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Friday 21 February 2014

Back on the Pacific Crest Trail

Pacific Crest Trail Journal Entry, May 24, 1982



Much of the last few days I've spent on the Pacific Crest Trail. In my mind anyway. Working on my book on my hike (Rattlesnakes & Bald Eagles) I've spent many hours looking through my old Kodachrome slides, my journals and other documents from that wonderful trip, all of them taking me back to the deserts and forests and mountains and snow of the American Far West.

Writing the book is a way of reliving what was the most significant of all my long distance walks. I'd looked at the photos on and off over the years for magazine articles and slide shows but I'd never done more than glance at my journals before. Reading them is bringing back events, places and people that had faded from my memory and I've realised that I've forgotten much. I am so glad I have my words to refresh my memory. Those little black notebooks - bought, I note from Megson Stationary in Manchester for £1.95 each and labelled 'Challenge Oilskin Note Book the super-strong Note Book with soilproof covers' - are some of my most treasured possessions. They contain a seminal part of my life.


Camp in Crabtree Meadow, High Sierra, Pacific Crest Trail, May 21, 1982








2 comments:

  1. Exciting news. I for one look forward to reading it Chris and the scenery being described and at the heart of the book, not hitching into town, along with ice cream challenges so often the focal point of PCT books these days.

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    1. Thanks Martin. The book will be about the landscape and the experience of being there. Ice cream might be mentioned though!

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