You are hoping that I will talk about why people thru hike. Sorry. This page is about why I got involved in watching and curating this material! The reasons people thur hike is a very complicated topic. A number of posters talk about their own reasons but many do not.
In the spring of 2022, I started using YouTube to follow a couple posters who were attempting to hike the Appellation Trail in the summer of 2022. I have no memory of what got me started but I really enjoyed it. I picked a few hikers to follow and mainly used an Xfinity TV app to access YouTube on our NH television and an Amazon Firestick to do the same at our summer home in Maine.
I did occasionally use my PC. The PC search is much better and of course one can copy and paste URLs. I mainly used the PC not to watch but to research and find people. On the TVs, I would have a saved “search” like “AT through hike 2022” and would just choose that.
A couple of the people I really liked, young women, dropped out and did not complete the hike. The series of posts would end with a tearful goodbye from home about why they had to leave the trail. For the hikers who did reach Mt. Katadhin, the reaction was even more emotional!! Also, one after another is really depressed after Mt Katahdin. Post hike depression is a real thing. As one blogger says, “back in the Muggle world”. Not a great place to be after 190 days of just sleep eat walk.
Soooo, how am I going to share this stuff? My idea is to curate a collection. Will I cut material out of videos? Will I give you a guide to minutes like go to 9:30 on this url post? I guess my goal is two fold. First, I want to share the actual experience that I have had, let you meet the actual people. Secondly, I want to suggest to you tools you can use to follow the class of 2023.
WHY? Hmmmm, not an easy question to answer. I enjoy the challenge of sharing information. I was a teacher for 12+ years and even during my 20 years in high tech, I would like to claim that my main style of management, either of people or programs, was based on the same, sharing information skills. So, now, I am long retired. No students or employees or children. My loving wife long ago abdicated from the role of willing learner! I share my bike travel stories on this site. I share historical, mainly family, research. In some ways, I don’t need to have my ego stroked. I love working behind the scenes. I don’t need to take a bow at the end of the play, I know that I enjoyed doing the job and that is much more valuable to me than applause. But I do tend to write about myself! If the topic is not literally me, then I am certainly including a lot of sentences, like THESE, about me interacting with the material. Back to the teaching. I can’t help you much with how to be a great father, husband, how to beat cancer, etc. I can help you with retirement! Before you retire, LONG before, get hobbies, interests, things you can do in retirement. Things you really enjoy. Things you are anxious to jump out of bed in the morning to tackle. Me, I love this kind of sharing. What can I say?
I do have a little guilt or second thoughts about time management. I’ll spend days when I do not write at all! I have a man cave FULL of family history that I am going to DUMP on my poor daughters. Instead of writing about the AT, I should be organizing, OCRing and writing around that material. My time is running out. I’m 76. But today I am writing about the AT. I do love my life!