Yeah, I've hiked there...I just don't remember it.

Visiting my parents this weekend, I was looking at some old photo albums. I saw some pictures from when I was about 12 years old. One group of pictures showed us on an overnight hike to Adams/Madison...which I don't remember at all. Another group of pictures showed us at Gulf Hagas in Maine...again, I don't remember this at all. For the last few years, while reading guide books and trip reports and studying maps, Gulf Hagas has been on my list of places to go; I had no clue that I'd already hiked there when I was 12. I guess when I was 12, I had no clue and no cares about what trail or mountain we were on, and apparently I didn't even know or care what state I was in. My dad also recently told me about the time we were going up Jefferson.....once again, I have no recollection of this. Are all 12 year olds as absent-minded as I was? Apparently I've hiked alot more in my life than I thought I had. I know I had a good time while on these hiking trips, but when you're 12 you don't have a real appreciation for how lucky you are to sit on the rocks overlooking the Great Gulf Wilderness or Gulf Hagas. It's just a fleeting episode of fun, and when it's over you just say, "OK, what's next?" Now that I DO have the appropriate appreciation for those things, I no longer have the time to do them. I guess that's what we call "life".

p.s. To all the parents out there whose children don't want their pictures taken: Take the pictures anyway. Nobody hated getting their picture taken more than my brothers and sisters and I. Now when we get together, we often look at the old photo albums. Few things are better.

p.s.s. One picture shows my backpack for the overnight trip near Adams/Madison was a canvas/heavy-cloth laundry bag strapped around my shoulders with rope (mailman bag style). I love that picture.

Funny you should post this as this weekend I spent sometime going through some photos myself trying to organize them. We took lots but now that I have a digital camera the stacks of photos have been neglected. What fun to see my little ones! Now they are grown but we had some fun hikes. And the gear – now that brought some laughs.

I remember a whole bunch of things that I no longer remember, but that was because I started back in the 60's. There were all kinds of artificial aids which helped mis and dis-remembering back then.

Reminds me of a question a ranger asked me the othere day, when I was explaining about dyslexic confusion of green and orange (words, not colors). She wanted to know if I had that problem before the acid.

I started a journal back in fall 2000 for all my outdoors activity (beyond, say, a 5 minute walk in the woods behind my house). It's kind of a pain to keep up to date, but I've found it invaluable in figuring out when I did X, Y, Z, how many times I've been to Mt ____, where I saw that bear -- and in combination with digital camera pictures that are timestamped, it's an unbelievable relief not to have to remember these things (so instead I have to remember a whole bunch of other work-related garbage ).

of course it's still in written form so I can't do full-text searching

arghman said:

I started a journal back in fall 2000 for all my outdoors activity

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I used to keep a journal until about '95. Then I started posting trip reports on the net, and I just use google/Yahoo when I want to find out about what I did. Lots easier for me.

My brother insists that we hiked the Franconia Ridge together in the 70s, as part of a larger group. His memories are very specific - hiking up to a hut, spending the night, then bagging the whole ridge and going down Osseo, and one member of the group having to hitchike back to the van...

Only problem is I don't remember a bit of it. I remember other climbs from back then - Madison, Washington, Katahdin, several hiking trips in the Greens - but not Franconia Ridge. So a couple weeks ago I did the Lincoln/Lafayette loop, just to see. Not familiar at all. How could I have forgotten those views?

Unfortunately there is no documentary evidence for my brother's story, and we're not likely to track down anyone else from the larger group either...

Pete_Hickey said:

I used to keep a journal until about '95. Then I started posting trip reports on the net, and I just use google/Yahoo when I want to find out about what I did. Lots easier for me.

Click to expand...

Grep is your friend...

(Sorry, I am assuming that you have access to a real OS again...)

Doug


PS for the non-UNIX people: Grep is a text file searching utility. Very useful.

Camping out on Cherry Mountain Road usually makes it tough to remember where we hiked over the weekend !

I forget why ?

Yeah-

all 12 year olds are this absented minded. It's the hormones. .

woodstrider said:

all 12 year olds are this absented minded. It's the hormones. .

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I guess I'll be the first to disagree. I started hiking at 8 years old. I have done most of the lists that people aspire to in the Northeast but not all. I am not a Badge collector and have kept very loose notes if at all; but ask me where I have hiked and I will tell you quite close to the time when I did the hike and I can tell you which ones and how many times. It's been a game for me to keep it all in my head; but who knows I may only be fooling myself!

It's not just 12 year olds who forget. When I hike with my friends, I often ramble on about "the last time we were here" and they just look at me like I'm nuts. One friend has said that to him, every hike is exactly the same. We drive, we park, we walk on a trail in a forest, we camp, we walk, we drive home. He enjoys the experience...just doesn't notice any differences between each trip. My memory is helped by a log I've kept of all of my trips. Sometimes just a few paragraphs, sometimes it runs much longer (20 pages). I started doing it just so I'd remember cool places (waterfalls, campsites, etc) and it's evolved since then. Originally on paper, then on files on my computer, and now it's all on my website. Reading over some of the old entries really does bring back all the old memories.

I don't remember anything from 12...maybe I willingly chose to forget. I know my kids already get some of the hikes we did mixed up and they are still young!

As for pictures, I tell the kids, it's for me so when I can't hike anymore I can look back and remember the good old days but I catch them always looking through the scrapbooks and laughing at how goofy we looked or the faces we were making. I'm with you...take the pics even if they don't want you to and then explain to them that it's better to get a picture of the front of their faces instead of a scowl or the back.

The photo assist is amazing. My father was an indefatigable 35mm slide photographer. There are some short hikes and camping trips from when I was 4-6 years old which I swear I can only remember because my memories were refreshed by seeing the photos over the years. Many were touristy walks: Acadia, Ausable Chasm, Letchworth, Watkins Glen, lots of waterfall hikes in Michigan's UP and elsewhere. But also Clingmans Dome in the Smokies on that paved trail with park benches, and some more remote areas in state and national parks. It is always fun to hike those places again.

There have been several occasions here in the northeast where I have started a hike, thinking I have never been here before. But then that feeling of deja vu begins. Occasionally it is a place I hiked as a kid, but on a couple times it has been a place I hiked 20-30 years ago as an adult.

I agree with the prior posts. Take photos, especially hiking with your kids, Take lots of photos! They won't regret it later.