My journal was largly inspired by Paul Magnanti, and his 1998 thru-hike. I'm thrilled to see his journal is back online, because I have lost the archive I made. He recently finished a long hike on the PCT. If my journal is half as good as his, I'm happy.
This first book covers the first 18 days of my hike. Much later in the hike, I was afraid that this section was short and scatter-brained, and would make for less enjoyable reading than what I was--much later--writing. Having re-read this part, I almost have arrived at the opposite conclusion. The simple observations and brevity of style are much more pleasing to me than the stuff I wrote at the end of my hike. Of course, what does my opinion matter? Go formulate one for yourself.
Truthfully my favorite book, if only because of the obscure video-game reference, "Let's attack aggresively." Here I started elaborating with paragraphs on thoughts that in Book One would have taken a single sentence. I was very conscious that my journal was going to be read, and afraid that I needed to improve the quality of my writing.
By now I'm in decent shape, and I'm writing a lot. You can read about the my fourty mile day into Damascus, and some really odd rantings. I used to be embarassed by this stuff, but now I enjoy re-reading it.
The climax and denouement of my journey is detailed here. I'm enjoying the trail, and have stopped writing about strange hiking philosophies. The last few days are, for me at least, very poignant. There's so much that never made it into these journals.
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