was the only game in town.
Some of these bodies of water and their surrounding trails may be familiar to you locals. Names like Solomon Pond (where there is now a shopping mall), Bartlett Pond, Little Chauncy Pond, Chauncy Lake, Millham Reservoir, Lake Williams, Fort Meadow Reservoir, and best of all (to us anyway) the Sudbury Reservoir (known as The Met.), became our staples. These were our stomping grounds. We'd hike and dive all over them and it was a fantastic day when we'd actually see a "real" fish (which to us meant a bass, trout, or pickerel) or a real wild animal (which might just be a squirrel, but if we were lucky, a raccoon or hawk). Mike Nelson (Lloyd Bridges) and Jacques Cousteau were my heroes (may they rest in peace).
As adolescence approached, most suburban kids gave up on the Cousteau life and began to focus on football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and other more mainstream activities. I never really did get into organized team sports, preferring instead to be more of a loner, a rebel. I continued my meditation in the forests and waters I loved. I even began to see a few patterns. I'd see the catfish most often early and late in the day - especially in the heat of summer.
There was one spot we called the Causeway where shiners always gathered in the tunnel under the overpass that divided the lake in two. I could even count on seeing bass in the shallows around this old tree stump at the Met. If I floated absolutely still they'd eventually come out from under the log and I could watch them shoot to the surface and catch flies. I never caught any fish (who'd want to eat something from these ponds anyway), and I never earned any bragging rights for having seen anything truly unusual or having climbed the highest mountain. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was an inane sort of training. Hiking and diving strictly for the sake of hiking and diving.
I suppose a boy with my preoccupation might have been better off growing up on Florida's Keys, or California, or some Caribbean Island for the diving. Or perhaps somewhere in the Rockies or even some foreign country like Nepal for hiking and climbing! The problem with those places is that they would have deprived me of the inanity of it all. I might have made the mistake of focusing on something other than the hike or the dive. I might have fallen into believing that some big goal exists out there, something beyond the hike and the dive themselves.
A boy growing up on the Keys in the 50's and 60's could have easily associated world record spearfishing with diving. A boy growing up in California could have connected pounds of abalone harvested with diving. A boy growing up on a Caribbean island would have easily learned to associate tourist dollar with diving. Imagine how many 14,000 foot peaks I could have climbed growing up in the Rockies, or how many times I might have summitted Everest growing up in Nepal?
continued next post.......
Inane Hiking for Diving
Webster's: void of sense or intelligence, silly, pointless
by Capt. Jim Hinckley
I grew up in Marlboro, Mass., at the time it was referred to as a suburb of Boston. Now it's simply called Metro West. Most of my boyhood hiking and diving experiences involved filthy ponds and lakes or, if we were lucky, Metropolitan District Commission reservoirs (if we didn't get thrown out by MDC Police). There my friends and I would spend countless hours hiking aroung the "Res", casting worm and bobber, hoping for the bite of a stunted sunfish or some mud dwelling catfish (we called them kivvers and horn pout). When we'd get bored we would swing from the tree on our rope swing, come crashing down into the water, then wonder why we weren't catching anything.
Our other big diversion was donning our Five & Dime (I am dating myself now) oval masks and snorkels with the diameter of a cocktail straw. This opened up a whole new world to me. We had no fins, we simply wore sneakers, because none of us wanted to touch bottom. The big fear was touching bottom, God knows what was under there besides abandon cars and broken beer bottles. If you stood up and got your sneaker stuck in the mud it smelled so bad you'd have to forfeit the thing. If not, mom certainly wouldn't let them back in the house, they were relegated to the back hall for eternity. Despite the obvious lack of aesthetics on these ponds, lakes and trails, we hiked there and jumped in often. After all, it was the only game in town.
Some of these bodies of water and their surrounding trails may be familiar to you locals. Names like Solomon Pond (where there is now a shopping mall), Bartlett Pond, Little Chauncy Pond, Chauncy Lake, Millham Reservoir, Lake Williams, Fort Meadow Reservoir, and best of all (to us anyway) the Sudbury Reservoir (known as The Met.), became our staples. These were our stomping grounds. We'd hike and dive all over them and it was a fantastic day when we'd actually see a "real" fish (which to us meant a bass, trout, or pickerel) or a real wild animal (which might just be a squirrel, but if we were lucky, a raccoon or hawk). Mike Nelson (Lloyd Bridges) and Jacques Cousteau were my heroes (may they rest in peace).
As adolescence approached, most suburban kids gave up on the Cousteau life and began to focus on football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and other more mainstream activities. I never really did get into organized team sports, preferring instead to be more of a loner, a rebel. I continued my meditation in the forests and waters I loved. I even began to see a few patterns. I'd see the catfish most often early and late in the day - especially in the heat of summer.
There was one spot we called the Causeway where shiners always gathered in the tunnel under the overpass that divided the lake in two. I could even count on seeing bass in the shallows around this old tree stump at the Met. If I floated absolutely still they'd eventually come out from under the log and I could watch them shoot to the surface and catch flies. I never caught any fish (who'd want to eat something from these ponds anyway), and I never earned any bragging rights for having seen anything truly unusual or having climbed the highest mountain. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was an inane sort of training. Hiking and diving strictly for the sake of hiking and diving.
I suppose a boy with my preoccupation might have been better off growing up on Florida's Keys, or California, or some Caribbean Island for the diving. Or perhaps somewhere in the Rockies or even some foreign country like Nepal for hiking and climbing! The problem with those places is that they would have deprived me of the inanity of it all. I might have made the mistake of focusing on something other than the hike or the dive. I might have fallen into believing that some big goal exists out there, something beyond the hike and the dive themselves.
A boy growing up on the Keys in the 50's and 60's could have easily associated world record spearfishing with diving. A boy growing up in California could have connected pounds of abalone harvested with diving. A boy growing up on a Caribbean island would have easily learned to associate tourist dollar with diving. Imagine how many 14,000 foot peaks I could have climbed growing up in the Rockies, or how many times I might have summitted Everest growing up in Nepal?
continued next post.......
Last edited:
CaptainJim
New member
...... continued from previous post .....
My home hiking trails and home waters deprived me of world records, poundage, and dollar signs. On those wretched ponds and flat trails you had to find meaning enough in the act alone. Otherwise you were better off on the football field, basketball court, baseball diamond, or hockey rink, where other people provided the standards and such standards were attainable.
I suspect that most people would conclude that inanity connected to an activity must render that activity unappealing (or as Webster puts it void of sense - silly) and lead one to more meaningful pursuits. Perhaps..., but only if one has a choice. I've never felt that hiking and diving was any more a choice than the color of my eyes. It has always been a given, handed to me by the Creator, predetermined by my genes, or some other mysterious source.
Aside from the fact that I didn't make the transition from the forest and ponds to the playing field during puberty, a certain psychological (not to mention physiological) partiality blossomed during that time of change. I began to contemplate the meaning of life. "Just what the hell are we here for anyway?" I, like all kids, worried about pimples, dates, my clothes, and all the other common concerns. Why should one person have pimples while someone else is free of them? Why does the girl I don't like, like me; while the one I do like, doesn't? Heavy questions for a 13 year old to ponder while staring through murky water or walking viewless trails.
At the age of 18, not many years removed from hiking to the "Met", I found myself living on the shores of the Quabbin Reservoir and attending the University of Massachusetts. In my consciousness, the focus had fully shifted away from hiking & diving to complex psychological, my major, and philosophical issues and, of course, females. Hiking and Diving is easier than either of those believe me !!!
During that time I began to get turned on to existentialism and phenomenology. Existentialism is a humanistic philosophy which asserts that each person is responsible for forming his "self", and must with his own free will, oppose his uncertain, purposeless, and seemingly hostile environment. Phenomenology is the study of observable facts in nature, or any odd or notable thing. Both of these courses of thinking seemed like the paths of least resistance to me since they fit well with the way I was feeling at the time anyway. I was actually not a very disciplined student, except in lectures. I could listen, take notes, and grasp abstract concepts as spoken words with no problem. The written word (reading books), was too much work.
I had an excellent and very intelligent professor during that time who liked to teach via "inane example". He was convinced that if you used real life examples for abstract philosophical principles students would simply memorize the examples without grasping the principle. My professor didn't originate the idea of inane example in philosophy. I'm sure you've all heard the one about whether or not the tree that falls in the woods makes a noise if there's no one there to hear it. My guess is that it does, but that's getting sucked into the example and missing the point.
Then there's the one that asks if you took a bright red apple into a closet and closed the door so you were in total darkness, is the apple still red? Again, that depends on your perspective. If you believe color is inherent in an object then the apple is still red, if you believe that color is only a reflection of a spectrum of light, then it isn't. We can argue either position but then we're missing the point again. Thought, perception, subjectivity, objectivity, proof, and the very basis of reality are the points.
By now I'm sure you're all wondering "How the hell does all this relate to hiking and diving anyway?" Well, my childhood hikes and dives were one long inane example. The marine life I encountered wasn't all that rare or beautiful. It didn't grow that large. The fish were a health risk if ingested, and the aesthetics stunk - literally! The trails were ususlly littered with beer bottles or discarded oil soaked oil filters (how they get out in the woods was beyond me). Perhaps all this diving and hiking in less than ideal places influenced my perspective more than a little bit. I've never been known to have a world view that could be called rosy in any sense. I can be a bit cynical and a little short of optimism as to the long term fate of the planet from an ecological point of view.
Sometimes inanity exists in almost everything, not just in diving dirty waters or hiking flat and dirty trails. It exists on the assembly line, in the courtroom, the Pentagon, on Wall street, and in the White House (especially in the White House). If you think about it everything is pointless from one angle, and totally meaningful from another. Money is everything to one guy and nothing to the next. Some people struggle for life, others jump off bridges.
I met a 85 year old lobsterman in Rockport recently. He said he has lived a long, full, and exciting life. "It's a weird world." he kept saying, and I wholeheartedly agreed with him. He mostly fishes during these final years of his life. He said he doesn't give a hoot about the meaning of life, he just knows what he likes. I envy him!
Perhaps hiking rotten trail to get to dive in smelly, murky waters did foul my perspective, coloring the universe with hues of pointlessness. Maybe I should try to draw from what my professor tried so hard to teach me years ago - the inane is only the example, not the point. Hiking fouled trails to go diving in murky waters looking for useless fish sounds pretty senseless, but that's only the inane example. The boy who did the diving was totally involved, totally enthralled. The boy who hiked for the sake of the hike and learned to dive for the sake of diving - Hardly inane !!!
Peace Out,
Capt. Jim
My home hiking trails and home waters deprived me of world records, poundage, and dollar signs. On those wretched ponds and flat trails you had to find meaning enough in the act alone. Otherwise you were better off on the football field, basketball court, baseball diamond, or hockey rink, where other people provided the standards and such standards were attainable.
I suspect that most people would conclude that inanity connected to an activity must render that activity unappealing (or as Webster puts it void of sense - silly) and lead one to more meaningful pursuits. Perhaps..., but only if one has a choice. I've never felt that hiking and diving was any more a choice than the color of my eyes. It has always been a given, handed to me by the Creator, predetermined by my genes, or some other mysterious source.
Aside from the fact that I didn't make the transition from the forest and ponds to the playing field during puberty, a certain psychological (not to mention physiological) partiality blossomed during that time of change. I began to contemplate the meaning of life. "Just what the hell are we here for anyway?" I, like all kids, worried about pimples, dates, my clothes, and all the other common concerns. Why should one person have pimples while someone else is free of them? Why does the girl I don't like, like me; while the one I do like, doesn't? Heavy questions for a 13 year old to ponder while staring through murky water or walking viewless trails.
At the age of 18, not many years removed from hiking to the "Met", I found myself living on the shores of the Quabbin Reservoir and attending the University of Massachusetts. In my consciousness, the focus had fully shifted away from hiking & diving to complex psychological, my major, and philosophical issues and, of course, females. Hiking and Diving is easier than either of those believe me !!!
During that time I began to get turned on to existentialism and phenomenology. Existentialism is a humanistic philosophy which asserts that each person is responsible for forming his "self", and must with his own free will, oppose his uncertain, purposeless, and seemingly hostile environment. Phenomenology is the study of observable facts in nature, or any odd or notable thing. Both of these courses of thinking seemed like the paths of least resistance to me since they fit well with the way I was feeling at the time anyway. I was actually not a very disciplined student, except in lectures. I could listen, take notes, and grasp abstract concepts as spoken words with no problem. The written word (reading books), was too much work.
I had an excellent and very intelligent professor during that time who liked to teach via "inane example". He was convinced that if you used real life examples for abstract philosophical principles students would simply memorize the examples without grasping the principle. My professor didn't originate the idea of inane example in philosophy. I'm sure you've all heard the one about whether or not the tree that falls in the woods makes a noise if there's no one there to hear it. My guess is that it does, but that's getting sucked into the example and missing the point.
Then there's the one that asks if you took a bright red apple into a closet and closed the door so you were in total darkness, is the apple still red? Again, that depends on your perspective. If you believe color is inherent in an object then the apple is still red, if you believe that color is only a reflection of a spectrum of light, then it isn't. We can argue either position but then we're missing the point again. Thought, perception, subjectivity, objectivity, proof, and the very basis of reality are the points.
By now I'm sure you're all wondering "How the hell does all this relate to hiking and diving anyway?" Well, my childhood hikes and dives were one long inane example. The marine life I encountered wasn't all that rare or beautiful. It didn't grow that large. The fish were a health risk if ingested, and the aesthetics stunk - literally! The trails were ususlly littered with beer bottles or discarded oil soaked oil filters (how they get out in the woods was beyond me). Perhaps all this diving and hiking in less than ideal places influenced my perspective more than a little bit. I've never been known to have a world view that could be called rosy in any sense. I can be a bit cynical and a little short of optimism as to the long term fate of the planet from an ecological point of view.
Sometimes inanity exists in almost everything, not just in diving dirty waters or hiking flat and dirty trails. It exists on the assembly line, in the courtroom, the Pentagon, on Wall street, and in the White House (especially in the White House). If you think about it everything is pointless from one angle, and totally meaningful from another. Money is everything to one guy and nothing to the next. Some people struggle for life, others jump off bridges.
I met a 85 year old lobsterman in Rockport recently. He said he has lived a long, full, and exciting life. "It's a weird world." he kept saying, and I wholeheartedly agreed with him. He mostly fishes during these final years of his life. He said he doesn't give a hoot about the meaning of life, he just knows what he likes. I envy him!
Perhaps hiking rotten trail to get to dive in smelly, murky waters did foul my perspective, coloring the universe with hues of pointlessness. Maybe I should try to draw from what my professor tried so hard to teach me years ago - the inane is only the example, not the point. Hiking fouled trails to go diving in murky waters looking for useless fish sounds pretty senseless, but that's only the inane example. The boy who did the diving was totally involved, totally enthralled. The boy who hiked for the sake of the hike and learned to dive for the sake of diving - Hardly inane !!!
Peace Out,
Capt. Jim
Last edited:
Chip
Well-known member
I'm addicted to that strange "It's still on but I feel 200 lbs lighter" feeling when I take my back pack off.
I like being able to carry everything I need over hill and dale.
Life sux and then you die, unless you get out and enjoy yourself.
When you've had physical problems, being able to do it is not taken for granted, and enjoyed that much more.
And then there's this. You can't see it, but I know how happy he is here;
I like being able to carry everything I need over hill and dale.
Life sux and then you die, unless you get out and enjoy yourself.
When you've had physical problems, being able to do it is not taken for granted, and enjoyed that much more.
And then there's this. You can't see it, but I know how happy he is here;
Hakuna Matata
New member
Why do I climb mountains? If you have to ask then I can't explain.
I think most everyone here understands but when you start explaining it to a non-hiker they look at you like you have 2 heads. I drive long hours to hike many miles that make my feet and body ache while I'm gasping for air and sweating like crazy that can make me feel a little nauseated and swating at bugs while I pee in the woods to sit an top of a rock.
I LOVE IT!!
I think most everyone here understands but when you start explaining it to a non-hiker they look at you like you have 2 heads. I drive long hours to hike many miles that make my feet and body ache while I'm gasping for air and sweating like crazy that can make me feel a little nauseated and swating at bugs while I pee in the woods to sit an top of a rock.
I LOVE IT!!
Pete_Hickey
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I think I have lots of reasons.
I've been hiking now for 40 years, and the reasons I have now are not necessarily the ones that I had when I started. I don't think I remember why I started.
Quiet and solitude. Most of my hiking is solo. I like to just get away. To be with myself. To think. To think about life, to think about myself, to solve math problems in my head (OK, so this one may be weird)
The danger. Yeah, I think there is a piece of this there. Everything is so 'safe' in our world these days, that I like to get away where there is some unknown risks. Nothing foolish, but being alone, 10 miles into the woods in the winter, with no cell phone. Then going off trail.
Chinook mentioned the 'under my own power' Yeah, that's also something for me. Especially when I do my yearly, cycle to the mountains, climb, cycle home. To know that I'm sitting on a mountain, 170 miles from home, and I got there completely by human power... Does a lot for me. I think this 'human powered' thing is something that has been in me since at least the age of 9, wanting to get to far-away places on my own. No, it was at age 7 that I started that.
And sometimes, I enjoy hiking with people. Sometimes it is fun to meet new (or old) people and go for a walk with them. Sometimes a group, or sometimes one-on-one. I don't think that this is really why I like to hike.
I've been hiking now for 40 years, and the reasons I have now are not necessarily the ones that I had when I started. I don't think I remember why I started.
Quiet and solitude. Most of my hiking is solo. I like to just get away. To be with myself. To think. To think about life, to think about myself, to solve math problems in my head (OK, so this one may be weird)
The danger. Yeah, I think there is a piece of this there. Everything is so 'safe' in our world these days, that I like to get away where there is some unknown risks. Nothing foolish, but being alone, 10 miles into the woods in the winter, with no cell phone. Then going off trail.
Chinook mentioned the 'under my own power' Yeah, that's also something for me. Especially when I do my yearly, cycle to the mountains, climb, cycle home. To know that I'm sitting on a mountain, 170 miles from home, and I got there completely by human power... Does a lot for me. I think this 'human powered' thing is something that has been in me since at least the age of 9, wanting to get to far-away places on my own. No, it was at age 7 that I started that.
And sometimes, I enjoy hiking with people. Sometimes it is fun to meet new (or old) people and go for a walk with them. Sometimes a group, or sometimes one-on-one. I don't think that this is really why I like to hike.
CatskillsYeti
New member
For me, being in the mountains, whether it's the Cats or the Sierras, whether it's solo or with friends/family, touches places in my being that just aren't touched by "everyday life." I feel most alive when I'm in the mountains.
Ridgerunner
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Sli
I think you are right...after reading the post again. Oh well. I guess I will keep my answer for another post.
I think you are right...after reading the post again. Oh well. I guess I will keep my answer for another post.
Artex
New member
It's fun.............
Rick
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I was heartbroken (and broke) at the abrupt end of a relationship some odd years ago and went to the woods on weekends to escape having to start to dating other women again and to avoid hanging out on weekends feeling sorry for myself or pestering our joint friends about what she was doing now.
It's been quite a few years now (Not as many as Pete, though.... Phew!!!!!) but it wasn't long before I realized that my core group of friends changed - No more power boats, bodybuilding, waterskiing, Downhill skiing and hanging out in bars with jocks, but hanging around with snowshoers,XC skiers, ADKers, and other backpackers, planning all week for a trip somewhere and saving all my Frequent Flyer Miles for other longer trips and just having a desire to get away somewhere on my own for short periods of time.
One day I woke up and realized my identity is hiking and backpacking. I don't know where I would be without it. Every aspect of my life is filtered around being outdoors and doing outdoorsy things. My coworkers cannot understand and they laughingly consider me the oddball because I'd rather backpack than stay in a hotel, hike rather than golf and kayak rather than tour a harbor in a party boat. But all of that is OK with me. My life is pretty doggone good as it is, and if something goes badly, I know I can always take a hike to figure it out!!!!!!!
It's been quite a few years now (Not as many as Pete, though.... Phew!!!!!) but it wasn't long before I realized that my core group of friends changed - No more power boats, bodybuilding, waterskiing, Downhill skiing and hanging out in bars with jocks, but hanging around with snowshoers,XC skiers, ADKers, and other backpackers, planning all week for a trip somewhere and saving all my Frequent Flyer Miles for other longer trips and just having a desire to get away somewhere on my own for short periods of time.
One day I woke up and realized my identity is hiking and backpacking. I don't know where I would be without it. Every aspect of my life is filtered around being outdoors and doing outdoorsy things. My coworkers cannot understand and they laughingly consider me the oddball because I'd rather backpack than stay in a hotel, hike rather than golf and kayak rather than tour a harbor in a party boat. But all of that is OK with me. My life is pretty doggone good as it is, and if something goes badly, I know I can always take a hike to figure it out!!!!!!!
Jaytrek57
New member
Wow...you all are deep. Thoughtful answers.
I like Artex's.
I like Artex's.
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