(Text and Photos © copyright by Rob)
Orange Fireball Sunset on the Pacific Crest Trail
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the image for the full-size image)
Orange Fireball Sunset on the Pacific Crest Trail
Click
the image for the full-size image)
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Click on any and all of the below images to go to a WV report from 2017.
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Hi, Rob here. "There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated.To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me." Edward Abbey This is my traditional year-end report. Rather than bore you with lots of text here - I refer you to lots of boring text and mundane photos and videos via links. Of course, not all hikes and adventures are summarized in the WV reports. Many photos from day hikes appeared on the False Bravado (https://www.facebook.com/robazpsych). Other trips, such as a traditional camping-day hiking excursion to the North Rim of The Canyon, a week day hiking in Canyonlands, etc. were not posted. Yet, these adventures were enjoyed all the same. I enjoyed two longer hikes this year, two trips totaling 279 miles on the AZT (Arizona Trail) and another spectacular section hike on the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail; 237 miles). These adventures helped push my total yearly mileage on foot over 1700. Yowee. Now, this is wandering without being lost, paraphrasing a poem by J.R.R. Tokien (Lord of The Rings). Humm, is this also a reference to recovery after the impeachment and imprisonment of the trumpmaniac and his wealthy elite ilk, cutting through the factless lies of repulsicans? Make it so. All that is gold does not glitter,
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
Poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring. It appears in Chapter Ten, "Strider", in Gandalf's letter to Frodo.  A data sketch from 2017 includes:
Hiking - total miles = 1771.9
(ERM* = 2607.1)
of which Backpacking = 648.2 miles (ERM* = 1031.0)
and Day Hiking = 1123.7 miles (ERM* = 1576.1)
Bicycling - total miles = 517.7 (all day tours in 2017) *ERM - Energy Required Miles. A mile is added for every 500' elevation gain or loss. It's a very serviceable method of estimating energy required miles.
Thanks to co-adventurers who enhanced the fun in the above trips, including Kathleen, Holly B., Annette A., Bob B, and Ben M.. Thanks one and all. The adorable Kathleen and I plan to continue to enjoy what is left of our public lands in 2018 :-)) We wish you the very best. Finally, please remember, wherever you go there you are. Let's all work for more peace and less repulsican. Take good care, Rob "What would it be like to live in this place? Could a man ever grow weary of such a home? Someday…I shall make the experiment, become an ancient baldheaded troglodyte with a dirty white beard tucked in my belt, be a shaman, a wizard, a witch doctor crazy with solitude, starving on locusts and lizards, feasting from time to time upon lost straggler boy scout. Madness: of course a man would go mad from the beauty and the loneliness, both equally mysterious. But perhaps it would be – who can say? – a kind of blessed insanity, like the bliss of a snake in the winter sun..." Ed Abbey The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life, now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon, there will be no wilderness. Soon there will be no place to go. Then the madness becomes universal. And the universe goes mad. Doc Sarvis in "The Monkey Wrench Gang" "The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark". John Muir "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." Stephen Colbert
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