Into the Wild
October 7-8, 2000
Participants: Damian Cunniff, Jon Reisman, Leigh Neithardt, Heather McConnell, Brett Mole, Leslie Van Gelder, Jasper the Wonderdog
With the Appalachian Trail ahead of us at the Delaware Water Gap we planned to hike up to Sunfish Pond and spend some time exploring the glacial pond, enjoying a little solitude and maybe even engaging in a bit of skinnydipping. Instead, we learned a valuable lesson that if one wants to really explore the wild, it is best not to bring a map. So, instead of Sunfish Pond, we found the dry top of Mt. Tammany on what proved to be the coldest night of the year.
r. We confronted some of the fears that the wild engenders - fear of bears who have a taste for rice krispie treats, fear of freezing to death, fear of being driven to madness by the incessant barking of a thirsty and cold (but so cute in his backpack!) Labrador retriever, and the fear that given the choice of eating the communal potato or pasta boiled with pineapple, that you'd choose either. There was all of the beauty of the wild, too, fields of autumn blueberries, sunrises melting ice from the leaves, and the sharing of poems and stories around a well earned fire on the mountain. Long live the Appalachian Thunder... Maybe next time we'll find sunfish pond.
 |
DC
|
|||
| JR |
BM
|
|||
Suggested Reading
Paul Gruchow, Boundary Waters
Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild
Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
John Krakauer, Into the Wild
Terry Tempest Williams, Leap
Web Resources