Читать книгу Becoming a Counselor - Samuel Gladding T., Samuel T. Gladding - Страница 40

At the end of two summers in my late teens, I hiked the Appalachian Trail with three of my good friends. Our hikes were in Georgia and North Carolina. We took enough food for a week and enjoyed the trail and one another’s company. The type of backpacks available now were not sold then. We had to jerry-rig knapsacks to meet our needs. I remember my mother giving me sponges to put underneath the straps of my knapsack so they would not dig into my shoulders.

Our group, both times, was harmonious. We each took a turn leading. The rotation was smooth. We spent the nights in lean-tos built by the Civilian Conservation Corps back in the 1930s. Hiking the trail was not nearly as popular in the 1960s as it is today. Every night we built a fire and cooked over it. The meals were edible but forgettable. We brought a variety of foods, including dried fruit and Gouda cheese for snacks. Nothing we brought needed refrigeration.

I kept a diary on these trips and invented “Mount Up-Some-More” for a mountain that had another name but seemed to go up in a steep incline forever. Highlights of the trips included field mice making a nest of toilet paper in my pants, playing football using sand in a baggie for a ball, and enjoying nature and one another’s company. When we finished the last hike, we had only a week or two before college. My peers on the trail taught me a lot about groups, traveling on foot, and life. From the wild I became more civilized.