Friday, April 21, 2006

Trail Name

It turns out that everyone on the trail pretty much abandons their names from civilization in favor of some pseudonym they either make up or receive in their first weeks of hiking. A lot of times these names derive from somebody doing something stupid (Freefall for example tried to glissade somewhere and ended up nearly going over a cliff) or they relate to one's life off trail (Novocaine is going to be a dentist,Grey Eagle is a retired Air Force and American Airlines pilot, Texas is from Texas, Goliath is really really big and tall) or they're because of whatever (Rat Puke, Sandman, Suffering Bastard, Bone Saw, Dirt, Tricycle, Patches) or they're location/name combinations that try suggest a commonality with Indiana Jones (Minnesota Smith, by the way is probably less like Indiana Jones than anyone I've ever met). So about two weeks ago I was in Hot Springs NC, and this dude (an older guy from Georgia, real nice, but is apparently hiking the trail to avoid getting a job and paying child support. There's a lot of people out here vaguely on the run from the law but that's a story for another day) I'd been hiking with in the Smokies and then not seen for a little while came up to me and was all "hey Senator", and I'm all "Senator?" and he says that he'd been talking it over with some other guys and they'd decided that because I was from Texas and went to an Ivy League school (we're talking about brown, but whatever) that I was going to be a senator. So, somehow that stuck and now that's what everyone calls me.

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