Fastpacking…trail angels…trail magic…retro running…sightjogging…parkour…all new concepts for me, explored thanks to Word Spy.
A friend asked about “fastpacking” and I knew about it vaguely. I googled it to learn more. Sure enough, it relates to ultralight backpacking. But it’s when folks take advantage of their 12-pound UL pack loads to basically run down trails for lots more miles per day than usual. I guess it’s possible to go 30-50 miles a day this way. They’re making shoes for this kind of thing nowadays even.
Man, that backpacking is cutting edge stuff.
But of course: the extremes are everywhere, aren’t they. They let us experience more…and seemingly leave us flattened, close to passing out. We wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m trying to get rid of this urge in myself but have a hard time. For instance, I think it would be neat to do the annual Hugh Heward 50-mile canoe outing coming up near here in a few weeks. Why just go canoeing when you can go “as far as possible”? Heck, some of the folks who do the HH have figured out that if you just keing, and skip the sleep,can get in 100 miles in a day. Go for it! It’s the “24 Hours of…” Whatever syndrome. Why go for a bike ride when you can ride til you fall down?
Anyway, you don’t have to go overboard to do fastpacking. It’s just a way to lightly cover some terrain. Take it as far as you like. I do generally like going swiftly and with little burden when I’m outside doing stuff.
But my googling brought me to an entry in Word Spy which related fastpacking to several other new terms, particularly: trail angel and trail magic.
A trail angel is someone who performs trail magic. If you’re a hiker who’s been on a long hot trail all day and you go down to a stream to get some water and you see a can of beer under a stone in the cold, clear water—that’s trail magic.
Or maybe you’re on a trail in the middle of nowhere when suddenly there’s a waterbottle propped next to the path. Trail magic.
Or you get to a trailside campsite and there’s a little pile of firewood already cut, under a little lid of bark, keeping it dry. Magic.
It’s a thing that has popped up around the Thru-Hiking scene. Thru-hikers are those who are hiking a major trail nonstop. These are most famously the AT and the PCT (the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Coast Trail). There’s a new American Discovery Trail—the ADT. And the North Country Trail, the NCT. Trails get initials. But lots of things do, I guess.
Anyway, through-hikers are often living on the short end of the stick. They’re by themselves for long periods of time. It’s a way that quite a few people choose to just drop out for awhile. I gather from my brief research that more than a few just keep on thru-hiking. They’re kind of the American version of a pilgrim, only because America doesn’t have much culture and has wrecked most of what it did have, our pilgrims stay in the woods. They’re naturalist types. (Unlike European and Muslim pilgrims who have ancient paths to follow and ancient, or at least pre-WalMart, cultures to keep them company along the way.)
Pilgrims get tired and thirsty.
And so…trail angels show up and leave them goodies and nice things. Which are called trail magic.
www.wordspy.com/words/fastpacking.asp
www.wordspy.com/words/trailangel.asp
Here’s another link to trail angel info:
