For a Better America

When President Bush calls to ask me what’s needed to get this country back on track, I’m ready. It occurred to me this morning, while waiting for the bus in a torrential downpour, that what this country needs is not a really good five-cent cigar, as the forgettable Thomas Riley Marshall, vice president from 1913 to 1921, said, but a mandatory walk in the woods. (As an aside, Marshall’s other great line was, "Indiana is the mother of vice presidents, home of more second-class men than any other state.")
An annual three-day backpacking trip should be a requirement for U.S. citizenship, right up there with a mandatory driver’s license re-exam every three years—and a five-year suspension of all NASCAR events and merchandise sales.
What prompted the thought was all the grousing by my bus-buddies, and all the crap we carry just to get through the day in a dry office.
I’ve done about 800 miles of the Appalachian Trail over the years, and numerous other hikes and camps. Out there (where ever "there" happens to be) you carry all you need for a week or so on your back. Everything. You learn if you get wet, you’ll dry. If you get hungry, you’ll fix something to eat. You won’t need newspapers because what happens doesn’t really matter and effects you even less.
All you really need to survive is on your back and in your pockets. If you need entertainment you stop to examine the bark of a tree. You stand still, stare at the ground and bust your brain trying to remember a bird’s song. You talk with people you’ll never see again so you’re free to tell the truth. Danger is not some druggie in a car, it’s your imagination: Was that a bear or a crazed Wild Turkey? Oh, another hiker taking a pee.
A backpacking trip brings life down to it’s most basic common denominators. At the end of the trip you swear you’ll never do it again. Two weeks later, hassling an umbrella, coffee cup, lap top computer case and deadlines, you start planning next year’s hike. It makes you focus on what matters most, something that’s missing from most political agendas.