Tag Archives: Long-Distance Hiking

Walk In The Woods pre-screening in Midtown Atlanta

Walk In The Woods pre-screening in Midtown Atlanta last night with Ken “The Weasel” Knight.

Walk In The Woods Pre-Screening

No VIP passes for us but thankfully we did get seats. And Amy Knight earned them after her work on the Konnarock crew doing Appalachian Trail work for a week this (and last) summer in Virginia. Those are the real heroes of the A.T. – the volunteers that build and manage it.

Walk In The Woods Movie Theater

The movie is in theaters Labor Day weekend – based on the book by Bill Bryson. Ken/I are in the first 20 minutes, and the lesson here is that you can spend 20 hours on set as an extra and get 4.6 seconds of screen time – if you are lucky.

Walk In The Woods JPG-crop

So watch for us in the “deep background” and don’t quit your day job!

#7 Listen to music

Just read an article at Appalachian Trials on “9 Things A Former Thru-Hiker Wishes She Had Known Before Hitting The Trail“.  And what was on the list?   My personal favorite….

#7 Listen to music:

” It will help keep you positive in the present as you hike and afterwards the music you listened to will become a time machine back to exact moments on the trail. You may not know the place or even the state but the song will bring back a perfectly rendered memory. “

Many go in to the woods to leave technology behind.  I work in technology, and I promise you that when I go in to the woods there’s nothing more that I want to do than leave technology behind.

But when you are hiking ~ 2200 miles to Maine – it’s a long, long way to walk.  Yes, music helps – believe me.  Actually, everything helps – hiking in silence, listening to the birds, talking with a day-hiker or fellow thru-hiker, and  ….. even listening to music for an hour or two.  (It’s an 8-12 hour thru-hiking day, you get that.)

So this week, I’ve been listening to cassette tapes that a group of friends made me for my hike in 1994.  I summited Mt. Katahdin 20 years ago this October, and the music does bring me back – as the article states.  There truly is a soundtrack to a thru-hike (and your life.)  And yes … all the memories do come flooding back.

Even if it originated on cassettee tapes that were played on a yellow waterprooof Walkman.   On a thru-hike … the music does matter, maybe not today – but tomorrow.