{"id":706,"date":"2006-10-23T21:35:07","date_gmt":"2006-10-24T02:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=706"},"modified":"2006-10-23T21:35:07","modified_gmt":"2006-10-24T02:35:07","slug":"thru-hikers-back-in-the-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2006\/10\/23\/thru-hikers-back-in-the-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Thru-hikers back in the press"},"content":{"rendered":"

It must be late October because small-circulation newspapers are starting to report on thru-hikers returning from six months on the trail. In Racine, Wisconsin, a guy returning to his parents’ home walked the last six miles from the train station. From the article in the Racine Journal Times. <\/a><\/p>\n

\n“It helped me to be out there, to live with just your necessities and to do it in such a beautiful, natural setting,” he said. “The combination lends itself to insight and soul-searching. Even though we were there as a couple, and walked within 20 steps of each other, there is solitude. You talk the first hour of the day and you’re silent for the next 10 hours.
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\n“Everything in you, your anxieties and neuroses, your dreams and goals comes out in your mind.”
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\nOn the trail, surrounded by trees and grass, there was a sense of fitting into nature instead of pushing it aside, he said. There were achingly beautiful views, terrifying lightning storms and the fear of encountering something dangerous.
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\n“There were nights I stayed up all night thinking bears were outside the tent,” he said. “I was holding my breath, listening to every crackle. A beetle on your tent sounds like a dinosaur. Then you see a bear and it runs away like a rabbit. You go out and learn to do it yourself, despite your fears and other people’s fears.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One reward of living in a smaller town: the local press thinks it’s interesting if a local successfully hikes 2,000 miles in one stretch. All you New Yorkers had better face the facts: only way the Post is running your story is if you do something really newsworthy, such as:<\/p>\n