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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Living in towns like Weston and Brookline almost feels like living in somewhat of a bubble. People are aware of things going on around in the world, but don't necessarily worry about a lot of it because you don't experience those same things in these towns. The way we “escape” the world is through technology not so much through nature and I think in most cases that can be really sad because in reality it stops you from enjoying the things you have around you (like nature) because you're constantly absorbing media of things you want and you can lose yourself in that process instead of finding yourself.

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In the beginning when Bryson first sets his mind on walking the Appalachian Trail. Here is thinking about how and why he feels the need to do this. He refers to his life as a “waddlesome sloth” because of the lack of adventure and constant reliance on other things. He wants to be able to survive on his own in the wilderness, one to prove to himself that he is capable of it, and to be able to reconnect with nature before it's too late.

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“And here it was, quite unexpectedly, meandering in a dangerously beguiling fashion  through the pleasant New England community in which I had just settled. It seemed such an extraordinary notion--that I could set off from home and walk 1,800 miles through  woods to Georgia, or turn the other way and clamber over the rough and stony White  Mountains to the fabled prow of Mount Katahdin, floating in forest 450 miles to the north  in a wilderness few have seen. A little voice in my head said: "Sounds neat! Let's do it!"

I formed a number of rationalizations. It would get me fit after years of waddlesome  sloth. It would be an interesting and reflective way to reacquaint myself with the scale  and beauty of my native land after nearly twenty years of living abroad. It would be  useful (I wasn't quite sure in what way, but I was sure nonetheless) to learn to fend for  myself in the wilderness. When guys in camouflage pants and hunting hats sat around in  the Four Aces Diner talking about fearsome things done out-of-doors, I would no longer  have to feel like such a cupcake. I wanted a little of that swagger that comes with being  able to gaze at a far horizon through eyes of chipped granite and say with a slow, manly  sniff, "Yeah, I've shit in the woods."

And there was a more compelling reason to go. The Appalachians are the home of one  of the world's great hardwood forests-- the expansive relic of the richest, most diversified  sweep of woodland ever to grace the temperate world--and that forest is in trouble. If the  global temperature rises by 4°C over the next fifty years, as is evidently possible, the  whole of the Appalachian wilderness below New England could become savanna. Already  trees are dying in frightening numbers. The elms and chestnuts are long gone, the stately  hemlocks and flowery dogwoods are going, and the red spruces, Fraser firs, mountain  ashes, and sugar maples may be about to follow. Clearly, if ever there was a time to  experience this singular wilderness, it was now.”

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Routines or habits are extremely important in people's lives because if you are able to develop healthy patterns that you follow it can  only better yourself. Bryson and Katz use routines to help them through their hike, I use them to help me stay active. During swim season and track season I follow daily routines that allow me to organize my time between schoolwork, practice, and friends. By following the set hour I have for myself to work on each of those things I allow myself to get rid of any other kind of stress when I need to get things done. My body gets used to a certain schedule and starts to follow it unconsciously. By doing this I get to really enjoy all the activities I am participating in and don’t really have to worry as much about what comes next.

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Before I am about to do something that involves me stepping out of my comfort zone I tend to think of all the possible outcomes of what could happen. I feel like in the same way Bryson is thinking about what could go wrong with the bears might be him trying to come up with a reason to not go on the Appalachian Trail after all. But one thing I have learned over time is that just because something scares you doesn't mean you shouldn’t so it because then you will end up regretting things you could've done but didn’t. As for him not wanting to feel alone, I think that is something almost everyone can relate to because it is one of basic needs as humans to have a connection with other people.

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Bryson was doing research on bears because he feared encountering one on his journey through the Appalachian trail. He was doing research on what to do in different situations if encountering a bear and what gave you the best chance of surviving. Beyond the fear of bears itself, at this point he still wasn’t planning on going on the trip with anyone, so I think part of his fear was being isolated for so long. If anything were to happen to him he doesn't want to die or suffer alone.

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Bryson and Katz have started to fall into a daily routine, which helps them get through their day. They are no longer worrying so much about the actual action of them hiking the trail and are now able to enjoy it a bit more. As difficult as the hike is these simple routines help them keep going and to take everything day by day and appreciate everything a little more.

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"Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark,  you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in  between. It's quite wonderful, really.

You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions  and only the smallest, least complicated of wants; you exist in a tranquil tedium, serenely  beyond the reach of exasperation, "far removed from the seats of strife," as the early  explorer and botanist William Bartram put it. All that is required of you is a willingness to  trudge.

There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However  far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It's where you were  yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every  bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every glimpse  into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know, your route could describe a very  large, pointless circle. In a way, it would hardly matter.

At times, you become almost certain that you slabbed this hillside three days ago,  crossed this stream yesterday, clambered over this fallen tree at least twice today already.  But most of the time you don't think. No point. Instead, you exist in a kind of mobile Zen  mode, your brain like a balloon tethered with string, accompanying but not actually part  of the body below. Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable,  as breathing. At the end of the day you don't think, "Hey, I did sixteen miles today," any  more than you think, "Hey, I took eight-thousand breaths today." It's just what you do."

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I won't say I became obsessed by all this, but it did occupy my thoughts a great deal in  the months while I waited for spring to come. My particular dread--the vivid possibility  that left me staring at tree shadows on the bedroom ceiling night after night--was having  to lie in a small tent, alone in an inky wilderness, listening to a foraging bear outside and  wondering what its intentions were. I was especially riveted by an amateur photograph in  Herrero's book, taken late at night by a camper with a flash at a campground out West.  The photograph caught four black bears as they puzzled over a suspended food bag. The  bears were clearly startled but not remotely alarmed by the flash. It was not the size or  demeanor of the bears that troubled me--they looked almost comically unaggressive, like  four guys who had gotten a Frisbee caught up a tree--but their numbers. Up to that  moment it had not occurred to me that bears might prowl in parties. What on earth would  I do if four bears came into my camp? Why, I would die, of course. Literally shit myself  lifeless. I would blow my sphincter out my backside like one of those unrolling paper streamers you get at children's parties--I daresay it would even give a merry toot--and  bleed to a messy death in my sleeping bag.

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I think a lot of places take advantage of those same “needs”. Take Apple for example, after a couple new phones they change the charging port forcing people who use their products to have to go out and buy more of their products to keep the devices up to date. Another example is with air pods, and then Apple selling wires that connect your AirPods together so you don’t  lose them, making them almost the exact same as regular headphones; but people still bought both items anyways because they believed they needed them, even when it was significantly more expensive than the other. Both of which I got stuck in the consumer mindset of buying when they first came out and now realizing that I could have avoided that.

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When Bryson was preparing to go on his trip he had to stop by an outdoor equipment store to get things he would need for the hike. At this point Bryson doesn’t really know what he is getting into and he spends quite a lot of money on buying an excessive amount of items. He was shocked at how much he would need to buy and how many options there were for everything because it is not what he had expected at all. He questions why things aren’t sold together in a way that makes sense like how a sleeping bag should be sold with the stuff stack for it but they aren't and both items cost quite a bit of money. It's the way marketing works to force people to buy more than what they actually need.

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"In between  there was lots of discussion about hiking generally, mostly to do with hazards like rock falls, bear encounters, cookstove explosions, and snakebites, which he described with  a certain misty-eyed fondness before coming back to the topic at hand.  With everything, he talked a lot about weight. It seemed to me a trifle over-fastidious to choose one sleeping bag over another because it weighed three ounces less, but as equipment piled up around us I began to appreciate how ounces accumulate into pounds. I hadn’t expected to buy so much—I already owned hiking boots, a Swiss army knife, and a plastic map pouch that you wear around your neck on a piece of string, so I had felt I was pretty well there—but the more I talked to Dave the more I realized that I was shopping for an expedition.

The two big shocks were how expensive everything was—each time Dave dodged into the storeroom or went off to confirm a denier rating, I stole looks at price tags and was invariably appalled—and how every piece of equipment appeared to require some further piece of equipment. If you bought a sleeping bag, then you needed a stuff sack for it. The stuff sack cost $29. I found this an increasingly difficult concept to warm to."