More on Diet

So hikers eat the same foods over and over again. Next time you're at the grocery store, try shopping like a hiker: Nothing perishable, nothing bulky, nothing heavy, nothing that requires a refrigerator, freezer, microwave, oven, or toaster. If it's more than one serving its packaging has to be resealable. And nothing that can get "smushed". What you're left with is the diet of a diabetic: cookie, chips, peanut butter. Which is reinforced by the fact that some of your "grocery stores" are just gas stations with gas station food anyway. Once you've bought it all, carry every scrap with you for the next week, including all the trash, even from the first meal (unless you smartly eat a bunch of food in the parking lot). As I've mentioned you burn about 3xit the average daily calorie intake, so hikers often have the appetite of a stoned anorexic.

Men typically lose about 20-30 lbs on a thru hike. My favorite part of preparing for this trip was the couple weeks leading up to my hike where I...sat around and gained 20 lbs. The day I started was the most I've ever weighed in my life (195 lbs). At one point in this hike I had lost as many as 35 lbs (down to 160) but I've gained about 10 lbs in the last month or so and overall I'm about 5 lbs less than what I weighed 6 months ago (and in the middle of the range I've been in for a few years, between 165-180.

Men hold excess weight around their belly (apple-shaped), and that fat gets burned away in a hike. But your abs aren't really used hiking, so the only 6-packs you'll find on hikers are preexisting ones. Women, on the other hand, do not lose any weight. They gain a little if anything. This is because women tend to hold excess weight in their butt, hips, and thighs (pear-shaped). And those muscles ARE used in hiking, so fat is not just cut away but turned into muscle, which is of course denser. This is all just my theory, and there are exceptions. One of my fellow (male) hikers has lost over 50 lbs, while another (male) has miraculously gained about 15 lbs. But my appetite has somewhat settled down (Half Gallon Challenge Notwithstanding) since the beginning, as this caloric intake and consumption rate has long become my body's norm.

Anyone who thinks a thru hiker eats a very organic diet is mistaken. We are stuck with far too many processed foods, out of geographic isolation and caloric need.

Some Typical Meals:

1) Generic Captain Crunch and Nutella in a Tortilla.

2) Smushed Bananas and Peanut Butter, on Smushed Bread.

3) Chia Seeds, Lentils, and Peanut Butter.

4) Half a Gallon of Ice Cream.

I recommend absolutely none of these meals.

Russian Dolls

So as I mentioned in the last post, I'm well over halfway. I'm even finally out of Virginia, after spending Lent there (about 40 days). If you look at a map of the AT and I've done this crazy distance with only this tiny bit yet to go.

Have you ever gone and seen a 3-hour movie in the theater? It's great, but towards the end you get a little squirmy and shift in your chair and maybe sneak a look at your watch. You're not remotely considering leaving the theater before the movie ends, but you want them to wrap things up already. Dragon's slain, princess's rescued. Let's happily ever after and get those credits rolling already.
Right, that feeling lasts, what, 10 minutes? I'll even say 30. While I'm pretty much just about all done I still have a month to go and 500 miles to walk. Do you know what it's like to hike 500 miles? I do, and it's not always fun. Especially when I wake up with everything soaked, hike about 16 miles on the day, 14-15 of which were uphill, and then give up on getting to the shelter that would have been 18 miles for the day, pitch my tent in the rain (never fun) and do it all again tomorrow. The problem is we know what these remaining weeks are going to be like. We know exactly because we've been hiking for 4 1/2 months. And if you do that you have a pretty good idea of what it's like to hike 5 1/2 months. And you don't want to do it. The novelty has worn off, and you all too familiar with the lifestyle. Worst of all the only reason you're still going forward is to be able to tell people later that you hiked the whole thing, rather than 90% and then you stopped because you got the gist of it. It is incredibly difficult to motivate yourself to do something when your only motivation is to talk about it later. Because that's a BS reason to do something. Earlier today a fellow hiker broke down literally crying (I won't name names). I had to give him a gooud long reassuring hug as he groaned/sobbed "I hate hiking I'm so sick of it" etc. We passed a very bleak gravestone today. We've passed a few cemeteries along the AT but this marker was fittingly alone: Mr Grindstaff (I forgot his first name), 1840-1890(ish). And on his tombstone, the man's life was summed up thusly: "he lived alone, he suffered alone, he died alone." Seriously. Incredibly bleak and macabre stuff. And the tears were before that.

All this said I still have some fun times and enjoyed going through a cow paster today. But, mentally, these are the hardest miles of the whole trip.

Rank, Order, & the Train

So, 4 months into it, I know who the other Sobos are. We all move along, and the people around me are like people in the same compartment of a train as we hike South. Want to see what the people ahead of you are up to? Just push hard and hike a long day, and you'll be in the next "train compartment". Sick of those people? Take a slow day or a day off, and you'll see all the people in that other car again. Whenever I take a day, I'll get back to the trail and discover those great guys I haven't seen since Connecticut. I didn't think I'd see them again, but they knew they'd been gaining on me for weeks. Likewise I know everything about the people in front of me, and nothing about those behind me. This is part of why some people want to get to the front of the train, as if that somehow makes them the conductor of the train. These competitive conquerors think that finishing the trail first makes them the best hiker. There is no ranking out here, and the guy who sprinted through everything missed some of the finer things, and end up with the shortest vacation. A 10 mile day out here is better than any day at work. A 25 mile day is not. I've done big-mile days, but they suck. They're the days you hike all day long, and do nothing else. I like getting sidetracked by towns or conversations or natural wonders. And at this point, a lot of people are trying to push to finish by a certain date. Not me. I'm going to still enjoy every day and (gasp!) finish a week or two after all these people who are sick of the trail and are just wanting to finish.

We're at that funky spot where we're well over over halfway, but still have a long way to go. To quote Julia, the person who inspired me to do this thru hike: "I was past the 1/2 way point, and my psyche shifted. That happens to me in almost all things - whether I'm reading a novel, writing a paper, in a tough work-out, or even on a vacation. The second half is less easy to hold onto one's in-the-moment-zen thing." All the other hikers I've been talking to are all talking about what they have to average to finish by certain dates, and what they're going to do after being done with the trail. But they still have a month to go (and I have roughly 6 weeks), and that's a lot of time to just look forward to the next thing, since this one is almost done. But I'm rejecting that, and even though it means I'll be closer to the Caboose, I'll be having a better time, and stop and smell the flowers. That's part of the point of a thru hike. If I was in that big of a hurry, I'd just drive to Georgia.