Note: I'm not looking to spark controversy, or get into online arguments, over the contents of this post. I prefer to let more informed, more intelligent people weigh in on topics like these, but it would be inauthentic for me to act like the events happening back in the "real world" didn't weigh heavy on my mind during this journey on days like today. So without further ado...
Friday, June 13 8:12 pm 19.0 mi
AT 574.6 Stealth Site → AT 593.6 Unofficial Campsite
Weather: Sunny and beautiful! The water sources could use a little replenishing but I’d never complain about the weather from these past few days!
Trail Conditions: Silky smooth trail, ran out of water overnight, first two water sources of the day bone dry. The road walk at the end of the day was the hardest on my body of any point today.
My Condition: Ankle still painful at start of day and a couple times during the day, but for the most part it felt good/more or less normal. Certainly the best its felt since this all started. It REALLY didn’t like the road walk, but otherwise really enjoyed the smooth, jostle/bang/bump-on-rock/root-free day
No bears today, but 2 snakes within the first mile. It feels really good to close back in on 20 mile days – fingers crossed that the ankle keeps healing and recovering in spite of the stresses I’m putting on it daily. Relatively uneventful day. I am going to spend some time tonight talking real world. Every hostel I’ve stayed at so far, I’ve been somewhat surprised to hear politics being discussed. I, for one, am very much enjoying the break from the daily nightmare. Generally, I’ve always tried to keep my head down and avoid getting political. Up until the past 10 years, I naively believed that politics didn’t matter all that much – no matter who got elected, nothing really changed because nothing changed for me PERSONALLY from president to president. Current events are blowing the lid off that argument. Coronavirus is again spiking as protests/riots in response to the killing of yet another black man by police, this time kneeling on the back of his neck as he suffocated. In response to the protests against police brutality, police used brutality, pepper spraying, tear gassing, and rubber pelleting many peaceful protests. Many of those formerly peaceful protests escalated, leading to police cars being set aflame and news cameramen being attacked in Pittsburgh. From what I understand, most of the protesters were of the peaceful variety, and aimed at bringing about justice for the victim and family of this most recent killing, and for all those that have come before. Friends of mine all over the country have been marching for justice, and I see it as one of the rare exceptions to one of today’s biggest issues – lack of empathy. I’ve felt for awhile that things were reaching a boiling point, and I hope that this brings about positive change and that many families and communities can live in a safer world, with less fear. Just like with COVID, now we’re hearing corporate crafted responses from every single company and organization that has our email in response to racial injustice. Even the Trek and ATC have weighed in, pledging to do more to hire and highlight voices representing a more diverse population. The issue is much more complex than that, however. The NFL implemented the “Rooney Rule” to promote diversity in hiring, but thinking about the hires that have been made in recent years I think a very strong argument could be made that the rule isn’t working. In terms of thru hiking, a thru hike is ultimately a very privileged endeavor – to be able to get away for 6 months, and have the financial security to not be working for that period of time, is certainly not a feasible reality for everyone. That’s not at all discounting the hard work and sacrifice it takes to pull a thru hike off- it demands a staggering amount of both. I don’t know that scholarships, or sponsorships, or even outfitting is the answer, however, to making the outdoors more accessible – in my previous job, we provided $750-$1500 camp experiences to low income families for $50 per family, which included full gear outfitting through a partnership with a large corporate sporting goods sponsor, as well as transportation to and from camp from the city, and we STILL struggled to meet our scholarship goal numbers. In many of the conversations I had with families from the program, camping sadly just isn’t something that they grew up doing. These families often didn’t travel outside a 20 mile radius, and there’s nowhere to camp within that bubble. What even is the appeal of camping? Sleeping outside with the bugs and in the elements? If you haven’t done it, you may not understand it. And then the trust factor – I could talk and talk and talk about staff training, about safety procedures for weather, about aquatic safety, about supervision practices, about full time staff and medical staff on site at all times, about the benefits of camp and the character/values it helps to cultivate, about camper choice in activities...but ultimately I’m just some crazy guy with a beard who hasn’t seen the world from their perspective. Our best success with scholarships came once the ball was already rolling, when we already had community advocates who could relate their own camp experience through the life lens of someone from a similar background. Along these same lines but shifting from a socioeconomic point of view to that of racial diversity on the trail, that’s where I think the Trek and the ATC could find success – harnessing the voices of hikers like Akuna, or the Blackalachian, or Derek Lugo, or Dragonsky, to relate the experience through a culturally relevant lens and bring an alien experience into the realm of possibility. As far as building trust goes, there’s still ample work to do though. You talk Appalachian mountains with a lot of people and immediately they think Deliverance. You look at the states the AT passes through, and historically there’s not a stellar picture as far as racial equality and acceptance goes. Ultimately, I think the Trek and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy both have a lot of work to do to rebuild trust, too. I’ve felt plenty welcome out here on the trail, but neither organization has made me feel very welcome or wanted as a 2020 thru hiker. It’s one thing to preach diversity and inclusion, but to do it while simultaneously excluding the class of 2020 from the history books is rather disingenuous. You always hear about the amazing hiking community, and in person it’s been sparser than normal but still great, but online has been anything but, full of bitter hate, strong opinions, and vitriol. Unfortunately, the public stances these organizations have taken has fed into the growing online divide. I think these issues need to be addressed before either organization can truly grow and become more inclusive. Anyways, I just wanted to put in my two cents. Black lives matter, and I hope that one day we’ll live in a world that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks would be proud to look upon. I’m glad that the tides of change are growing in strength and I hope they enact a positive impact on a world that desperately needs it.
Post Trail Analysis
On trail, you have a unique vantage point from which to relate back to what’s going on in the real world. While you don’t have cell phone coverage all the time in the mountains, if you’re looking to stay connected you can almost always find a place to get tuned back in every day. You do miss being immersed in the events of the day, however. The water cooler talk at work, reading the paper or watching the news, hearing about today’s events on the radio as you commute to or from work, texting with your friends. Whether you intentionally make the effort or not, you’re generally in the loop during every day life. On trail, you don’t get that unless you really do make the effort to seek out the news. It would be easy to bury your head in the sand and ignore everything that’s going on in the real world during a thru hike, and in general I found the trail experience to be the perfect soothing balm to the overwhelming, daily shock inducing grind of the 24 hour a day news cycle. Some nights, though, I did tune in – it was hard not to, knowing the state of the world going in to the trail. I remember struggling to find sleep this particular night, hurting for George Floyd and his family, hurting for the black community who in so many instances for so long have been shown through the actions and inactions of those who ought to be doing better that their lives are not important and meaningful. I’m glad that people were upset, and though it shook me to my core watching a neighborly city like Pittsburgh tipping over police vehicles and setting squad cars aflame, something needed to spark real, authentic change. I worried about the overlapping issues of increasing civil unrest and the threat of a global pandemic, and what might come of the two overlapping. As I continued my journey, I made sure to snap a picture of every single Black Lives Matter sign I came across. Even in these divided times, it gave me hope to see just how much love there was out there as well, from the backwoods of Virginia to the mountains of New Hampshire. There’s still such a long way to go, but for awhile it really seemed like meaningful momentum was being gained, and now I just hope that that momentum is also maintained. At this point during the pandemic, with the world in a state of tentative not quite locking down but also not quite reopening, almost a point of statis, people had no choice BUT to look at the ugly truth we were confronted with. Interestingly enough, Real Sports just did an episode where they talked about the Rooney Rule in the NFL, meant to bring diversity to hiring practices and decisions regarding coaching and ownership. I had guessed correctly, as it has had an almost completely negligible impact on bringing additional diversity into the league, yet there is an abundance of talented black candidates that just don’t receive the notoriety and attention they ought to. I don’t know that adding rules to hiring practices are the answer. I don’t know that platforms purposefully showcasing black voices necessarily come off as genuine or authentic. I don’t have the answers and I'm only seeing it through my own lens of experiences, but I know we have a lot of work in front of us to make the world more equitable, and that work is worth doing. Those potential employees, and those stories, DESERVE to be heard and given the same level of credence as anybody else. The color of your skin should not determine opportunity, and it sure as heck shouldn’t be a cause for you to live your life in a perpetual state of fear, yet those things are happening. Sadly, the problem does indeed appear to be systemic, and we need to collectively come together to dismantle something broken and fix it. Black lives matter!
The road walking was down a large, looping gravel path, which led to a major road. You had a view down onto the highways winding their way through the foothills. After reaching a parking lot with a trash can provided and maintained by a 78 year old lady and 79 year old gentleman requesting that you DON’T leave deer carcasses in the barrel, there was a steep climb up to a solo stealth site where I sat and pondered on the real life political events of the day.
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