Wayne's Adventure (In Motion)

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After 4,000 plus hiking miles and over a year of sleeping bag nights, long-distance hiking still holds certain mysteries for me. Emotional hypersensitivity is one. Long-distance hikers, I can only speak for men here, become extremely emotionally vulnerable. When talking about a loved one, they will turn away because they are tearing up. Maybe it’s a stress, being alone, missing home, raw exertion, starvation, but I have found it a common theme. On one of my Appalachian Trail thru-hikes, I happen to be in a hostel with five other thru- hikers watching TV in a common room. Some stupid Hallmark commercial came on and we all started blubbering  against our collective will. Ashamed of ourselves and each other.

I have felt this rawness the last several days. Me, who hates strong emotion with a Spock-like contempt. And so I had it all on lockdown… until right up until I lost it all in true Lieutenant Dan fashion and provoked a War with the Old Gods clinging to a precipice on top of Jack’s Peak.  ( story next entry ).