The Backpacker's Manual [antikvár]

PrefaceOnce, during a radio interview, I was gently accused of being a little odd. We were discussing a book I had written about backpacking, and my interviewer could not, or did not want to, see further than the potential discomforts of backpacking.He wanted to discuss the concept of carrying a heavy rucksack up and down mountains; I wanted to discuss the feel of wind on an upturned face. He grimaced at the thought of living off freeze-dried foods; I described the simple pleasure of drinking ice-cold mountain water when thirsty. He could not understand that anyone could get pleasure from sleeping out "in the middle of nowhere". I could not understand how someone could sleep in a hotel room next to a busy highway, with glaring lights, and the solid thud-thud of somé nearby discotheque slowly driving them crazy, when they could lie and listen to the all-embracing sound of intense silence under a starlit sky.Eventually, the tack was changed and I was accused of trying to escape from reality. If reality was income tax forms, how to pay the mortgage, the eternal city-centre search for parking places, and the almost continual tap-tapping at a typewriter to earn a daily crust, then yes sir, as often as my accountant would allow me, I tried to escape from it!With just a faint glimmer of respect in the eyes of my interviewer, I was finally branded "a tough outdoorsman". Much as my ego would ha ve liked to agree to this label, I had to unfold the truth. Maríné commandos are tough; the hunters and trackers of old were tough; mountaineers, strug-gling with the verticai snow and ice of far-flung mountains are tough; but I couldn't describe myself as tough. The technology of latter twentieth-century manufacturing skills have, in a sense, deprived me of that accolade. Lightweight orthoticboots, waterproof and yet breathable materials, micro-weight tents, and self-inflating air mattresses allow me to indulge in the wonders of the wild and remote places without undue bodily suffering. Tough, then, is not the word I would use. Skilled, perhaps, experienced, even learned, but hardly tough.I left that young man with his darkened room, his flashing red lights and vast control panel, and as I drove away I listened on my radio to his bantering between pop records. That was his world, unreal enough to me, and a little odd. I drove through the crowded neon-lit streets of his city, cursed at the staccato stop-go of traffic lights, and longed for the green places, far removed from the twilight world of the disc jockey, his world, as real, or as unreal, as my own.Naturally, not everyone understands. Civilized man has come a long way in the last couple of hundred years, and what was once normál practice, is nowadays generally regarded as a little freaky. The desire to walk on one's own two legs, for recreation, is hard for the person whose sole walking experience is from his front door to his car to understand. How does one relate the well-oiled flow of mind and muscle to the average non-walker whose understanding of movement has been bred on unforgiving concrete? To many, there is little value in a holiday without discos, bars, shows, constant sunshine, and days spent languishing on a beach with a couple of hundred others. Quietness, isolation, and self-sufficiency are alien thoughts to many. The very last thing I want to do is knock discos, bars, constant sunshine, and days spent on the beach. But dare I plánt a simple thought? Can it be true that the wonders of modern manthe videós, telephones, and even the space racecan limit the perspectives we have of our own natural world? Perhaps modern man has an underlying