Leave a blank book in the middle of the woods for a year, and what happens? It becomes a Rorschach test for hikers, except the hikers leave the inkblots. The books are part community message board, part graffiti canvas, part group diary, and part rainy day diversion. Most entries record little more than names, dates, and destinations, with occasional musings on the beauty of the surroundings, but here are a few other uses that hikers thought up:
- Thank-you card: “Dear lean-to adopters and trail maintenance crews...”
- Autograph collection: What would your trail name be? I followed the exploits of the likes of the Rondackers and Bachelor Bob. A string of letters and numbers followed some names: NTP 2004, LT 99, AT, GA-->ME 06-07. This code is the hikers’ version of adding Ph.D. or F.R.S. to their names, like medals of honor, or brief resumes of the trails they’ve walked. Bachelor Bob followed his name with alphabet soup, which lent weight to his frustrated criticisms of signage and trail maintenance issues. Since I was walking in his footsteps for a few days, I could only commiserate in my own entries.
- Travel guide: Most NTP hikers walk northward, so the rare southbound hiker reaps a harvest of cautions and recommendations about the trail ahead.
- Opinion forum: Hot topics include the necessity of fire bans and the tension between historical preservation, public accessibility, and the wilderness aesthetic. Also popular are impassioned essays against the inevitable lean-to litter.
- Breadcrumbs: A rescue party can play connect-the-dots until they find where a missing person’s entries leave off.
- Directory: Entries noted the best firewood-gathering grounds and the most productive fishing spots.
- Confessional: A gay couple confessed to accidentally “showing off” while skinny dipping to a Boy Scout Troop. Unsurprisingly, such incidents happen on an apparently regular basis.
- Religious testament: Spiritual moments strike people often in the wilderness, but I was confused by the praises to God’s aesthetic sense at Duck Hole, a reservoir.
- Sketchbook: A few disturbingly practiced adolescent drawings wait patiently among entries, hoping to shock unsuspecting browsers. Elsewhere, innocent illustrations retell hikers’ adventures in graphic-novel style.
- Backwoods girl talk: “When Aunt Flo comes calling a few days early, sphagnum moss offers a comfy and absorbent solution.”
- Weather monitoring station: Dripping wet hikers need somewhere to vent their weather-related frustrations.
- Wilderness survival guide: “Remember the computer game Oregon Trail: meager rations and a grueling pace means everyone dies!”
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