He did hike indeed

I Hike
by Lawton Grinter

A collection of stories and a joy forever. Mr. Grinter pulled stories out of the memories of his many trails--Pacific Crest, Appalachian, Continental Divide, John Muir and others, and put them together in themed chapters. Who could resist chapter names like Ice Cream Headache, The Bears of Yosemite, Death by Bloodletting, Zee Vater? Reading them was almost as good as being there, and in the case of the mosquito episode, better.

It's not an instruction manual, but you do learn a bit--the difficulties of hiking in National Parks, some good remedies for chafing, what time of day to ford icy streams (morning). And you learn a lot about the wonders of trail magic, hot showers, and instant friendships.  And you learn that it's best to ignore food challenges--

I had just paid someone five dollars for an ungodly amount of ice cream that I was going to try and devour in less than one hour. If I was able to accomplish this feat without soiling my pants, I would be presented with a tiny wooden spoon for my efforts and become part of an obscure club that no one outside of Pine Grove Furnace State Park or the thru-hiking community would have ever heard of or care about. Sounds brilliant.

In case you're wondering, he drank the coolaid--I mean, ate the ice cream. He wasn't even deterred by the sight of a fellow hiker running from the table to the bathroom, returning after 15 minutes, then flopping on the cement floor and groaning while clutching his mid-section.

I'll leave it to you to find out if he finished the carton. Read the book if you need to know all the gory details; otherwise, just use your imagination.

He also describes trail angels and trail magic, like coolers of free beer, soda and candy bars left at crossings--although there was one sad episode where a bear got to the cooler first. His bears are never a wondrous wild animal to admire; they're pretty much always a pain in the butt.  I'm not criticizing him for that. If I'd been woken up four times in one night by people yelling and clanging pots to drive the bears out of the campground, I'd feel the same way.

The only thing that came off strange was that he almost never described the terrain through which he hiked. There were no Mountain Majesties, just uphills followed by downhills followed by uphills. There was no noisy birdsong at dawn, no awesome fields of flowers, no chipmunks--how can there not be chipmunks? Maybe he thought these things weren't worthy of inclusion or maybe he just didn't feel up to the writing of them? I know they had to be there--so where were they?