Too early
I woke up at 4. This is getting ridiculous. I've moved from dawn to pre-light.
I did some yoga and ate a couple of dried apricots. My body feels good. Yesterday, Marek told me he thought I could push it harder because I wasn't sweating and gasping for breath. But I think it's a matter of taste.
I like things like dance and yoga, where the whole point is that even when they're hard, make it look effortless. There's this entirely different mindset of physical fitness that's all about grunting and pain. All the grunting-and-pain workout types told me to just expect pain my second day. They seemed to think I should look forward to it. Probably in their opinion, I'm not getting the full measure of the experience.
Marek told me that the No. 1 trait of a backpacker is to accept pain and suffer silently. Later when I complained that I wasn't getting a chance to look around with the pace that Jim was setting, Marek told me that if you stopped to ponder a tree every 20 feet, you won't get anywhere.
It's light now; I'm surprised at how quiet it is. I don't hear any birds. I can hear the stream. It's a nice sound.
We're sharing a campsite with Greg and Bonnie from Lancaster. I can hear them laughing; they must have just woke up. Greg accidentally got into backpacking because he was searching for golden trout, California's state fish.
I always thought California's state fish was the garibaldi, those orange ones, but it turns out that's our marine state fish. We also have a stream state fish. We're very well represented in the fish mascot world.
Anyway, he got into backpacking searching for golden trout. The only way he could get to golden trout was to backpack because they didn't live anywhere near civilization. Then he hooked Bonnie.
They strike me as happy tree ponderers.
Comments
"What do you mean I can't smell the roses (I mean tree bark)?" I think Marek has mixed up the personalities of backpackers and labs, suffering silently, accepting pain? This is not a "fun junky" trek.
Posted by: Das Standridge | August 14, 2006 07:36 AM