In Novemeber of 2005 we went down into the the wilderness for the first time. Equipped with work boots, my uncles old pack, my new three man tent, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad we trekked into the woods of the Daniel Boone National Forest. It was the first time I had ever been really outside the woods in my neighborhood and years since I had been in the woods in general. We planned to hike sections of the Sheltowee Trace, the great trail named for my favorite frontiersman, Daniel Boone. I believe 28 miles was the official count of our plan.
Driving down in two cars we had trouble finding the trailhead where we were going to ditch our second car. We dropped off our friends at the beginning, and were driving around the country roads of Eastern, Ky. looking for any sign of the trail. We found a little gas station and went inside. In the back there were some guys sitting round in their hunter orange gear shootin the shit. We asked the woman at the front where the Sheltowee Trace was. The guys in the back had a vague idea and pointed us back down the road, while telling us to make sure we had our orange on. None of us even thought about coming prepared with that.
I think our expedition consisted of Kelly, Ming, Sean, Max, Dave, Brian, and myself. It all started when we were sitting around in our studio early in the week when we hatched a plan to go camping down in the gorge. I don't particularly remember why I decided we needed to go, but along with Kelly rounded up a rather large group. Amongst the seven of us Kelly was the one that was most prepared. We all had bits of gear laying around though. After making the appropriate trips to Bass Pro Shop and soliciting my Dad for some early Christmas money we were stocked with most the the necessary stuff: sleeping bags, knives, water filters, cans of beans, MRE's, and lots of rope. Rope is something that I've found necessary on any kind of expedition. You never know what you're going to need rope for, but you always need about 100 more feet than you bring. Not to even mention the merits of a well woven rope.
Rhododendron were what most intrigued me in this environment. We hiked about six miles the first night having to wait for people to come up behind us. Some of us weren't as fit in those days. We set up our camp alongside the Red River across from the suspension foot bridge right next to the trail. We passed whiskey and other things around the raging fire. It turned out to be a cold night. Brian only had a blanket and was shivering the whole night, there were some locals down river shouting all night, and no one got much sleep.
The next day while sitting around eating our oatmeal in the cool autumn air, we found we still had 20 miles to do before we hit the car. It turned out to be the longest hike of my life. We walked along the road for a few miles suffering huge blisters, and at about nightfall we got back to our car and gorged ourselves with snacks from the Slade, Ky Shell station.
We were so inexperienced, and the hike wasn't even that hardcore. We were just a bunch of city folk walking around in the woods. This would be the adventure that started our mom's worrying about us as later we would take off on adventures for days through the woods, rivers, and cities of America.
Showing posts with label Daniel Boone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daniel Boone. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Where's the Wilderness?
Kelly just sent me an article from that site I was reppin yesterday, Out Your Backdoor. It talks about ultra-light vs traditional backpacking. They brought to mind a question that Kelly and Dan Clifton and I were talking about. More like Kelly and I were trying to convince Cold Cut of our point. The question is: When you're out backpacking in the wilderness, how self sufficient are you? Can you really get that wilderness experience? My answer to that question is reluctantly no. Ever since I really got into going out and hiking (i think every break from school I've had for the last 3 or 4 years I've gone on some sort of wilderness trip) I've had this idea that I was going into the wilderness and being self sufficient. Well thats not the case at all because I still have to bring all my food, stuff to cook with, and then gadgets to filter water.
It's too crowded to go out there like Daniel Boone slay 91 bears and build a fire and shelter for the night. Our public land is taxed as it is. There are so many people that use the land many states have restrictions on how you can use it, whether you can have a camp fire, where you can hike, etc. When you go out there you usually see other people. My first trip there were some locals down the river from us hooting and hollering all night long. I can't say I've been many places where I haven't seen a single person. So the thing is you just have to call a spade a spade.
My perspective about the wilderness has changed and also my perspective about travel has changed. Really what I'm interested in is traveling, and the more self sufficient I can make it the better e.g. more places I can camp, more forms of human power I can use, more people I can meet. There's not a place in the lower 48 that man has not touched, so there's no point in going in with a DB attitude.
Also I've found that I travel places everyday (work, school, etc) and have found that the best way to get there is the way that involves the most adventure (it would be sweet to paddle to work). I tried to explain to my mom how we plan trips (to colorado, to louisville, to the smokies) and I told her that we really look for the most variation in transportation, and the most adventurous way to do it. It turns out that those are usually a good way to save a lot of money (Last summer four of us went to Colorado for about 350 bucks each). So really you can travel the new American landscape with a DB, pioneering attitiude, you just can't do it like he did it.
For a while now I've wanted to take a trip down to Red River Gorge by bike and then hike around for a couple of days. One of the best trips I've been on has been canoeing down the Ohio River to Louisville. We got to see a lot of variation between country and city. I think that's what its all about for me the contrast of the country and the city, seeing people vs no people. O and industry, whenever I can see industry thats pretty tight like power plants and barges.
Being self sufficient is all about doing it yourself and also, for me, spending as little money as you can while doing it. Self sufficiency really gives me that wilderness feeling. With that I can be in the wilderness in the most urban area like when Kelly and I traveled from Staten Island to Brooklyn via bike and the Staten Island Ferry. Or when Witz and I traveled from Baltimore to New York to Boston via bike, bus, bike, bus, and bike (in that order).
This pretty much goes back to that dude's point in the article where he talks about ultra-light vs traditional. It just comes down to the experience you get out of it, and you can get a good experience from either. There's still frontier, it just doesn't look like it did in the 1770's.
It's too crowded to go out there like Daniel Boone slay 91 bears and build a fire and shelter for the night. Our public land is taxed as it is. There are so many people that use the land many states have restrictions on how you can use it, whether you can have a camp fire, where you can hike, etc. When you go out there you usually see other people. My first trip there were some locals down the river from us hooting and hollering all night long. I can't say I've been many places where I haven't seen a single person. So the thing is you just have to call a spade a spade.
My perspective about the wilderness has changed and also my perspective about travel has changed. Really what I'm interested in is traveling, and the more self sufficient I can make it the better e.g. more places I can camp, more forms of human power I can use, more people I can meet. There's not a place in the lower 48 that man has not touched, so there's no point in going in with a DB attitude.
Also I've found that I travel places everyday (work, school, etc) and have found that the best way to get there is the way that involves the most adventure (it would be sweet to paddle to work). I tried to explain to my mom how we plan trips (to colorado, to louisville, to the smokies) and I told her that we really look for the most variation in transportation, and the most adventurous way to do it. It turns out that those are usually a good way to save a lot of money (Last summer four of us went to Colorado for about 350 bucks each). So really you can travel the new American landscape with a DB, pioneering attitiude, you just can't do it like he did it.
For a while now I've wanted to take a trip down to Red River Gorge by bike and then hike around for a couple of days. One of the best trips I've been on has been canoeing down the Ohio River to Louisville. We got to see a lot of variation between country and city. I think that's what its all about for me the contrast of the country and the city, seeing people vs no people. O and industry, whenever I can see industry thats pretty tight like power plants and barges.
Being self sufficient is all about doing it yourself and also, for me, spending as little money as you can while doing it. Self sufficiency really gives me that wilderness feeling. With that I can be in the wilderness in the most urban area like when Kelly and I traveled from Staten Island to Brooklyn via bike and the Staten Island Ferry. Or when Witz and I traveled from Baltimore to New York to Boston via bike, bus, bike, bus, and bike (in that order).
This pretty much goes back to that dude's point in the article where he talks about ultra-light vs traditional. It just comes down to the experience you get out of it, and you can get a good experience from either. There's still frontier, it just doesn't look like it did in the 1770's.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
WWDBD? (What Would Daniel Boone Do?)
This question was posed back in December/January in 2006 while a group of us were backpacking down the in Daniel Boone National Forest. DB has long been my favorite frontiersman in American History. I didn't know much about him until recently when I started reading a biography by Robert Morgan. DB's life has a lot to say about pioneering the American landscape, and his legacy lives on and confronts us with some current issues. The conflict that existed mostly throughout his life was preserving his role as a frontier woodsman while populating the state of Kentucky.
From an early age Boone would go into the woods and hunt and trap. He would commonly be out in the wilderness for days and provided his family with food and furs from an early age. He made most of his money for his family through the fur trade. Theres a story in which one season he killed 91 bears in the Virginia wilderness. This was the attitude of many men on the western frontier, and the frontier would move further west as the hunting lands in the area were used up. Boone only reportedly made any kind of comment regarding how he treated the land and its resources. It was simply not thought as something that could be used up like it had in Europe.
Boone built one of the first roads into Kentucky by way of the Cumberland Gap. It was more of a trail that used Indian hunting trails and buffalo traces that could accommodate people on foot with pack horses. He brought people and settled in the "promised land" of Kentucky. Kentucky was a much contested area among settlers in different colonies, the colonies governments, and the Indians who believed it to be a sacred hunting ground. Indeed it was because it had some of the richest area of game for the time. As people filed into Kentucky they would claim huge tracts of land to start farming. After a few years the soil would be worthless from only planting corn on it and the field would be used for a school house or cemetery. Morgan also goes on to point out the fact that as settlers moved in they would clear as many trees as they could. The forests were dark and a good place for Indians to hide in ambush of the settlements.
The American frontier life was hard on the environment of this continent and we still seem to live by the values of those days. America at the time was viewed as endless and people bought land for pennies an acre and spread out across the western lands. They destroyed populations of game and the old growth forests in which they lived. Today our cities are growing out into the frontier that is the edge of the cities. Everyone wants their plot of land in places such as Anderson Meadows and Eagles Watch, and most Americans feel it their right. Our cities are being destroyed by this sprawling landscape just as Daniel Boone's forests were being destroyed. The American suburbs are huge. Houston is 100 miles in diameter! Transportation is a huge problem through our cities with declining infrastructure, smog, and traffic jams. The alternative forms that seem to work in Europe and other places don't sit well with the American attitude. Why ride the bus when you can be on the open road blazing the trail to work? America is all about personal mobility and a personal mode seems to be attached to Americans at the hip whether its a car, bike, truck, or skateboard. We don't have a collective mindset in transportation that Europe seems to have, and we have a unique problem with our sprawling cities and need for the feeling of freedom. Just like Daniel Boone we still live life with those frontier values. So what is our American solution to the transportation problem in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Like Daniel Boone we need to reject the solutions back East and blaze into the new frontier. We are a self sufficient people (at least we like to think that.)
From an early age Boone would go into the woods and hunt and trap. He would commonly be out in the wilderness for days and provided his family with food and furs from an early age. He made most of his money for his family through the fur trade. Theres a story in which one season he killed 91 bears in the Virginia wilderness. This was the attitude of many men on the western frontier, and the frontier would move further west as the hunting lands in the area were used up. Boone only reportedly made any kind of comment regarding how he treated the land and its resources. It was simply not thought as something that could be used up like it had in Europe.
Boone built one of the first roads into Kentucky by way of the Cumberland Gap. It was more of a trail that used Indian hunting trails and buffalo traces that could accommodate people on foot with pack horses. He brought people and settled in the "promised land" of Kentucky. Kentucky was a much contested area among settlers in different colonies, the colonies governments, and the Indians who believed it to be a sacred hunting ground. Indeed it was because it had some of the richest area of game for the time. As people filed into Kentucky they would claim huge tracts of land to start farming. After a few years the soil would be worthless from only planting corn on it and the field would be used for a school house or cemetery. Morgan also goes on to point out the fact that as settlers moved in they would clear as many trees as they could. The forests were dark and a good place for Indians to hide in ambush of the settlements.
The American frontier life was hard on the environment of this continent and we still seem to live by the values of those days. America at the time was viewed as endless and people bought land for pennies an acre and spread out across the western lands. They destroyed populations of game and the old growth forests in which they lived. Today our cities are growing out into the frontier that is the edge of the cities. Everyone wants their plot of land in places such as Anderson Meadows and Eagles Watch, and most Americans feel it their right. Our cities are being destroyed by this sprawling landscape just as Daniel Boone's forests were being destroyed. The American suburbs are huge. Houston is 100 miles in diameter! Transportation is a huge problem through our cities with declining infrastructure, smog, and traffic jams. The alternative forms that seem to work in Europe and other places don't sit well with the American attitude. Why ride the bus when you can be on the open road blazing the trail to work? America is all about personal mobility and a personal mode seems to be attached to Americans at the hip whether its a car, bike, truck, or skateboard. We don't have a collective mindset in transportation that Europe seems to have, and we have a unique problem with our sprawling cities and need for the feeling of freedom. Just like Daniel Boone we still live life with those frontier values. So what is our American solution to the transportation problem in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Like Daniel Boone we need to reject the solutions back East and blaze into the new frontier. We are a self sufficient people (at least we like to think that.)
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