MULTILITERACIES AND DESIGN: MULTIMODALITY IN THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL THRU-HIKING COMMUNITY by LESLIE SUSAN RUSH (Under the Direction of Donna E. Alvermann) ABSTRACT This dissertation study, stemming from a theoretical framework of multiliteracies, literacy as a social practice, and ecological literacy, explores the multiliteracies and culture of the Appalachian Trail thru-hiking community as members of this community walked the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine between March and October, 2001. As a participant-observer, I joined this community and hiked 1400 miles of the Appalachian Trail during a six-month data collection period, collecting ethnographic fieldnotes and archival data and conducting interviews with thru-hikers and other members of the AT community. Analysis of these data showed not only the presence of multiliteracies that were unique to this community, but it also showed the use of “ecological literacy,” the ability to interpret the natural surround. In addition, I analyzed the multimodal nature of these literacies through the construction of Multimodal Connection Maps and Design Charts for data excerpts. The Design concept (New London Group, 1996, 2000) is a description of a process of interpretation that involves both use of available patterns of meaning – the work of the social context – and individual creativity in meaning making. Through this analysis, I found that description of literacy as Design provides both a model for understanding how the values and traditions of the thru-hiking community were instantiated in its literacies and a useful tool for analysis. INDEX WORDS:
Multiliteracies, Literacy as a social practice, Design, Multimodality, Appalachian Trail, Thru-hiking
MULTILITERACIES AND DESIGN: MULTIMODALITY IN THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL THRU-HIKING COMMUNITY
by
LESLIE SUSAN RUSH B.S., Texas A&M University – Commerce, 1984 M.Ed., Texas A&M University – Commerce, 1996
A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
ATHENS, GEORGIA 2002
© 2002 Leslie Susan Rush All Rights Reserved
MULTILITERACIES AND DESIGN: MULTIMODALITY IN THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL THRU-HIKING COMMUNITY
by
LESLIE SUSAN RUSH
Approved:
Electronic Version Approved: Gordhan L. Patel Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2002
Major Professor:
Donna E. Alvermann
Committee:
Michelle Commeyras Kathleen deMarrais Bob Fecho Diane Samdahl
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DEDICATION To whom else would I ever dedicate this dissertation, but to the man who made it possible for me to get through it sane. You, babe, are the one who always said, “Yes, I do,” when I asked, “Do you really think I can do this?” Whether I was talking about hiking the AT or getting the writing done, you’ve always had faith in me, always supported me, always been my biggest fan. Now it’s your turn! To my best friend, best hiking buddy, and the best person I know:
Mark “Toot” Jernigan
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people have been part of pushing, pulling, and prodding me through two of the hardest things I have ever attempted: thru-hiking the AT and completing my doctoral degree. I’m not sure which was harder; I’m not sure which I’m prouder of. I am sure that all of you, and many others as well, have been integral to my success. Mom: Throughout my life, you have been my biggest supporter. So many times, growing up, you told me, “You can do anything, Leslie, as long as you really want it and are willing to work hard to get it.” It’s the confidence you built and nurtured in me that has made me believe that I could achieve what I dreamed. I only hope that when I am 70, I will be as capable, active, strong, and good-looking as you are now! Fellow graduate students Margaret Hagood, Alison Heron, Elizabeth Carr Edwards: How will we all make it in the big wide world without each other? And what can I say about how much your friendship has meant to me? In moments of panic, desperation, joy, exhilaration, and exhaustion, my first impulse was to run down the hall and share them. Thanks for being there when I needed you and for allowing me to be part of your lives. Donna Alvermann, my major professor/advisor: Your high expectations and confidence in me helped me to persevere, to keep plugging away at it, to get the best out of myself. I don’t know that I will ever match your work ethic, but you have provided mentoring and a sense of how academia works that I am grateful for. Committee members Michelle Commeyras, Kathleen deMarrais, Bob Fecho, and Diane Samdahl: Who would have believed that you would take a chance on an
vi oddball idea from left field and encouraged me to run with it? You’ve all been both intensely supportive and challenging at the same time. I often remarked, during data collection, analysis, and the write-up, that at times I felt my committee members were more excited about this dissertation than I was. My reading and writing partners: Corey Emory and Alison Heron. You both took the time to read my writing and apply your own unique critiques. I appreciate your time and effort; you’ve both improved my writing by being such fantastic writers yourselves. Reading Education Department staff members Joy Fulmer, Jennifer Guyton, and Deanna Palmer: You’ve screened my calls, taken care of my cats, managed to get the right software, listened to me gripe and moan, and become friends in the process. I’ll miss all of you and wish you well in the future. Carol Niedzalek of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. Your willingness to trust me to handle archival materials with care and to return them to you promptly was an inspiration. My hiking buddies: Duracell, Rocky, Sojourner, Triple Slim, Chris, Slow and Steady, and others of my thru-hiking friends/family/community, too many to mention by name. Words cannot express what it means to me to be an accepted part of the community and to have had your support throughout my hike. See you out there!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v 1
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................1 Theoretical Framework.................................................................................5 Research Questions....................................................................................15
2
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ................................................................17 Literacy as a Culturally Situated Social Practice........................................18 Multiliteracies .............................................................................................33 Literacy Within Secondary Discourses......................................................38
3
METHODS .....................................................................................................44 Data Collection ...........................................................................................46 Data Transformation ...................................................................................57 Reflexivity in Data Collection and Transformation....................................67
4
DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTEXT ............................................................82 Snapshot Descriptions.................................................................................83 Members of the AT Thru-hiking Community ............................................98 A Typical Day in the Life of a Thru-hiker................................................104 Who Are Thru-hikers? ..............................................................................108 Thru-hiker Traditions................................................................................118
viii 5
MULTILITERACIES OF THRU-HIKERS .................................................124 Literacies that are Primarily Linguistic.....................................................125 Literacies that are Primarily Gestural .......................................................148 Literacies that are Primarily Spatial..........................................................166 Literacies that are Primarily Visual and Auditory ....................................171 Ecological Literacy ...................................................................................174 Conclusion ................................................................................................186
6
THE DESIGN PROCESS AND MULTIMODALITY ................................188 Method of Analysis...................................................................................188 Introduction of Data Excerpts...................................................................193 The Design Process...................................................................................211 Conclusion ................................................................................................232
7
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS ........................................................234 Discussion of Findings..............................................................................235 Implications...............................................................................................243
EPILOGUE ..........................................................................................................255 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................257 APPENDICES .....................................................................................................268 A
HAND-WRITTEN FIELDNOTES...................................................269
B
EXPANDED FIELDNOTES ............................................................271
C
PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM .................................................274
D
APPALACHIAN TRAIL MAP ........................................................276
E
“THE RAINY DAY (AT) POEM” ...................................................278
ix F
“THE MARAUDERS’ MAP”...........................................................281
G
INTEGRATIVE MEMOS ................................................................284
1
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The Appalachian Trail (AT) is an approximately 2,160-mile footpath that follows the course of the Appalachian Mountain Range, between Springer Mountain in northern Georgia and Mt. Katahdin in Maine's Baxter State Park. Marshall (1998) described the AT as "a connecting thread, stitching together the patchwork geography of eastern America" (p. 4). This is an apt description, as the AT winds its way through 14 states, 8 national forests, and 6 national parks. Benton MacKaye, a Connecticut-born philosopher and regional planner interested in the effect of land management on human behavior, is credited with the idea of this continuous greenway. MacKaye’s article, entitled "An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning" in the October 1921 issue of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects (Appalachian Trail Conference, 1996) proposed the reservation of a wilderness environment to provide an outdoor experience for urban laborers. This wilderness environment was to include communities throughout the Appalachians, farm camps, and a footpath as its connecting link. MacKaye sought "regeneration of the human spirit through . . . harmony with primeval influences" (Appalachian Trail Conference, 1996, p. 2). Believing that the relationship between human beings and nature was of primary importance, MacKaye saw the AT as a means of preserving this relationship. In addition, he believed that the founding of closely knit communities near the trail would foster close exchange among members of these communities (Warren & Kocher, 1979). Though MacKaye is credited with the idea of the AT, he was not the first to imagine a long trail
2 linking the communities of the Appalachians. Hiking clubs in New England had been building footpaths and dreaming of a trail that would stretch across the Appalachians since the 1900s (Appalachian Trail Conference, 1996). The Appalachian Trail Conference (ATC) was formed in March of 1925 after a meeting convened by the Regional Planning Association of America, of which MacKaye was a member. At that time, the trail was to run 1,700 miles, from Mt. Washington, New Hampshire to Cohutta Mountain in Georgia. By May of 1928, when Myron Avery joined the executive committee of the ATC, 500 miles of trail were open for travel, primarily in New England. Avery's energetic leadership resulted in 260 miles of new trail and the formation of new ATC clubs in the south during that year. By 1931, when Avery was elected ATC chairman, 1200 miles of the trail had been built. Avery held the post of chairman for the next 21 years, and by 1937 the trail was completed (Appalachian Trail Conference, 1996). Between 1937 and the present, some changes in the trail itself have been made: the southern terminus was moved from Cohutta Mountain to Oglethorpe Mountain and finally to Springer Mountain as a result of increased development around Oglethorpe. Building of the Blue Ridge Parkway displaced 120 miles of the trail to the west in Virginia (Appalachian Trail Conference, 1996). In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the National Trails System Act, and the AT became a public resource. This act designated two national systems of trails, the Appalachian Trail in the east and the Pacific Crest Trail in the west, and appropriated $5 million for land acquisition. In 1978, amendments to the 1968 statute designated more money for the land-acquisition program and extended the range of the program's eminent-domain authority. The
3 National Park Service handed over to the Appalachian Trail Conference in 1984 the responsibility for managing and maintaining the AT. Since that time, volunteers have been largely responsible for this effort (Appalachian Trail Conference, 1996). According to the Appalachian Trail Conference, 5,876 individuals have hiked the entire length of the AT. This number includes "thru-hikers" who hike the trail within a year and "section hikers" who hike a section at a time over a longer period. Twenty percent of thru-hikers are women (L. Potteiger, Appalachian Trail Conference Information Officer, personal communication, January 22, 2001). The traditional understanding of a thru-hike is as follows: The attempt to thru-hike should be a personal effort, with the individual thru-hiker carrying everything needed for his or her journey in a backpack, leaving from one terminus and heading for the other, and, once underway, relying for daily sustenance only on food and supplies prepared before the hike and forwarded by mail and/or purchased in nearby towns and communities along the way. (Bruce, 1998, p. 1) The first thru-hiker, Earl V. Shaffer, completed the trail, south to north, in four months during 1948. In 1965, he hiked the AT southbound, becoming the first person to thru-hike the trail in both directions (Luxenberg, 1994). Since then many others have followed suit. During the 1980s, Ward Leonard speed-hiked the AT in sixty days. Emma "Grandma" Gatewood hiked the trail several times in her late 60s, wearing light tennis shoes and carrying her belongings in a burlap bag. Bill Irwin, a blind man who hiked with a seeingeye dog, hiked the trail and wrote a book about his experiences. Others have hiked from Georgia to Maine and then turned around and hiked back to Georgia (Bryson, 1998).
4 Although thru-hiking is in many ways an individual activity, thru-hikers form, collectively, part of a distinctive community with rituals (taking trail names, signing in at Amicalola Falls, and completing the approach trail to Springer Mountain), traditions (Trail Days, an annual meeting of past and present thru-hikers in Damascus, Virginia), and a collective identity. As I was told by one thru-hiker: When you meet a thru-hiker it’s not like you’re meeting a stranger. You’re walking down the trail and you see another hiker, it’s like you have this bond. And you kind of just automatically start talking. So it’s kind of like even if I just met you for one day, I already kind of felt like I had this history with you. (Interview with Lazy Daisy, 1999) This sense of a common bond with other thru-hikers helps to define the community and the culture that this study investigates. For this study, the Appalachian Trail thru-hiking community includes as its central members all of those who are attempting to hike the length of the Appalachian Trail, whether they are attempting this during one year or over a period of several years. Although thru-hikers themselves are central players in this community, they are not alone. Other members of the community include family members or friends who send support packages; officials in the Appalachian Trail Conference, the institution that is responsible for management and maintenance of the trail; volunteer trail maintainers in towns along the way; people who live near the trail and provide treats and rides for thru-hikers; day hikers; long-distance hikers who are not planning to thru-hike; staff of the largely northern hut system; and others. It is this collective group that I see as the Appalachian Trail thru-hiker community, with thruhikers themselves as the central focus for my study.
5 There are obvious connections between thru-hiking and literacy. Thru-hikers have written books about their experiences (e.g., Hall, 2000; Lowther, 2000); thru-hikers keep journals, write poetry and songs, communicate with each other in shelter registers, read books during their hike, and write letters home. In addition to these print literacies, thruhikers become skilled at other forms of literacy: reading maps, the landscape, the trail, their own bodies, and other people. These multiliteracies will be discussed more fully in a later section of this dissertation. This study investigates the literacy practices and culture of the AT thru-hiker community. In order to conduct this research, I joined the community of thru-hikers, with the goal of hiking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine in one year. We thruhikers came from different backgrounds and places, with different values and beliefs. We learned to make meaning from texts (the land, water sources, maps, books) and to create texts (make decisions, write in journals) according to the values and beliefs of the thruhiker community, as well as those brought with us from our individual backgrounds. Theoretical Framework Literacies, language, and culture are inextricably linked in webs of connections. Language, a fundamental root of literacy, is a necessary precondition for culture, a consequence of cultural engagement, and a medium of cultural process (Lankshear, 1997). It is not too difficult, then, to make the leap that literacy is embedded in culture and that learning literacy is a matter of learning social practices, as Gee (1996) illustrates: Thus, one does not learn to read texts of type X in way Y unless one has had experience in settings where texts of type X are read in way Y. These settings are various sorts of social institutions, like churches, banks, schools, government
6 offices, or social groups with certain sorts of interests, like baseball cards, comic books, chess, politics, novels, movies, or what have you. One has to be socialized into a practice to learn to read texts of type X in way Y, a practice other people have already mastered. (Gee, 1996, p. 41) This connection between cultural ways of being and literate practices means that ways of reading, writing, speaking, and listening are embedded in the ideology of a particular context and thus “cannot be isolated or treated as ‘neutral’ or merely ‘technical’” (Street, 1984, p. 1). Instead, literacy practices must be interpreted in relation to larger sociocultural patterns. This reconceptualization of literacy recognizes its close relationship to culture. Cope and Kalantzis (2000c) used the notion of literacy as Design to describe the process of meaning making and strongly affirmed the dependency of Design on culture: Design is a process in which the individual and culture are inseparable. The representational resources available to an individual are the stuff of culture; the ways of making meaning that an individual has learnt and used perennially over the course of their [sic] life; as well as those new ways of making meaning that they know are there and that they could pick up with more of less effort if and when they were needed. Culture is no more and no less than the accumulated and continuing expression of agency; of Designing. (p. 203) Culture not only structures the modes of meaning making that are available, it also determines which are valuable, which are not, and how they are used (Kress, 2000). This study seeks to investigate ties between literacies and culture by examining multiple forms
7 of literacy, the ways in which these literacies help to create the culture of the AT thruhiking community, and the effect of that culture on its literacies. Literacy as a Social Practice Research and theory that consider literacy as a social practice examine literacy in a social setting, as part of the culture of a group. Barton (1994) calls this approach an ecological one: “An ecological approach aims to understand how literacy is embedded in other human activity, its embeddedness in social life and in thought, and its position in history, language, and learning” (p. 32). Although the term ecological is used here to show that literacy takes place in a context, I will be using ecological literacy in a slightly different way, as will be evident in a later section of this chapter, in which I outline my understanding of ecological literacy. Barton and Hamilton (2000) elaborated on their approach to literacy as ecological through the following propositions: •
Literacy is best understood as a set of social practices; these are observable in events that are mediated by written texts.
•
There are different literacies associated with different domains of life.
•
Literacy practices are patterned by social institutions and power relationships and some literacies are more dominant, visible and influential than others.
•
Literacy practices are purposeful and embedded in broader social goals and cultural practices.
•
Literacy is historically situated.
•
Literacy practices change and new ones are frequently acquired through processes of informal learning and sense making.
8 Thus, there are different literacies, or configurations of literacy practices, that are associated with particular aspects of cultural life and communities. In light of this perspective, I examined the patterning and structuring of literacy practices of the AT thru-hiking community as they were shaped by power relationships, values, traditions, and other aspects of thru-hiker culture. Literacy events and literacy practices are key to understanding literacy as a social practice. Literacy events are concrete evidences of literacy practices. Heath (1982) developed the notion of literacy events as a tool for examining the forms and functions of oral and written language. She described a literacy event as “any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants’ interactions and their interpretive processes” (p. 93). Any activity in which literacy has a role is a literacy event. As Barton and Hamilton (2000) described, “Events are observable episodes which arise from practices and are shaped by them. The notion of events stresses the situated nature of literacy, that it always exists in a social context” (p. 8). Writing in a shelter register, talking to someone about such a writing, reading a map, telling a story, and reading weather patterns are all examples of literacy events I encountered in my research. Barton and Hamilton (2000) described literacy practices as “the general cultural ways of utilizing written language which people draw upon in their lives. In the simplest sense literacy practices are what people do with literacy” (p. 8). Literacy practices involve values, attitudes, feelings, and social relationships. They have to do with how people in a particular culture construct literacy, how they talk about literacy and make sense of it. These processes are at the same time individual and social. They are abstract values and rules about literacy that are shaped by and help to shape the ways that people
9 within cultures use literacy. Street (1993) described literacy practices, which are inclusive of literacy events, as “‘folk models’ of those events and the ideological preconceptions that underpin them” (pp. 12-13). Thus, the values, beliefs, and models that are portrayed through thru-hiker literacy events would be classified as thru-hiker literacy practices. During my research on the AT thru-hiking community, I used the notions of literacy events and literacy practices to provide structure for my observation, interviewing, and collection of artifacts. I sought to document literacy events, or activities in which literacy has a role, in order to understand literacy practices, or the values and beliefs related to literacy, in the AT thru-hiking community. Broadening our Definition of Literacy Although Barton and Hamilton (2000) defined literacy events narrowly as focusing around written texts and communication involving language, I have begun to consider literacy inclusive of non-print texts, including visual media, sounds, gestures, and nature. The door to considering multiple forms of literacy – multiliteracies – has been opened by those concerned with sweeping changes in our society. Calling themselves proponents of the New Literacies, these theorists and researchers have argued that students must be prepared to handle the increasing pressure of interpreting multimedia texts that incorporate print, visual, and verbal modes (Hagood, 2000; Bean, Bean, & Bean, 1999; Elkins & Luke, 1999). Especially for thru-hikers, literacy involves reading not only print texts, but also topographical maps, sign systems designed for trail navigation, cloud formations, the gestures and movements of animals and humans, geographical formations, and their own bodies. This widening of the arena of literacy is supported by work done by the New
10 London Group, a group of researchers and theorists from fields such as linguistics, literacy pedagogy, and media studies, who originally met in New London, New Hampshire in September of 1994, to discuss “what would need to be taught in a rapidly changing future, and how this should be taught” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000b, p. 3). Concerned with exponentially increasing global communications and media, as well as with the impact of linguistic and cultural diversity in our continuously globalized society, they developed both a theoretical base and a pedagogy of multiliteracies that is broader than language alone and that allows for variation in different cultures and contexts. The New London Group’s (2000) conception of literacy includes six areas of designs or modes of meaning-making: linguistic, audio, spatial, visual, gestural, and multimodal. Linguistic design, which is most commonly associated with literacy as it has historically been defined, includes elements of language such as delivery, vocabulary, information structures, and local and global coherence. Elements such as music and sound effects are addressed in audio design. Keys to visual meaning, such as color, perspective, foregrounding and backgrounding, can be read in visual design. Gestural design includes elements that constitute behavior, bodily physicality, gesture, sensuality, feelings, affect, and kinesics. Spatial design includes elements that constitute ecosystemic, geographic, and architectonic meanings. Multimodal design, which is regarded by the New London Group as the most significant of these modes, involves the reading of all of the other designs in interactive, dynamic ways. The multiliteracies framework put forward by the New London Group (2000) is accompanied by their Design concept, which is a description of a process of interpretation that involves both use of available patterns of meaning – the work of the
11 social context – and individual creativity in meaning making. This process involves three elements: Available Designs, Designing, and the Redesigned. The first of these three elements, Available Designs, describes the resources available to us as we interpret the world around us. These resources include the structures of many different forms of texts, including but not limited to language, sound, gesture, film, etc. Available Designs also include the ways of interpreting those resources that are favored by cultures or societies. The second element, Designing, is the process of making meaning out of Available Designs, always involving re-presentation and recontextualization. Designing is never merely a repetition or copy of Available Designs. Instead, it is essentially a transformation process, through which the resources used are transformed into a new meaning. Reading, seeing, listening, hearing, and interpreting landscapes and bodies are all instances of Designing. The result of Designing is the third element, the Redesigned – a new meaning or product. The Redesigned itself becomes an Available Design, available for interpretation by ourselves and by others. This understanding of literacy as Design takes into consideration a broad understanding of both what is read and how that reading is accomplished. The schools of Manitoba, Canada have recognized the need to broaden the definition of literacy. In their third-grade English Language Arts curriculum, this district has added “the land” to possible sources that their students may read in learning to manage ideas and information. In addition, students are encouraged to systematically observe and record information from their environment (Manitoba Department of Education and Training, 2000).
12 Until recently, I would have, like many other researchers, limited literacy to printed and spoken texts. My understanding of literacy has broadened to include a wide variety of practices. Alberto Manguel’s (1996) description of literacy in his work A History of Reading, is a beautiful encapsulation of this complex yet ubiquitous function: The readers of books . . . extend or concentrate a function common to us all. Reading letters on a page is only one of its many guises. The astronomer reading a map of stars that no longer exist; the Japanese architect reading the land on which a house is to be built so as to guard it from evil forces; the zoologist reading the spoor of animals in the forest; the card-player reading her partner's gestures before playing the winning card; the dancer reading the choreographer's notations, and the public reading the dancer's movements on the stage; the weaver reading the intricate design of a carpet being woven; the organ-player reading various simultaneous strands of music orchestrated on the page; the parent reading the baby’s face for signs of joy, or fright, or wonder; the Chinese fortune-teller reading the ancient marks on the shell of a tortoise; the lover blindly reading the loved one’s body at night, under the sheets; the psychiatrist helping patients read their own bewildering dreams; the Hawaiian fisherman reading the ocean currents by plunging a hand into the water; the farmer reading the weather in the sky – all these share with book-readers the craft of deciphering and translating signs. (pp. 6-7) I quote this excerpt at length because it expresses the wide variety of settings and abilities that I see as literacy. I believe that a conceptualization of literacy that is inclusive of not just printed text but also the world around us has great potential to deepen our
13 understanding of literacy and to help us as humans to reestablish connections among ourselves and our environment. Thru-hikers, because of their extended and intimate connections with the natural environment, are required to read more carefully than others the weather, the landscape, their own bodies, and to pay close attention to the behavior of animals. Because of these requirements, the community of thru-hikers is an ideal location for research into multiliteracies, as well as the traditional linguistic understanding of literacy, which includes reading, writing, speaking, and listening using words. Thus, literacy events and practices within this study reflect an understanding of literacy as broad and multi-faceted. Ecological Literacy In exploring possibilities for expanding our understanding of literacy to include reading beyond print text, I have begun to consider theoretical work that deals with ecological literacy. I have encountered three different understandings of ecological literacy. The first of these is that of Barton (1994), who sees literacy as deeply embedded in a social context and thus is concerned with an ecological approach to literacy. This understanding of literacy, although it is useful in its placement of literacy in a social context, is limited in that it confines literacy to printed text and makes no connection between the reader and his or her natural or physical environment. A second conceptualization of ecological literacy frames it as an understanding of a group of concepts related to ecology. Ecologists, concerned that education should include an understanding of the relationships between humans and the earth and the need for a sustainable economy, have presented basic concepts that should be central to ecological literacy. Klemow (1991), for example, states that in order to be ecologically
14 literate, students should know the definitions of ecology and ecosystem and possess an understanding of the ways that “humans have changed the earth’s ecosystems” (p. 5). Others have advocated activism to encourage ecological literacy. Mt. Holyoke College’s Center for Environmental Literacy, for example, included in its five key initiatives efforts to develop a campus-wide green plan, mainstream environmental courses throughout the curriculum, enhance the environmental value of the campus, facilitate environmental dialogues among students, staff, and faculty, and raise funds for environmental activities on campus (Center for Environmental Literacy, 2000). The University of Georgia’s own Realizing Environmental Literacy Through Advanced Technology and Experimentation program (RELATE) defines environmental literacy as “the ability to comprehend and critically evaluate (1) basic principles which govern natural systems, (2) linkages among living organisms and the physical environment, and (3) consequences of human activity on natural systems” (RELATE, 2000). I agree with Barton (1994) that literacy is ecological in the sense of its embeddedness in a context and with Klemow (1991) that it is important for us to recognize the impact of our way of life on the environment. I would argue more strongly for a third conceptualization of ecological literacy: the development of our ability to read the world around us, an ability that pushes beyond simple knowledge of facts and definitions about the environment. One ecologist, David Orr (1992), has argued that ecological literacy should be taught in schools, but that this form of education should begin with “the more demanding capacity to observe nature with insight, a merger of landscape and mindscape” (p. 86). He argued that without a sense of wonder and delight in being alive in our “beautiful, mysterious, bountiful world” (p. 86), no amount of
15 learning about ecology will prevent us from destroying that world. What is needed is a sense of kinship with the world, which is difficult to obtain because education has always been a primarily indoor activity, with fewer and fewer opportunities for direct experience with nature. According to Orr, “experience in the natural world is both an essential part of understanding the environment, and conducive to good teaching” (p. 91). Because thru-hikers and other members of the AT thru-hiking community are in intimate contact with nature on a regular basis, they provide a suitable base for beginning research on reading the natural world. Research in this area has implications not only for thru-hikers and for their experiences, but also for the ways in which we teach children to view and deal with the world around us. This study examines the practice of multiliteracies within a social context that is embedded in a natural setting, in an attempt to understand what forms multiliteracies can take, how social contexts and multiliteracies might impact each other, and how a natural setting is involved in this process. Research Questions This study addresses two questions: •
What are the multiliteracies of the Appalachian Trail thru-hiking community?
•
How do these literacy practices help to constitute the social processes and structures of the thru-hiking community, and in turn, how do these social processes and structures help to form the literacy practices of the community?
Examining my own and other thru-hikers’ literate and social practices provides insight into multiple forms of literacy, including ecological literacy, and the cultural processes through which these literacies are shaped and valued. Data were collected using
16 ethnographic methods: participant observation, interviewing, artifact collection, and response data collection (St. Pierre, 1999). Data were analyzed with three emphases: description, analysis, and interpretation (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995; Wolcott, 1994). Description attempts to answer the question “What’s going on here?”; analysis identifies essential features and describes interrelationships among them; interpretation explores meanings and attempts to answer the question “What is to be made of it all?” (Wolcott, 1994, p. 12). In this chapter, I have provided an overview of the theoretical framework informing this study, as well as the research questions that the study investigates. In Chapter 2, I review relevant literature, including research on literacy as a culturally situated social practice, multiliteracies, and literacies within secondary Discourses (Gee, 1996). In Chapter 3, I describe the methods used to collect and analyze data. In Chapter 4, I describe the context in which the study took place: people, places and seasons of the Appalachian Trail thru-hiking community as I experienced it. In Chapter 5, I present the multiliteracies of the community, including linguistic, gestural, spatial, visual, audio, and ecological modes of design. In Chapter 6, I present an analysis of data excerpts in light of the Design process, illustrating multimodality within these data and interconnections among literacies and culture. In Chapter 7, I provide a discussion of these findings and implications for theory, research, and practice.
17
CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE My work on this review of relevant literature began while I was writing my prospectus. I had read several books on literacy as a social practice (Heath, 1983; Street, 1984; Street, 1995) and on multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000a). Working outward from these sources, I found other books with chapters containing research on connections between culture and literacy and included these in my prospectus. After data collection and analysis, I realized that my review of the literature needed some updating, so I continued my search for relevant studies in several ways. First, I turned to Academic Search Premier and ERIC (online databases) and, limiting my search to peer-reviewed journals and non-classroom based studies, I used the following search terms: social literacy, literacy as a social practice, literacy practices, visual literacy, spatial literacy, gestural literacy, body and literacy, audio literacy, multiliteracies, multiple literacies, multiple sign systems, intermediality, Design, Design framework, technology, computers, and popular culture. I then limited my scrutinizing of ERIC to the Journal of Literacy Research and Reading Research Quarterly, using the same search terms as listed above. Next, I used the Social Science Citation Index to find relevant articles that cited the initial publication of the New London Group (1996) and used pearling to find subsequently cited pieces. I performed a hand search of articles published since 1998 in the following journals: American Educational Research Journal, American Journal of Sociology, Annals of Tourism Research, Annual Review of Sociology, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Cultural Studies, Educational Researcher, Journal of Contemporary
18 Ethnography, Journal of Leisure Research, Journal of Literacy Research, Leisure Studies, Reading Research Quarterly, Review of Educational Research, Review of Research in Education, and Recreation Research Review. The studies that I review here concern both literacy in its connections with culture and with social practice and multiliteracies. I have grouped the studies in this review into themes that I found to be of import for my research: literacy as a culturally situated social practice, multiliteracies, and literacy within secondary Discourses. Literacy as a Culturally Situated Social Practice Studies that examine literacy as a culturally situated social practice have found that multiple forms of literacies exist and that these literacy practices are influenced by cultural norms and values. In addition, literacies serve to maintain and preserve cultural identity and to meet cultural needs. Multiple Literacies Researchers who view literacy within its connection to culture have presented detailed descriptions of literacy practices within particular communities. These studies point to the conception of literacies as multiple, rather than as a universal set of concrete skills that can be isolated and taught, aligning themselves with the argument against the notion of an autonomous, universal literacy (Street, 1984). Perhaps the most well known of these works for educators is Heath’s (1983) Ways with Words. Describing her research as an ethnography of communication, Heath examined the use of language in three communities in the Carolinas: Roadville, a white working-class community; Trackton, an African American working class community; and a mainstream white community. She argued that the children in these communities learned to use language differently,
19 depending on their community’s family structures, the roles available to members of the community, and the concepts of childhood that guided socialization. Scribner and Cole (1981), in an attempt to examine literacy apart from the effects of schooling, studied the Vai of West Africa, many of whom are literate in three different languages: Vai, Arabic, and English. They found that each language was connected not only to a particular form of education, but also to its own dominant sphere of influence. The Vai native language, used in traditional socialization, is written as a syllabary. The teacher-student relationship is one-on-one; individuals who wish to learn Vai script ask someone knowledgeable in the script to help them learn it. This learning usually takes place in home and everyday settings, and as it is a native language for the Vai, learning is fairly simple. The English language is connected with formal school, with the teacherstudent relationship assigned by school location. Rather than a one-on-one setting, the social context of learning to speak, read, and write English is a class in an organized school. Arabic is associated with Qur’anic schooling. Like English, Arabic is learned as a foreign language. Instead of taking place in a formal school setting however, each family chooses a teacher and the dominant teaching method is memorization in a class setting. Along with learning Arabic, religious knowledge of Islam is taught as well. Street (1984) also described two types of literacies in effect in 1970’s Iran: ‘maktab’ literacy, the traditional, religious literacy of those trained in the Islamic schools, and ‘commercial’ literacy, adaptations made to suit the needs of economic growth. Both literacies brought with them certain assumptions and conventions, showing that the acquisition and practice of literacies is a process of socialization into cultural and ideological norms. These three foundational studies illustrate that literacy cannot be
20 conceived of as having one universal form, but that literacies are tied to the values and beliefs of the cultures that produce them. Other researchers have given detailed, descriptive accounts of the literacies practiced by adults and children within communities outside of school. Barton and Hamilton (1998), for example, examined the use of reading and writing in Lancaster, England in the 1990s. They linked literacies to social practices and foregrounded the role of literacies as communal resources that contribute to the quality of local life. Their case studies of individuals in Lancaster demonstrated a wide range of literacy practices, patterns of gendering in everyday home literacies, and tensions in literacy practices in multilingual households. In an exploration of the literacy practices of families in an inner-city African American neighborhood, Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines (1988) found that the families they studied, considered by many to be only semi-literate, were in fact quite capable of using literacy for a wide variety of purposes, audiences, and situations. For example, they found their participants involved in news-related reading to gain information about third parties or distant events, or reading to gain information about local, state, and national events. In addition, these families read recreationally, during leisure time or in planning recreational events. They also read to check or confirm facts or beliefs, often from archival materials stored and retrieved only on special occasions. Involvement in critical/educational reading to fulfill educational requirements of school and college courses; to increase one’s abilities to consider and/or discuss political, social, aesthetic, or religious knowledge; and to educate oneself were also found. Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines also documented what they called sociohistorical reading, reading to explore one’s
21 personal identity and the social, political, and economic circumstances of one’s everyday life; and reading and rereading cherished writings that create a permanent record of the family’s life history as well as financial reading, reading to consider (and sometimes to make changes to) the economic circumstances of one’s everyday life; reading to fulfill practical (financial) needs of everyday life. Writing was also present in these families, as a reinforcement or substitute for oral messages; to establish, build, and maintain social relationships; to negotiate family responsibilities; to serve as a memory aid for both the writer and others; and to record numerals and amounts and purposes of expenditures, and for signatures. In addition, Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines found participants writing to meet practical needs and manage/organize everyday life; writing to gain access to social institutions or helping agencies; and as a means of self-expression. As a result of numerous examples of literacy in these households, Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines argued that to be literate is never a mechanical process that is solely dependent upon skills that are taught, and that sex, race, economic status, and setting cannot be used as significant correlates of literacy. In her study of the literacy practices of an Amish family and community, Fishman (1988) became aware of multiple forms of literacies after realizing that one of her informants, Anna Fisher, possessed literacies that she did not: It took Anna Fisher to teach me that literacy truly is a cultural practice, not a decontextualized, universal set of skills and abilities automatically transferable across contexts. It is not the technology or isolated skills of reading and writing that count, but the understanding and application of those technologies and skills within particular cultural frameworks that truly matter. (p. 3)
22 Reading and writing practices valued by the Amish people Fishman studied include following written directions, empathizing with characters, and making lists, among others. She addressed reading, writing, and meaning in four communities within the research setting: the immediate community, the larger community, the church community, and the school community. She found six identifiable abilities that count as reading to the Amish. These include (a) the ability to discriminate among print materials, to select from what is available and to manage what is selected; (b) following written directions; (c) recalling what is read; (d) memorization; (e) synthesizing what is read in a single text with what is already known; and (f) empathizing with characters in a text. Mainstream abilities that are not significant to the Amish are literary appreciation and literary criticism. Writing abilities that are significant to the Amish include copying, encoding, listing, following formats, and choosing content. Mainstream writing abilities that are not significant to the Amish are English grammar and punctuation, the thirdperson formal essay, mainstream journalism, and originality. Choices of forms of reading and writing made by the Amish helped to maintain the values of their community and to keep that community separate from the outside world. Even the practice of filling in government forms reveals how language and literacy practices are determined culturally. Jones (2000) studied the communicative practices of Welsh farming people in north east Wales. She provided samples of talk around the filling in of government forms as farmers checked in their cattle at an auction. In particular, she describes the work of an auction staff member, whose responsibility was to help Welsh-speaking cattle owners fill in “animal movement forms,” new government forms that were printed in English. Her analysis shows code-mixing of
23 English and Welsh taking place when English forms are being filled out, but no code mixing when both the written text and the spoken interaction were in Welsh. By studying these bureaucratic practices, she shed light on ways in which the institutional bureaucracy met the day-to-day talk of farmers and on the processes of articulation, negotiation, and inscription that took place at this junction. In another study that highlights how cultural differences can impact literacy, Bus, Leseman, and Keultjes (2000), studied how parents from different cultural groups read to their children. 19 Surinamese-Dutch, 19 Turkish-Dutch, and 19 Dutch low-income parent-child dyads were videotaped as they read a book and were evaluated in terms of supportive presence. The authors found that the ethnic groups differed in types of interactions. For example, Dutch parents were more likely to use synonyms for words or to simplify phrases than either the Turkish-Dutch or the Surinamese Dutch. Dutch dyads paid more attention to connections going beyond the text and focused more on children’s own experiences. Turkish-Dutch dyads scored comparatively higher on discussion of the procedure, and Surinamese-Dutch on naming of characters in illustrations. These differences, based on the culture of the family and not the level of parental literacy, marked the storybook reading that occurred in the dyads. Two studies look at the work of language and literacy acquisition in social settings (Bell, 1995; Ogbu, 1999) and illustrate differences among cultures in beliefs about language and learning. In an autobiographical study of her own attempt to learn Chinese as a second language, Bell (1995) pointed out differences between English and Chinese literacy. She studied Chinese with a private tutor and simultaneously enrolled in a university course in spoken Cantonese. In her work with a private tutor (a bilingual and
24 bicultural graduate student), several differences arose in how they perceived literacy. Bell found that she, as a native English speaker, conceived of literacy as reading, emphasized content over form, believed that a good learner was a quick, active, questioning learner, and valued an analytic approach to learning language. Her tutor, however, as a native Cantonese speaker, conceived of literacy as writing, emphasized form over content, believed that a good learner was slow and observant, and took a holistic approach to learning language. Ogbu’s (1999) two-year ethnographic study of a Black speech community in Oakland, California focuses on dialect perceptions, beliefs, and responses. He found that in this inner city Black community, Lafayette, both “slang” English and “proper” English co-exist. In addition, he found that Lafayette adults and children believed that society gives White or proper English a higher social value than Black English. Black slang English was reported to be used for everyday communication in the family and community, whereas proper English was considered more important for school workplaces, and communicating with outsiders. In addition, Ogbu found that parents expect teachers to help children develop proper English, because they themselves either did not speak it at all or did not speak it well and because conflicting beliefs about the consequences of speaking proper English exist within the community. These studies show that literacies and culture are interconnected in several ways. First, children are socialized into particular ways of language learning and use. In addition, forms of language and literacy use within cultural contexts are particular to both educational and economic contexts. Numerous forms of literacy may be present, even in communities considered by outsiders to be semi-literate or illiterate. Literacies are used
25 to maintain community values and to keep communities separate from the rest of the world. Literacy is a site where bureaucracy meets day-to-day life and through which power negotiations are articulated. Literacies are communal resources that contribute to the quality of local life. Cultural differences exist in ways of storybook reading between parents and children. Cultural perceptions of literacy differ and these differences may create difficulties for language and literacy learning. Finally, beliefs about the appropriateness of language use and how language and literacy learning should be achieved may also vary from one culture to another. Thus, Street’s (1984) argument for an ideological literacy has been born out in this research. Several researchers have documented literacy practices or cultural connections with literacy by examining literacy artifacts. Hamilton (2000), for example, used newspaper photographs of people interacting with literacy to identify four elements of literacy practices: participants, settings, artifacts, and activities. Each of these elements contains connections both to individuals and to their social milieus. Participants in these photographs included people interacting with written texts, plus hidden participants – other people or groups of people involved in the social relationships of producing, interpreting, circulating, and otherwise regulating written texts. The settings were the immediate physical circumstances in which the interaction takes place, including the domain of practice within which the event takes place and takes its sense and social purpose. Artifacts were the material tools and accessories that are involved in the interaction (including the texts), as well as all the other resources brought to the literacy practice including non-material values, understandings, ways of thinking, feeling, skills, and knowledge. Activities were the actions performed by participants in the literacy
26 event, as well as structured routines and pathways that facilitate or regulate actions, and rules of appropriacy concerning who is able to or does participate in particular activities. Hamilton argues that documenting literacy events is a necessary first step, because literacy practices can only be inferred from observable evidence. Through the analysis of these photographs, Hamilton found four types of literacy events: interactions between people and written texts, literacy in the environment, literacy on the body, and reproductions of documents. Hamilton argued for a reconsideration of what interaction may consist of in a literacy event and perhaps the adequacy of the notion of an event itself. Ormerod and Ivanic (2000) elaborated on artifacts as elements of literacy practices by examining the physical characteristics of texts written by 37 children from year 4 to year 6 in a middle class neighborhood in northwest England. From these texts, they argued, beliefs and values can be inferred, as well as a constantly changing process of literacy learning that involves several different geographical dimensions and individuals. Beginning with a detailed description of one student’s project on bats, Ormerod and Ivanic discussed the range of materials and technologies used, the ways in which they are used, and the understandings, attitudes, and decision-making associated with the materials and technologies used. They described the contributions of other people to this project, in providing access to resources, ideas for material presentation, and direct physical help with its production. They concluded that the physical characteristics of literacy artifacts reflect attitudes, beliefs, and approaches concerning literacy, and that these practices and beliefs are rooted in the children’s experiences in and out of school, as individuals and as members of different social groups. In addition,
27 they argued that project work flows between different social and geographical domains, involving a wide range of people, that physical characteristics draw attention to the complexity and significance of the ‘physical dimension’ to literacy learning, and that the processes observed are not static, but constantly changing, both in the lives of individuals and as cultural resources. Tusting (2000) analyzed a parish newsletter and other artifacts from a church to demonstrate the importance of time as a factor in literacy practices. She demonstrated that time is an important aspect of the new literacy studies, and that focusing on time and literacy can give useful insights into literacy practices. In her analysis, Tusting found that an investment in time is used as a measure of commitment and the production of literacy artifacts is a material ‘proof’ of this commitment. In addition, she found that these literacy artifacts were used both permanently and in recurrent literacy events to achieve community awareness of candidates’ progress through the process of confirmation, and that literacy was used to transcend the temporary nature of the ceremony itself and create a permanent historical record of a once-only event. Thus, literacy synchronized events in time, in order to achieve the social goal of maintenance of community identity at both local and global levels. These studies illustrate the effectiveness of studying artifacts of literacy events, as these artifacts may bring to light hidden aspects of literacy practices, such as time, the involvement of others, and a broad range of literacy events. However, setting a study of literacy artifacts within a larger ethnographic study would be a more powerful research design.
28 Creating and Maintaining Cultural Identity The influence of cultural values and beliefs on the ways that particular literacies are enacted within a culture has also been a focus of attention for research. Through this examination, literacy can be seen as a tool used to create and maintain cultural identity. Several researchers have made clear that literacy serves to maintain and preserve the ways of a culture. Fishman’s (1988) research on Amish literacies found four functions for literacy in Amish society: identification, affiliation, separation, and cooperation. The first two, identification and affiliation, occurred intraculturally, in that the individuals Fishman studied identified themselves as members of a family, as Amish, and as American through their choices of texts. The last two, separation and cooperation, occured interculturally. By choosing not to read and write certain texts, members of the Amish community maintain their separation from mainstream America. Because this separation can never be complete, however, they cooperate in order to fulfill the literacy requirements of the ‘outside’ world. Thus, Fishman found that literacy played a key role in confirming and maintaining cultural identity. Literacy also played a part in maintaining a sense of community in Moss’s (1994) research on African American churches. Moss described sermons as cooperative dialogues or community texts, as they were initially written by ministers but were substantially changed through the participation of the congregation. As such, sermons were forms of literacy that were designed to construct communities and identities. By using first-person plural pronouns, telling personal stories, and assuming shared knowledge, the ministers identified with the community, allowed the community to identify with them, and demonstrated their knowledge of the community. Thus the
29 sermon is viewed as a community text, with no concept of text ownership or intellectual property; the sermon is delivered by the minister, but its meaning is determined by the participants, as they cooperate in its delivery. Rhetorical strategies may also serve to orient speakers and writers within certain community practices of literacy. Guerra (1998), for example, connected cultural identity with literacy practices as he chronicled the oral story telling patterns, personal letter writing, and narrative writing of members of a social network within Chicago’s Mexicano community. He found a range of communicative practices across oral and written genres that demonstrated a rich repository of rhetorical strategies, such as grace, eloquence, flavor, emotion, and sincerity. These qualities, described as a “mexicano discourse style” (p. 73) are present whether speakers are involved in self-oriented narratives or other-oriented narratives. These strategies, examples of communal rather than individual property, were used by individuals to fit into their discourse communities. Literacy practices may also be seen as tools for maintaining cultural traditions. McLaughlin (1989) studied uses for English and Navajo literacy on a Navajo reservation in Arizona. In a two-year ethnographic study, he found that Navajo community members both read and wrote in Navajo in ways that contributed to the maintenance of traditional culture and promoted self-understanding. These literacy practices took place in church, school, and home settings and included biblical texts, hymns, pedagogical texts, newspapers, letters, class notes, journals, lists, and personal notes. Both the church and the school of this community structured uses for Navajo literacy, in an attempt to maintain traditional cultural ways.
30 At times, cultural and individual understandings of literacy and its value may come into conflict. Mahiri and Godley (1998) examined the interconnections between social and personal meanings of literacy in their case study of Viviana, a Latina college senior who was afflicted with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, which caused her to lose her ability to write in the midst of a promising academic career. They found that Viviana’s perceptions of her personal and social development were powerfully connected to her writing and other practices of literacy. When she lost the ability to write, Viviana’s perception of herself as an intellectual and as a contributing member of her family and community were threatened. Because she bought into the notion that her writing was so tied to these perceptions of herself, they found that her investment in literacy came at a serious cultural cost and that her educational choices and achievements made her an anomaly in her culture. These findings showed that it is the social construction of literacy, not its autonomous nature, which holds consequences for the individual. In these studies, literacies are tools used to maintain cultural and personal identity. Choices of texts and the ways in which those texts are read and written have important roles to play in creating and maintaining a sense of community and in helping individuals to choose and to maintain their roles within those communities. What is missing in these studies, although it is alluded in Mahiri and Godley (1989), is the role of the individual within communally valued literacy practices. Meeting Cultural Needs Several studies have demonstrated that literacy is a tool used to meet culturally determined needs. Weinstein-Shr (1994) described the literacies and social resources of three individuals in Philadelphia’s Hmong community. Some members of the community
31 used their literacies to engage with the institutional world of education and bureaucracy, and others used literacies to support a kinship system. Both uses of literacies provided needed resources, reflected differing aspirations, and created new roles in their respective communities. Kulick and Stroud (1993) illustrated how the people of Gapun village in Papua, New Guinea “actively and creatively apply literate skills to suit their own purposes and needs” (p. 31). Gapuners see literacy and its associates – schooling and religion – as a route through which they can receive the material goods prized by their culture. Literate Gapuners practice close reading of religious texts to find out the “secret” that will help them acquire these material goods. Bloch (1993) studied the culture and literacy of the Zafimaniry of Madagascar, in particular the ways in which they have taken literacy and incorporated it into their own beliefs regarding the wisdom of the elders. The Zafimaniry see education as a potential avenue to social success and wealth; however, the achievements of young, literate people are not valued as highly as the wisdom of the largely illiterate elders. Any forms of literacy that emanate from the village, such as an occasional letter, may be written by a young, literate person, but they are seen as emanating from and containing the wisdom of the elders of the village. In addition, Besnier’s (1991) study of the literacy practices of Nukulaelae atoll of Western Polynesia describes two literacy practices: letter writing and sermon writing. Besnier found that personal letters in this cultural group are frequently affectively charged events, whereas sermon writing provides an opportunity for authoritative statements. Because personhood in Nukulaelae society is perceived of as having different meanings in different social contexts, these literacy practices provide a foregrounding of
32 different aspects of the definition of the person and are located in different interactional, social, and ideological linkages. Bledsoe and Robey (1993) studied the literacy practices of the Mende people of Sierra Leone and found that these practices were closely connected to power and to secrecy. The Mende secret societies, called the Poro and Sande groups, use special sign languages, songs, and dances to manage power through ritual authority. In addition, many of the Mende rely heavily on magicians and wise men, called morimen and karamokos, who use the text of the Koran to effect cures and to give blessings. The literate abilities owned by these wise men were extremely valuable, and thus were commonly kept secret, or taught only to a few who paid for their education. Bledsoe and Robey argued that writing is just as suited to maintaining secrets as it is to facilitating communication, especially for the Mende: “The Mende of Sierra Leone view literacy less as a mnemonic device than a resource to bolster the legitimacy of claims and provide (or preclude) access to secret domains of knowledge whose meanings are dangerous to those without legitimate social and ritual qualifications” (p. 112). These studies clearly demonstrate links between cultural values and beliefs about how needs get met and the inscription of those values and beliefs on literacies. When taken together with the other research cited on literacy as a socially situated cultural practice, a broad base is set for continuing work that examines literacy as a social practice. However, all of these studies consider literacy as a purely language-based phenomenon, in that they examine written and spoken texts and talk around those texts. In addition, the roles of the individual and of the community seem to be conflated, with no room in the notion of literacy practices for individual design. In addition, none of
33 these studies is linked to the notion of Design, an important theoretical conception of literacy that involves non language-based texts, the work of the individual and of the social group. Multiliteracies Researchers and theorists in the New Literacy Studies and in multiliteracies have theorized about broadening the definition of literacy by examining it in light of the changes taking place in society and the increasingly heavy demands placed on students by globalization, multimedia, and technology. Luke and Elkins (1998) described the transformative effect of new types of texts, such as those inherent in information technologies, and presented the task of educators: “to understand how new (and old) technologies, workplaces, and institutions might place new demands on, create new opportunities for, or, for that matter, exclude and discriminate against the adolescents or adult learners we teach” (p. 6). Some research that I classify as involving multiliteracies doesn’t use the framework as described by the New London Group (2000). Researchers in the humanities, for example, have begun to examine connections among language, texts, bodies, and visuals in their respective spheres. An historical and archival study of the Spanish work to reducir (reduce) or colonize the people of the northern Andes described the involvement of alphabetic literacy, visual representation, and town planning in this process (Cummins & Rappaport, 1998). To bring order to what they perceived as chaos, the Spaniards taught alphabetic literacy and grammar. In addition, they built urban grids, carefully prescribing in which grid each individual would live. The Spaniards built churches, government spaces, and decorated them with art and textiles that reflected their
34 own religious and cultural beliefs, as well as their reconceptualizations of those of the colonized peoples. Thus, the colonization of territorial, ritual, conceptual, literate, and architectonic space would ultimately colonize the native sense of history, irrevocably altering knowledge of the past by lodging it within colonial ideological structures that were shared, albeit in different ways, by Spaniards and natives (p. 193). Recognizing the interconnectedness between language, art, space, and architecture, Cummins and Rappaport applied this understanding to a cultural setting of power and disenfranchisement. Another example of research that explores these connections, this time from the field of African literature, is Muller’s (1997) exploration of the transference of the power and value of the written word onto traditional Zulu ritual performance and attire by a group of Nazirite women in South Africa who neither read nor write. This transference was accomplished at three levels: verbalization, ritual song and dance, and women’s beadwork. Verbalization of dreams or miracle experiences placed these “texts” into the group’s narrations and some of them were eventually written down by the church secretary. Songs and dances of the ritual were seen as the path “that enables ascent into the holy space” (p. 6). Finally, in the women’s beadwork, which signifies marital status, can be seen a parallel to the music of Nazarite women’s song performance: The most obvious parallels in these two media are: the overall ascent, plateau and descent of the melodic and visual contours; both outlines are filled in with a polyphony of vocal and visual color, pattern and texture; there are long straight white lines of beadwork that may resemble the nonmelodic, evenly spaced pulses
35 of dance performance that are externalized in feet-stamping, hand-clapping, and drum beats; and finally, the cadential moment at the end of a textual couplet or stanza is represented visually in the double vertical line of beads on the front of the hat, in line with the woman’s nose. These beads separate the mirror image into two parts, in much the same way as a four-lined stanza is divided in half by the musical cadence. (Muller, 1997, p. 10) Thus, although these women have no alphabetic literacy, they use their beadwork, music, and verbalizations to gain access to power normally attributed to the written word, in this case the power of entrance into heaven. From the field of dance, Kuppers (2000) addressed the use of performances by disabled dancers to teach “dance literacy,” which they described as “our ability to read dance and appreciate the manipulation of bodies, spaces, and time” (p. 119). Exposing the public to dancing wheel chair users and to troops of dancers that use distancing and physical limitations upsets fixed ideas about dancers, disability, and dance. Artist Tiffany Holmes (1999) described her art installation called “Littoral Zone,” in which she uses digital, biomedical, linguistic, and artistic modes to represent the body. She used these pieces to help observers to consider how visual, scientific, and linguistic representations of the body dictate their perceptions. A final example of research from the humanities is a study by Marvin (1994), in which she analyzed historical accounts of book collection and medical practices, as well as the history of medical knowledge. First arguing that a mark of literate competence is skill in disguising or erasing the contribution of the body to the process of textual production, Marvin went on to examine the practice of binding books with the human
36 skin, called anthropodermic bibliopegy. She then analyzed the divide in medical training between text-based studies of physicians and the body-based dissection work of barbers/surgeons during the medieval and Renaissance eras, a divide which resulted in the devaluing of the bodies of criminals and the poor, whose skins were used to bind books owned by some of these medical men. Marvin argued that if literacy is to be considered not exclusively a mental skill, we must pay attention to the notion of literacy as an embodied practice, extending literacy studies to topics such as binding books with human skin, though these topics may have excited little interest in the past in examinations of literacy as a cognitive skill. A few classroom-based studies have invoked the notion of multiliteracies through the use of technology or through pop culture, studying kindergarten children’s use of multiple forms of literacy through classroom computer use (Labbo, 1996); high school students’ interactions with the grammars of art and abstraction (Kist, 2002); lessons designed around pop culture texts in middle school classrooms (Stevens, 2001); and “atrisk” students involvment in multimedia activities in a literacy lab (O’Brien, 1998). Others have examined ways in which students use multiple sign systems to navigate literacies in classrooms through postmodern picture books (Anstey, 2002), and through interpretation of the sign systems of art, music, mathematics, drama, and language (Leland and Harste, 1994). Worthman (2002) describes the work of a student who uses dance to tell a story, describing the student’s storytelling as “imaginal interaction.” Through this process, the student used the literacy practice of dance to communicate her understanding of the world.
37 Some reading researchers have delved into multiple literacies in non-classroom based settings. For example, Smith (2001) examined her interaction with her son, James, in connection to three different types of storybooks: traditional, CD-ROM, and language experience storybooks. She found differing patterns of engagement with each medium and that the medium of the storybooks contributed uniquely to James’ knowledge and literacy development. A study by Steffensen, Geotz, and Cheng (1999) examined bilingual readers’ nonverbal responses, including visualizations and emotions, to reading a text in both English and Chinese about a train trip. Readers were asked to give reports of the imagery and emotional responses they experienced during reading. The authors found that when these native Chinese speakers read in English, they reported fewer experiences of imagery as they read. These studies, whereas they seem to indicate some movement toward considering non-language based literacies, do so in only minimal ways. Research from the humanities looks at combined notions of linguistic, visual, spatial, and bodily texts, but this research does not come from the standpoint of an educator and does not observe these literacies as they are played out by a group of people in the process of accomplishing a goal. Studies in education that examine multiliteracies are few and far between, and they have focused on multiliteracies as multimedia texts, pop culture, varieties of print texts, and dance. None of the research in education has addressed multiliteracies by examining all of the elements of multiliteracies within a specific community setting. In addition, none of the work in multiliteracies has examined the role of culture within multiliteracies.
38 Literacy within Secondary Discourses Whereas the cultural contexts for the studies discussed previously are those that Gee (1996) would call primary Discourses, that is “those to which people are apprenticed early in life during their primary socialization as members of particular families” (p. 137), some research on literacy as a social practice has taken place in contexts that are secondary Discourses. Secondary Discourses include “other Discourses which crucially involve social institutions beyond the family” (Gee, 1996, p. 143). These groupings might also be called affinity groups (Gee, 2001) or communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). Wilson (2000), for example, studied the literacy practices of inmates at a penitentiary. The inmates brought literacy practices from the outside world and merged them with those of the prison setting, resulting in entirely new creations. Faced with the prospect of wearing prison-issue shoes (considered ‘uncool’), one inmate stated that he would rather go without shoes than to be seen in them. The officers on duty customized the shoes into ‘Adidas prison trainers’ by drawing three stripes down the outside edge. Thus, prison discourse and outside discourse were combined. Wilson proposed that “all of those involved are engaged in a literacy-related activity, with a culturally appropriate Discourse, situated in a culturally approved space, which embodies but transcends the ideologies from which it is formed” (p. 58). Wilson argued that the two notions of prison as autonomous entity and prison as social environments are bound up in the realities of closed institutions. In addition, she argued that theoretical issues around both need to be recognized, addressed, and included in any discussion on the place of communicative practices within penal establishments. The two notions of literacy as autonomous and literacies as sociocultural constructs are similarly bound up in the realities of closed
39 institutions and that both contribute to the generation of communicative practices within penal establishments. Wilson drew a theoretical framework around salient aspects of autonomy and social multiplicities within which to make visible a third space: a space which supports its own culturally-specific discourse, generated, influenced, and sustained by the interrelation of these notions of prison and literacy. She overlaid a third space notion on prison, the combination of an outside world and the prison world, with a third space notion on literacy: the combination of literacy as autonomous and literacies as multiple. The literacies of secondary Discourses can also be influenced by societal conceptions of power. Kalman (1999) studied the literacy practices of scribes and their clients in the Plaza de Santo Domingo in Mexico City and the negotiation that took place as they composed or typed documents for their clients. She described differing stances in the scribe/client relationship, each of which determined the amount of negotiation that took place in the creation of texts. Then Kalman looked at some of the underlying reasons for the stances taken by both scribes and clients, as well as the connections that the participants made between the documents they produced, their lives, and their purposes for writing them. She found that textual choices made were mediated by the scribes’ and clients’ social knowledge and their concern for the potential consequences of their choices in the context of specific social relationships and situations. All of these choices were influenced not only by the differing literacy capabilities of the clients and scribes, but also by differences in their perceived status and in their gender. A second example of a study involving the literacy practices of a secondary Discourse is de Pourbaix’s (2000) study of language learners’ computer discussions.
40 Participants in these discussions were undergraduate students who were required to enroll in an online class, “English as a Second Language for Academic Purposes” at a Canadian university, because they were unable to demonstrate a required level of language proficiency. The students were involved in an electronic discussion throughout the semester, and during that time a specific set of practices emerged. de Pourbaix described the academic, computer, and information literacies that developed among the students and noted the impact of a multiplicity of overlapping communities and domains of practice upon the emergence of discourse practices in this newly formed community. In a study that described adolescent literacies outside of a school setting, Mahiri (1994) documented the literacy practices of adolescent African American males who were involved in a Youth Basketball Association (YBA). He found a wide array of literacy practices in this sports setting that were tied directly to sports discourse. The boys closely read rulebooks for league play, newspaper articles about NCAA and NBA teams, and guidebooks for collecting basketball cards, building a “knowledge base (a discipline) that these youths had mastered to a higher degree than just about every adult they knew” (p. 137). Like Heath (1983), who found that schools did not support the home literacies of many of her participants, Mahiri highlighted the literate abilities of these boys within the discourse of sports, a discourse not supported by traditional schooling practices. A second report of adolescent literacies outside of school, and one that incorporates multiple forms of literacy as well, is Moje’s (2000) study on the unsanctioned literacy practices of gang-connected youths in Salt Lake City, Utah. She described written practices, bodily practices, and oral practices that were used to signify identification with and membership in gangs. Written practices included poetry and
41 parody, tagging and graffiti writing, and letters and notes. Bodily practices included dress, makeup, and gestures. Oral practices included words, accents, and plays on language. Describing these young people as apprenticing themselves to others in a community of practice and trying out these practices in a variety of spaces, she found that they valued these unsanctioned literacy practices more than those of school because of the connections they made between these literacy practices and their families and culture. Moje concluded by arguing that literacy theorists, researchers and educators should should acknowledge, challenge, and extend the power of these unsanctioned literacy practices. Thru-hikers, like Wilson’s (2000) prison community, de Pourbaix’s (2000) online community, Moje’s (2001) gangsta community, Mahiri’s (1994) YBA community, and Kalman’s (1999) scribe community, form a secondary Discourse, a community of practice, or an affinity group. As such, the literacies of thru-hikers present an interesting combination of home or school literacies and literacies learned along the trail. Like the students described in de Pourbaix’s study of the emerging practices of an on-line community, thru-hikers create their own ethos and forge their own literacy practices in keeping with the cultural values of the secondary Discourse that they have chosen to join. Most research on backpackers comes from work done in the field of tourism and recreation (Elsrud, 1998, 2000; Loker-Murphy & Pearce, 1995; Murphy, 2001). Defining backpackers as tourists and travelers, with (a) a preference for budget accommodation, (b) an emphasis on meeting other people, (c) independently organized and flexible travel schedules, (d) longer rather than brief holidays, and e) an emphasis on informal and participatory holiday activities (Loker-Murphy & Pearce, 1995), Murphy (2001) found
42 that backpackers have informal networks of information dissemination. Elsrud (2001) defined a backpacker as a long-term budget traveler, one who was away from home for a year or more, and explored how narratives of risk and adventure among backpackers express cultural beliefs and enable individuals to position themselves within a hierarchical structure. In addition, Elsrud (1995) described these long-term journeys as attempts to move away from clock time into a time when the traveler is left alone to do her own structuring of time and experiences. Whereas these studies do provide a sense of the informal networks among backpackers and the hierarchical structures that can be found within them, I find that their focus on the backpacker as tourist moves away from my perception of Appalachian Trail thru-hikers, a group of backpackers I see as athletes rather than travelers. No research that I could find within the field of literacy studies has examined the literacies of backpackers. The research reviewed here provides strong support for connections between literacy and culture, for the use of literacy to maintain cultural identity and meet cultural needs, and for literacy in secondary Discourses. The few examples of research that I found that approximate multiliteracies from reading researchers trace this notion to work in emergent literacy research (Labbo, 1996, Smith, 2001), instead of seeing multiple literacies as emerging from differing cultural settings. In addition, the research I have cited here does not include an attempt to understand non-language based literacies or ecological literacy. I found no research that examines multiliteracies, as defined by the New London Group (2000), in the setting of a cultural group that is also a secondary Discourse, affinity group, or community of practice. Moje’s (2000) study on the literacy practices of gangsta youth perhaps most closely approximates the intent of my research
43 into the multiliteracies of the AT thru-hiking community, in that, like mine, Moje’s research was ethnographic in nature, set in a group she described as a secondary Discourse, and examined multiple forms of literacy. I believe, however, that certain differences apply. Moje refers to literacy as the reading and writing of written texts, arguing that conflating written texts with speaking, listening, dancing, drawing, and other forms of representation strengthens the privileged position of print literacy. Instead of representing gestures, clothing, tattoos, and the like as literacy, she describes them as Discourses, tools that her participants use to shape their identifications. My study relies on the background established by research into literacy as a social practice and forges ahead into new territory by examining multiliteracies within a secondary Discourse and by using the Design framework as both a tool for analysis and a way of understanding multiliteracies and culture.
44
CHAPTER 3 METHODS Ethnography is both a research design and a research product. As a research design, ethnography is used to investigate the everyday lives of individuals within the groups or communities they belong to. Ethnographers become participators in the daily lives of the groups they study and observe what goes on around them. While involved in this process of participant-observation, ethnographers turn their observations into data collection: they write down their observations, ask questions of participants and learn from and write about the answers. Thus, through participant-observation and data collection, ethnographers create a systematic, cumulative written record of their experiences and observations (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995; Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995). Using their own experiences and this cumulative written record, ethnographers then create a research product: an ethnography. An ethnography as product is a narrative or an interpretation about a group of people created by a researcher who has spent an extended amount of time in face-to-face interaction with people in the community or group being studied. Historically, ethnographers have attempted to provide complete pictures of the groups they studied, including beliefs, values, traditions, social networks, language, commerce, technology, and other aspects of the culture being studied. Contemporary ethnographies, however, are more commonly focused on a particular aspect or issue within a culture (LeCompte & Schensul, 1999). This practice of narrowing the focus to an issue within a community results in a product called a topicoriented ethnography by Spradley (1980).
45 Literacy researchers who are interested in the connections between the way individuals practice literacy and their cultural ways of being have used ethnography to observe literacy practices within communities. Barton and Hamilton (1998), in their study of the literacy practices of Lancaster, England in the 1990s, chose ethnography for their research because it was appropriate to their understanding of literacy as embedded in a social context. They used participant-observation, interviews, and surveys to examine how literacy and culture were connected in this community. Similarly, in her study of an Amish family and community and their literacies, Fishman (1988) rejected traditional survey or other descriptive methods because they seemed to assume homogeneity among the Amish. Fishman wanted to show the Amish as individuals using literacy in individualized as well as communal ways, so she utilized ethnographic methods, especially participant-observation, to provide her research with rich descriptions of the individuals in the family she studied. For her study of the way children in differing communities in the Piedmont learned to use language and correspondingly learned the values of their communities, Heath (1983) used participant-observation, relying heavily on fieldnotes to make connections among language learning, language use, and culture. These ethnographers, studying both literacy and culture, chose ethnography as a research method because of its emphasis on lived experience. I have chosen to examine connections among literacy and culture in the AT thruhiking community. Like these researchers, I want to portray the embeddedness of thruhiker literacies within thru-hiker culture and to provide rich descriptions of the individuals, their culture, and their multiliteracies. Because ethnographic methods use the concept of culture as a lens through which to interpret results (LeCompte & Schensul,
46 1999), I have chosen descriptive ethnographic methods of participant-observation, interviewing, and artifact collection as the most appropriate methods for the study of these connections. Ethnographic methods, with their emphasis on the daily lives of individuals within groups, suited my study in both practical and theoretical ways. Through participant-observation, I gained access to thru-hiker’s daily lives in order to observe and write about their literacy practices in fieldnotes. Artifacts and interviewing provided opportunities to collect thru-hikers’ stories about and understandings of both their culture and their literacy practices. But thru-hikers are not just individuals; they are part of a larger group. Because ethnographic methods are designed to examine not only the experiences of individuals, but also the experiences of individuals as they occur within groups or communities, these methods suited my desire to investigate the connections among the literate practices of thru-hikers and their cultural ways of being. I chose ethnographic methods as both research design and product because it gave me tools to use in examining and writing about the daily lives, multiliteracies, and culture of the Appalachian Trail thru-hiking community. Data Collection In the following sections I outline the methods I used for collection of fieldnotes, interviews, archival, and response data. Observation I took daily hand-written fieldnotes of interactions and behaviors of thru-hikers and other members of the AT thru-hiking community during the six months of my involvement in thru-hiking. Some of these notes were taken in the evenings, as thru-
47 hikers were arriving to shelters or camping areas, cooking dinner, setting up camp, and interacting. Often, while I was hiking, I had conversations with other hikers who passed me or whom I passed. When these conversations or other thoughts occurred during the day, I wrote notes about them in a small spiral-bound notebook that I kept in a handy pocket of my pack. Later in the evening, I expanded these hand-written notes into typed fieldnotes, using a small hand-held computer that I purchased for this purpose prior to my hike. Following Spradley’s (1980) and Hammersley and Atkinson’s (1995) advice, I attempted to develop an ethnographic record that clearly reflects the language of participants in their own words and is full of concrete, specific detail. I documented actions, conversations, and evidence that connect the literacies of thru-hikers to elements of their culture as these elements became apparent to me. I occasionally drew maps or diagrams of shelters, campsites, and hostels, and included them in my fieldnotes. For an example of initial, hand-written fieldnotes, and the same set of notes expanded and typewritten, see Appendixes A and B. Also included in my fieldnotes are the results of informal interviews (Rosman & Rallis, 1998). Informal interviews were serendipitous and conversational, occurring naturally while I was talking to other thru-hikers, and their responses were included in my handwritten notes and were typed up and extended in the evenings. I asked thruhikers informal questions concerning how they got their trail names and where they were from. For example, on March 22, I met several people and provided descriptions of them in my fieldnotes: Also met Hot Water and The Senator again today. Hot Water is only 18! She is collecting purposes: people's reasons for being here.
48 Starbright graduated from UGA with a degree in history. He's probably around 25 or 26. He said that he didn't really think beyond graduation when he was in college. After graduation, he got a "generic" job for three years and now is thruhiking. Going into education is still a possibility. When I asked him if this shelter had a privy, he read in the handbook and said "It doesn't say anything about a privy, and usually it would if there was one.” We ate lunch with Starbright, Hot Water, and The Senator. When I told them about my dissertation, Hot Water said "Cool!" When I returned home from the AT, I downloaded my fieldnotes from my hand-held computer to a PC, added line numbers and page numbers to the documents, printed them, and placed them in a notebook for ease in reading. Interviews I began to choose key informants for formal interviews during the second month of the data collection period, when I felt that I had gained access into the setting and had found people who would be willing and able to tell me about their understanding of the culture of thru-hikers and their own literacy practices. I took the advice of Hammersley and Atkinson (1995), who suggested choosing informants who are especially sensitive to an area of concern and who are willing to reveal information, and Creswell (1998), who advised choosing key informants who are well informed, accessible, and able to provide leads and other information. A further concern in choosing participants for formal interviews was finding a time and place to make the interview happen, and getting to know participants well enough to allow me to ask them to be involved in the study. All of
49 the interview participants signed consent forms (See Appendix C for a sample consent form). Most thru-hikers take trail names, which are nicknames that they either choose for themselves or are given to them by another thru-hiker based on a personality characteristic or an event. My trail name, for example, is Turtle, a name I chose for myself because I wanted to be persistent in attempts to thru-hike. It helped, of course, that my hiking pace was on the slower side, as well. In order to preserve the confidentiality of my participants, I chose pseudo-trail names for them, carefully attempting to maintain something of the meaning of their names but still camouflaging their identity. I interview 15 thru-hikers and 2 individuals who either worked at or managed hostels at which thruhikers commonly stayed. In Table 3, I present the pseudonyms and demographic information descriptive of my interview participants, along with the places and dates of the interviews.
50 Table 3 Interview Participants Interview date
Participant name
Demographic information
Place of interview
May 19, 2001
Critter
White male, mid-50s, retired biologist
Damascus, VA
June 20, 2001
Sassafrass
White male, early 20s, college student
Pinefield Hut, VA
July 9, 2001
Mole
White male, mid-30s, equipment manager
Caledonia Park, PA
July 15, 2001
Turtle
White female, late 30s, graduate student
Peter Mtn. Shelter, PA
July 29, 2001
Davenport
White female, mid-30s, software consultant
Vernon, NJ
August 11, 2001
Jumper
White female, early 20s, college graduate
Salisbury, CT
August 21, 2001
Jockey
White male, early 20s, college graduate
Cheshire, MA
August 22, 2001
Jennifer
White female, mid-20s, college graduate
Bennington, VT
August 25, 2001
Iron Foot
White female, mid-30s, land surveyor
Woodstock, VT
August 25, 2001
Kelton
White male, mid-40s, technician
Woodstock, VT
August 26, 2001
Belly Dancer
White female, early 20s, high school graduate
Woodstock, VT
September 1, 2001
Tenderfoot
White female, early 50s, retired nurse
Glencliff, NH
September 1, 2001
Sure Pace
African American male, mid-50s, doctor
Glencliff, NH
51 September 10, 2001 September 10, 2001 September 10, 2001 October 13, 2001
Barton Smith
White male, mid-50s, hostel manager
Gorham, NH
Buffalo
White male, early 20s, college graduate
Gorham, NH
Binx
White male, 19, high school graduate
Gorham, NH
Bill Parsons
White male, late 50s, hostel owner and manager
Elizabethton, TN
52 All of the interview participants were thru-hikers, except for Barton Smith, who worked at a hostel in New Hampshire, and Bill Parsons, who owned a hostel in Tennessee. As is evident from this table, the majority of interview participants were White, with only one African American participant, Sure Pace. Though this predominance of White participants may seem odd, it does reflect the predominance of whiteness in the AT thru-hiking community. In my fieldnotes and journals, I mention 229 thru-hikers by name. Of those, 97% (222) were European-American, and 3% (7) were African American or Asian American. The interviews began in May and continued through September, with quite a few concentrated near the end of the data collection period, in late August and early September. I interviewed life partners Iron Foot and Kelton and married couple Slow and Sure Pace as couples. After returning home from my thru-hike in early October, I made arrangements to interview Bill Parsons, a hostel owner and manager in Tennessee, on October 13, 2001. The purpose of these interviews was to investigate the everyday world of thruhikers and to collect thru-hikers’ observations about their literacy practices and their culture. Interviews allowed me to gain more detailed descriptions of literacy practices and to collect stories about experiences that later proved invaluable for analysis. Therefore, questions for the qualitative research interview encouraged participants to reflect on their experiences with thru-hiking and with literacy. I began by asking the participants to describe themselves and then moved on to broad questions, such as “Tell me about a typical day for you, as a thru-hiker” and “Think of a particularly important day during your thru-hike, one that you will remember when years have passed. Tell me about that day.” These questions prompted participants to tell stories that contained
53 elements of thru-hiker culture as well as literacy events and practices. In order to obtain more detail about literacies, I asked probing questions, around the particular events that they brought up, such as reading maps and trail guides, writing in journals, and writing in shelter registers. For example, when I interviewed Davenport in Vernon, New Jersey, I asked, “OK, tell me about a typical day in your thru-hike, from when you wake up to when you go to bed.” In her answer, Davenport described her day and also said this: “And I try to write in my journal – try to -- everyday, though I haven’t. But I’m getting better lately about putting some thoughts down.” When she had finished answering this particular question, I asked a probing question about journaling: “So do you – you mentioned writing in your journal. The kinds of things you write in your journal? Talk about that a little bit.” In response, Davenport gave some detail about the kinds of things she writes about and went on to describe her re-reading of earlier journal writing: And I’ve gone back already and read some things. And I just -- it’s fun to do that. Last night I was reading – I was looking ahead, I think I was in Virginia and I was just wondering, when am I going to be in West Virginia, when am I going to be in Pennsylvania. You know, here I am in Jersey! So you know – and there was a period of time in Tennessee that I went through a bit of a rough spot there. And I just didn’t write for a while. I just didn’t feel the energy to do it. But I’ve definitely gotten better about – and I want to, because already I enjoy looking back and reading you know what my thoughts and feelings about it were.
54 This practice of asking participants to tell stories about events in their experiences and then asking probing questions about those experiences elicited a rich variety and detail that can be seen in the interview transcripts. I interviewed Barton Smith and Bill Parsons, who were involved in hostel work in New Hampshire and Tennessee, respectively, because I wanted to get a perspective on the thru-hiking experience from those who were members of the thru-hiking community but who were not actually thru-hiking themselves. I asked them to tell me about their involvement with thru-hikers, how they perceived thru-hikers, and about the larger AT community. Once I completed my thru-hike and data collection, I transcribed the taperecorded interviews. I chose to transcribe the interviews myself for several reasons. First, I wanted the opportunity to listen to the interviews over and over again. I believe that this repeated exposure to the data helped me to become familiar with both the content contained in the interviews and the tone of voice in which my participants spoke. There were also some technical difficulties involved in transcribing them that I felt could not be handled by anyone who was not present during the interview. These included high quantities of background noise and poor tape quality. All of the interviews but one were conducted outdoors, which allowed for a wide variety of interfering background noises, including donkeys braying, other thru-hikers laughing and shouting, and logging trucks going by (several interviews were conducted sitting beside a road). The one interview that was conducted inside took place near a room air-conditioner, and this background noise made it difficult to decipher what was being said. All of the interviews were recorded on a battery-operated micro-cassette recorder with a built-in voice-activated
55 microphone, chosen for its light weight, not for its sound quality. This tape recorder did a workmanlike job of recording our voices, but sound quality was often poor. In addition, in both the questions and the answers, we used vocabulary that would not be familiar to someone who was not part of the thru-hiking community, such as “yogiing,” “blueblazing,” and “purist.” For these reasons, I chose to transcribe the tapes myself. In order to transcribe the tapes, I purchased earphones and slowly typed out the words of the interviews, often pausing to replay portions of the tape several times to make sure that my transcription was accurate. Once all of the transcriptions were complete, I listened to each tape again, checking my transcription against the audiotape for accuracy. After the accuracy of each tape had been checked, I printed out all of the transcriptions and put them into a notebook. Artifacts A third part of the data collected was artifactual. Artifacts are materials used by, created by, or created for the thru-hiking community (Creswell, 1988). A large part of these artifacts are documents that I created, including my personal/research journal, my planning sheets, letters, books, maps, and other reading material that I used to prepare for and carry out my thru-hike. I also collected materials created by others. I obtained journals kept during the thru-hike from four thru-hikers: Jumper, Stretchin’, Python, and Jaws. In addition, I made copies of entries written in six shelter registers that were archived by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. These included two registers from Calf Mountain Shelter, and one each from Pinefield Hut, Manassas Gap Shelter, David Lesser Memorial Shelter, and Pine Knob Shelter, all in northern Virginia (see Appendix D for a map of the AT). Photographs taken during my thru-hike; flyers collected from hostels,
56 national parks, and festivals; poems, drawings, and maps created by thru-hikers are also included as artifacts. An example of an artifact I collected toward the end of my thru-hike is Kegger’s “Rainy Day Poem” (see Appendix E). I bought a copy of this poem from Kegger at a thru-hiker party in Monson, Maine, for one dollar. He had written the poem and made 12 copies to sell for one dollar each, in order to pay for his last campsite at Abol Bridge, just before climbing Mt. Katahdin. I placed all of these artifacts together for the purpose of analysis. Response Data In an effort to gather alternative perspectives on myself and on my research, I collected what St. Pierre (1999) called imaginary response data: “others’ response to what they imagine we are doing” (p. 270). This response data concerns others’ perceptions of me as a person, thru-hiker, and researcher, and of my research. I collected response data in two forms. My fiancée, Mark Jernigan, wrote an observation of the changes he saw in me as my research and thru-hike progressed. He acted as my support person, mailing me food and equipment, keeping track of my whereabouts, and maintaining connections with my family and friends. His role in my research was pivotal, so I consider his perspective as data. I also collected the series of emails that he sent out to family and friends on a weekly basis, describing what was happening on my hike. I also gathered response data from members of the AT thru-hiking community, largely through recording in my fieldnotes their reactions to my research. For example, in Duncannon, Pennsylvania, I met Fly Boy, a fellow thru-hiker. After speaking with him about my research, I wrote this in my fieldnotes: “When I told Fly Boy about my dissertation (he's in graduate school in physical anthropology) he said: ‘That's
57 anthropology, not education.’ He also said, ‘I haven't seen you taking any notes’ and ‘What have you found so far? What's your hypothesis?’” I gathered both Mark’s writing and my notes on people’s reactions to my double-identity as a thru-hiker and researcher together and placed the pages in a notebook. Data Transformation I use the phrase data transformation (Wolcott, 1994) as an umbrella term descriptive of the complete process of data analysis to maintain clarity about the use of the term analysis as descriptive of a single phase of work done with data. Data transformation begins during data collection and continues through analysis and writing (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995). Data Transformation Through Field Note Writing The process of writing fieldnotes is in itself a beginning step in data transformation, as the ethnographer chooses what to observe, what to write about, and how to represent these events in fieldnotes. Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995) outline several procedures that can be used by ethnographers to begin data transformation during the data collection process, including asides, commentaries, and in-process memos. These styles of writing move away from description and towards analysis, beginning to capture ethnographer reflections on personal involvement and structuring of events. Asides are brief bits of writing that enlarge upon, reflect on, or critique some event or happening described in a fieldnote (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, p. 101). They usually describe a personal reaction to something that happens during participantobservation, and are set aside through parentheses or some other separation. I included
58 asides in my fieldnotes, as in this example, in which I react to Grampa’s decision to hike southbound up Roan Mountain, instead of northbound. The aside is printed in bold text: Turns out [Grampa] got this pastor from a nearby town to drive him to Carver Gap, and he hiked up to Roan Mountain Shelter from there. (A bit easier hike than climbing up it the way I did!) He's hiking an average of about 9 miles a day, and he said that the group of thru-hikers he has met are not as friendly as last years, when he hiked from Springer to Hot Springs. In this aside, I refer to my own experience of the difficult climb up the south side of Roan Mountain and compare it to Grampa’s possibly easier experience climbing up the north side. This use of asides is different from that described by Young (1998), who wrote asides containing emotions about her data, participants and findings. It is also different from their use by St. Pierre (1997), who used asides in her dissertation writing as a “breather” (p. 375) from the need to write with citational authority. Commentaries are more elaborate reflections on a particular event or issue and are often used to track the ethnographer’s own experiences and reactions during fieldwork (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, p. 102). I often wrote about my reactions to people and events, as can be seen in this commentary about a thru-hiker named R.J.: When we saw [R.J.] in Hiawassee, we were getting ready to leave to head out for the trail. He suggested that we split the cost of a shuttle, $15. We had already decided that we were going to try to hitch, and if that was unsuccessful, we would get the shuttle. When we told R.J. this, he said that in his experience, it was easier to get a ride into than out of town. When we persisted in our decision, he said, "Well, I only have 10,000 miles behind me, so what do I know." This angered me.
59 I felt that he was using his experience to attempt to manipulate us into saving him some money. It also brings up the issue of status: does R.J. have a higher status because he has more experience with thru-hiking than most of the rest of us? Even Wounded seemed a bit obnoxious at times, but Twice Shy was able to get his opinions across without seeming like a know-it-all. Or perhaps that is just my own subjectivity coming to bear. I've never been good at taking advice from others. In this commentary, I explore my reactions to the comments of those who have more experience thru-hiking than I do and recognize that although I have different reactions to different individuals, I have always had trouble taking advice and so have perhaps a more virulent reaction than others. In-process memos are more clearly analytical pieces of writing and require more time outside of the field experience. In an in-process memo, the ethnographer begins to elaborate new interpretations of events and experiences (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, p. 104). One example of an in-process memo that I wrote is a report to my major professor, written by hand in a hotel room in Hot Springs, North Carolina, one month into data collection. In this in-process memo, I began to collect a variety of experiences into categories, particularly into the categories of linguistic, gestural, and spatial literacies as I saw these literacies in my observation and fieldnotes. As I collected fieldnotes, interviews, artifacts, and response data, I began to notice certain patterns that pertained to both the cultural values and norms of the thru-hiking community and to the literacy practices of this community. I saw that thru-hikers valued strength, speed, high mileage, and light pack weight. I noticed tensions in the community between those who considered themselves purists and hiked every mile of the AT with a
60 fully loaded pack, and those whose approach was a bit looser, who skipped sections or hiked without a fully loaded pack. I experienced my own increasing ability to read topographical maps correctly and to gauge my body’s need for calories and water. I noticed that many thru-hikers kept journals, wrote in shelter registers, and told stories about their experiences. Noticing these patterns of cultural ways of being and of literacies, I began to focus my data collection on conversations, events, and thoughts that would give me more information about them. In addition, my interview questions, while still asking thru-hikers to tell stories about their experiences, became more focused. I began to include questions about journaling, taking care of the body, the participant’s definition of a thru-hiker, and preparation for the thru-hike. Thus, as my thru-hike progressed, my data collection became more focused on the particular patterns that I was seeing of particular thru-hiker values, practices, and literacies. Data Transformation after Data Collection The data transformation procedure I used during data collection and after completion of my thru-hike has three emphases: description, analysis, and interpretation (Wolcott, 1994). Davies (1999) calls these “levels of analysis” (p. 194) and her description of them is similar to Wolcott’s. In this first level, description, the researcher organizes and categorizes data. This means taking the wide variety of ethnographic data, including fieldnotes, interview transcripts, and artifacts, and placing them in some kind of order, so that they may be easily read and analyzed. Along with organization comes categorization through initial coding. This involves staying close to the original data, but presenting it in a theoretically determined format, using codes for categories that are basically low-level theoretical concepts for classifying and thinking about the data. These
61 categories may come from the theoretical orientation of the ethnographer, from the participants themselves, or from some combination of the two. Once organization and categorization on this simple level are complete, the ethnographer moves to the second level, analysis, in which inferences are drawn from the data. Maintaining ties to the concrete by linking them to the data, abstractions or inferences are drawn that help to make sense of the data. In the third level, interpretation, the ethnographer creates theory, always being careful to retain links with the concrete data. Methods of analysis used in ethnography, such as those described here, are relatively loose, allowing the researcher freedom to develop tools and strategies within the structure as I have described it. Whereas I found these general suggestions for transforming ethnographic data helpful in giving me a sense of what ethnographic analysis was all about, I also used the techniques of coding and writing suggested by Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw (1995). Although their discussion of analysis draws heavily on grounded theory, they describe their approach as both inductive and deductive, so that instead of discovering theories in data, the ethnographer is “like someone who is simultaneously creating and solving a puzzle, or like a carpenter alternately changing the shape of a door and then the shape of the door frame to obtain a better fit” (p. 144). In the following section, I describe my methods of data transformation in a more detailed fashion. Description In the first level, description, I began to work with data: organizing, reading and rereading, and generating categories or concepts (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995) through coding. The first step, of course, was to transcribe interview tapes and to print
62 and organize all of these in addition to my fieldnotes, journals, journals of others, and copies of register entries. I created several large notebooks of printed data, in which I organized materials by type. In one notebook, I placed my fieldnotes and the transcripts of all of the interviews. In a second notebook, I placed my journals, along with those I had collected from Stretchin’, Python, Jumper, and Jaws. A third notebook contained copies of shelter registers from Calf Mountain Shelter, Pinefield Hut, Pass Mountain Hut, David Lesser Memorial Shelter, and Manassas Gap Shelter, all of which were obtained from the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club with the help of their archivist, Carol Niedzalek. I placed archival data – much of which were loose sheets, maps, and spiral notebooks – in a large envelope. Once data were organized, I began reading. According to Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995) this close reading should be a line-by-line reading of fieldnotes and other data. During this reading, I began to code, asking mental questions of the data. By asking questions such as “What are people doing?” and “How do members talk about, characterize, and understand what is going on?” (p. 146) I was able to focus on the practical, everyday processes and events, and to try to understand my participants’ perspectives. This type of coding is called open coding because it is open to all analytic possibilities instead of limiting codes to particular predetermined sets. The following example of coded fieldnotes illustrates this process:
63 people
I spent last night at Hexacuba Shelter with mom and Sam, Professor,
section hiker
Cowboy (who came in after dark). Also Bobby Smith, who did part of a thru-hike in 86, and is now doing from Bennington VT to Katahdin.
thru-hiker—
He told me that his impression of "this year's thru-hikers" is that they
characteristics
seem "a closed bunch." He left early this morning. Also there were
people
Crank and Gemstone, who northbounded to Bear Mountain, then did a
flip-flopping
flip-flop. They haven't done Katahdin; they're saving it for when they get done with the section they're doing now. They told us about
slackpacking
slackpacking the Whites from the Hiker's Paradise Hostel in Gorham. They said that that was definitely the way to do the Whites -- coming
slackpacking-
back every night and taking a shower and sleeping in a bed; being able
style
to carry sandwich meat for lunches every day; they said that Bruce at the hostel was very knowledgeable about the trail through that area
hostel-workers
and would sit down with people to figure out the best way to get through it. This conflicts with what Gunfighter told us about this
hostel-reports
hostel. He told me that there had been several bad reports about it, and that we should stay at the Barn if at all possible. Climbed Mt. Cube this morning. Mom says she has never been on a trail
trail conditions
this rugged. It's like "they put a bunch of white blazes on a rock slide." Several northbounders have made comments about southbounders. that
northbounders
they are rude, or don't want to talk. And when they do talk, they just
versus
want to talk about how rough what's coming up is for us
southbounders
northbounders.
64 This section of fieldnotes contains data on types of people (thru-hikers, including both northbounders and southbounders, section hikers, hostel workers) as well as ways of hiking (flip-flopping, slackpacking) and differing reports on hostels. Once this level of coding is complete, Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995) suggest writing initial memos. These memos are generally analytic in nature and reflect an attempt to make linkages among coded data. To more clearly flesh out the categories I created, I wrote initial memos of several categories of data. For example, I grouped all of the data, including data taken from my fieldnotes, interview transcripts, and journal entries, that I had coded as “map reading” into one document. Using this collection of map-reading data, I wrote a description of the general practice of map reading among the thru-hikers in my study. I followed this practice with each of the categories that I had created in the data, including visual, spatial, linguistic, and gestural literacy. Analysis In this second level of data transformation, I decided to take a more focused look at data excerpts in relation to multiliteracies and culture. In order to choose pieces of data to analyze, I read the entire data set again and picked 10 data excerpts that contained especially rich or vivid stories about thru-hiker experiences. Once I had selected data that I thought might be fruitful for analysis, I began to create Multimodal Connection Maps for each data selection to illustrate the presence of multimodality within the data and to examine in what ways linguistic, visual, gestural, audio, and spatial literacies worked together as thru-hikers interpreted the world around them. A more detailed description of my analysis using Multimodal Connection Maps can be found in Chapter 6, in which I also present findings based on this analysis.
65 Along with analyzing the data for multimodal uses of literacy, I wanted to see what connections could be made among the ways we used literacies and the cultural ways of thru-hikers. In order to address this issue, I began to closely analyze the 10 data selections using the concept of meaning-making as Design. The New London Group (2000) and Cope and Kalantzis (2000c) proposed taking a broad stance on meaningmaking, one that is required by the notion of multiliteracies, and instead of calling this process “reading,” they call it “Design,” as it incorporates many types of texts, including print texts. The process of design is presented as containing three elements: Available Designs, Designing, and the Redesigned. In order to use this framework as a tool for analysis, I created a chart in which I described the Available Designs, Designing, and Redesigned for each data excerpt. Using the process of Design as a tool for analysis, I was able to look at ways in which the multiliteracies and the cultural ways of being of the AT thru-hiking community were connected. In Chapter 6, I provide a fuller explanation of both Design and my analysis around Design, along with the findings from this analysis. Once these maps and charts were complete, I wrote integrative memos (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). These memos are more polished in nature than the initial memos written after open coding. Using integrative memos, I made theoretical connections between data selections, utilizing the insights developed through the making of maps and charts. For example, I wrote this discussion of reading plants and forests based on a Design chart created for a collection of data: In order to read plants and animals, thru-hikers used structures that were available to them and orders of discourse of the AT thru-hiking community – Available
66 Designs. When identifying and then describing these forests, they used structures or grammars such as the amount of sunlight present, temperature, the types of trees, the presence or lack of moisture in the air, the presence of growth and/or decay, and the presence of animal life. The process of Design involved in reading plants and forests involves making connections and interpretations. When describing these forests, many thru-hikers connected them to affect, calling them “spooky,” “evil,” and “sad.” They also related the type of forests to the animals that they sensed there – bears, birds, and bugs – and to literature, as Mole did when describing this type of forest as “Mirkwood.” The Redesigned – the new meanings made as a result of these re-presentations and reconceptualizations – lie in thru-hikers’ journal entries and statements about forests and the affect produced through their interpretations. When learning about ramps, thru-hikers used the visual structures of leaf shape and color and the smell of their roots. This learning provided a more active form of Designing, as thru-hikers dug up the plants and used them to season their food, taught others about how to identify ramps, and learned these same things from others. In this integrative memo, I described the analysis I had done through charting the Design process for reading plants and forests, and I began to make connections to aspects of multiliteracies as well. Interpretation The third emphasis of analysis is interpretation. During writing, I used details, categories, and connections developed during description and analysis to connect to existing theory and to provide implications for future research and for teaching. In the
67 context of my research, this meant not only digging down within the context of the AT thru-hiking culture and multiliteracies, but also looking back at the theoretical framework for my study to see how that theoretical framework could be re-thought to accommodate the findings of my study. For example, I envisioned how the multiliteracies I had catalogued might fit into the Design framework, and developed a theoretical combination of the two frameworks, in which multimodal literacies are integral to the Designing aspect of the process of Design. A fuller description of these combined theoretical frameworks can be found in Chapter 6. Reflexivity in Data Collection and Transformation Postmodern and feminist theorists have criticized ethnographers for writing “realist tales” (Van Maanen, 1988, p. 45), tales that are characterized by use of the monologic voice of the narrator, smoothing over of issues of self and power, and the presentation of fieldwork as simple and straightforward. Instead of attempting to diminish the ethnographer’s impact on representation of the culture he or she is studying, an impossibility at best, many ethnographers have turned to the practice of reflexivity throughout the research process, as a tool to use in handling some of these issues. Reflexivity is especially salient for ethnography, because of the close relationships developed through participant-observation. Reflexivity, taken broadly, means a turning back on one’s self. In research, reflexivity connotes an awareness of how our research is affected by our own involvement in it. Because we are a part of the groups we study, ethnographers should be aware of the impact we have on our research, the implications of our own socio-historical locations. In order to maintain a reflexive stance, I must study myself in relationship with
68 others, and give careful examination to the roles played by my own interests and cultural background in my interpretation of and representation of the people I am studying. Making Research Decisions Practicing reflexivity in this study began at a simple level with reflecting on and making conscious choices concerning the research as it was conducted. Of course, every day brought new decisions concerning the research, as it does for all who participate in qualitative forms of data collection. I present here several examples of decisions I made during the data collection period. The first of these decisions concerns my interview guide. In order to gain a clearer understanding of what my interview participants were experiencing, I asked a fellow thru-hiker, Streisand, to interview me, using the interview guide that I had developed. During this interview, I realized that one of the questions on my interview guide, “Tell me about a memorable experience in your thru-hike, one that you will remember for years after your thru-hike is over,” was extremely difficult to answer, because it required participants to choose one event out of several months of memorable experiences. The question limited the participants, prompting much evaluation of experiences in order to choose the most memorable, instead of prompting them to think of rich and vivid stories about thru-hiking to tell me. Looking back at the three interviews I had conducted before this, I saw that all of the participants had answered this question by refusing to pick out one event or even one day. Instead, they tended to describe several experiences or a range of experiences that they found memorable. In fact, when I answered the question, I included not only several events as memorable ones, but one of these “events” took place over a time frame of a month and a half. Subsequently, I changed my framing of this
69 question to make it possible for participants to choose their own time frame of memorable events, asking “Tell me about something that you think you will always remember after your thru-hike.” In this instance, reflexivity in the form of taking the place of my interview participants helped me to broaden the scope of my interviews, allowing for a more rich data collection. Simple decisions about where I would sleep also had to be made in consideration of how these decisions affected the taking of fieldnotes. Every day, I had to decide if I would sleep in a shelter or in a tent, and these decisions, chronicled in my personal journal, affected the focus, quantity, and quality of my fieldnotes. Although I was carrying a tent, I planned from the beginning of my hike to sleep in shelters, thinking that I would be able to get to know people better, and to observe them more readily. Unfortunately, with the large number of hikers beginning at the same time I was, the shelters were usually filled with faster hikers before I got there, as seen in this excerpt from my journal: Because Mark and I have been getting into the shelters late (today we got to Blue Mountain Shelter, after a 13-mile hike, at 5:30), we never stay in the shelters. Instead, we pitch a tent. This allows me to talk to other people who are also staying in tents, but not to those in the shelters. Is this a power issue? Faster hikers get better accommodation? The rule seems to be first come, first served. Whereas this experience did point towards status issues among thru-hikers, it also foiled my plan to use shelter stays as a basis for data collection, and focused my fieldnotes on those who were in tents around me – usually slower hikers, like myself. As a matter of fact, it was not until 10 days into my thru-hike that I actually got a spot in a shelter, and
70 this was largely due to an early start and a short mileage day (4.5 miles). Once I did begin sleeping in shelters, another problem emerged, one that eventually caused me to abandon shelter sleeping except for truly inclement weather, and to prefer sleeping in my tent. Apparently, I kept people awake with my snoring. In this excerpt from my journal of April 3rd, I describe the problem and develop a solution: Last night, I snored so loudly I kept just about everyone in the shelter awake. Skinny said it sounded not like snoring, but like a baby crying. Someone else said it sounded like a wildebeest. Needless to say, I was not the most popular person this morning in the shelter. Had a bit of a cry over it on the trail. I think I need to set up my tent wherever possible, to keep from actively making enemies as I go. Even if it rains, the worst that will happen is that I will have a wet tent. That's not much to sacrifice in order to win the goodwill of my fellow thru-hikers. Eventually, I learned that I slept better in my tent, and kept more thru-hiker friends, which helped with my hiking ability, but perhaps kept me from some interactions and made others possible. I began spending most of my time in the evenings in the shelters, socializing and taking fieldnotes, and moved to my tent in the evening for sleep. Occasionally I did sleep in shelters, when the weather was bad, and as our thru-hikes progressed, we all became much heavier sleepers. My own snoring also apparently decreased, to the point where I heard few complaints from other hikers. I also had to decide how and when I would tell other members of the community about my research interests. Initially, I was concerned that thru-hikers would be suspicious of me. I wondered if they would feel I was spying on them or if they would choose not to speak in front of me because they knew I was taking notes. I felt that the
71 best way to deal with this was to be up-front and honest about my research with everyone I met. As I met people, whether during the day while hiking, at night in shelters, or during town stops, I made a point of mentioning that I was thru-hiking and collecting data for my dissertation research. I continued this practice throughout my hike. Telling people about my dissertation research usually triggered questions. For example, when I met Palmolive and Xerox at Pine Grove Furnace State Park in Pennsylvania, they asked about my area of study and the topic of my research. I told them that I was a doctoral candidate in education at the University of Georgia, and that I was attempting to study both the culture of the thru-hiking community and the ways in which literacy was practiced by thru-hikers. For most people who asked these questions, this information was enough. Others asked me about my findings. When asked about my findings, I usually described whatever topic was foremost in my thinking and in my fieldnotes for that particular time. I often took fieldnotes in the evenings, writing in a small spiral-bound notebook about whatever was happening around the evening’s campsite. Initially, I used my portable computer to take fieldnotes, thinking that I would be able to get more information down more quickly because I was typing. I found, however, that using a computer, even a small, portable computer such as the one I had, tended to draw attention to me and to focus conversation around the fieldnotes that I was taking. In addition, one thru-hiker, Sassafras, made a comment about having to be careful about what he said because of the presence of my computer. The next evening, I switched to writing fieldnotes in a small notebook. Perhaps because this practice seemed much like writing in a journal, others did not take much note of it. After that experience, I only used the computer to expand my hand-written accounts into the fieldnotes that I later printed out.
72 Balancing Participation and Observation An important part of being a reflexive participant-observer during my data collection was balancing my identifications as both a thru-hiker and a researcher. Rather than viewing these as two separate entities, I see this double identity as occurring on a continuum. Throughout my research and thru-hike, I slid back and forth along this continuum in both my thinking and my actions, sometimes favoring my thru-hiking ambitions and at other times favoring my research ambitions. Occasionally, I had to rethink the balance of these two identities because of their impact on my research and my body. This section outlines my changing identification as a thru-hiker and a researcher through discussion of the changes that took place in my identification with the thru-hiker community. Gaining formal access to the thru-hiker community was not an issue in this study, as no institutional entity grants permission to thru-hike; the trail is open to any who choose to use it. Like other thru-hikers, I spent several months planning and preparing for my hike, and when the time came for me to head out, I simply left home and started hiking. I chose to hike northbound, because a larger proportion of thru-hikers choose this route. Gaining informal access, becoming a member of the community of thru-hikers, was a little more complicated. For the first two weeks, my fiancée, Mark Jernigan, and I hiked together. Fitting into the thru-hiker community, for us, involved adopting trail traditions, such as taking trail names – the nicknames that most thru-hikers adopt during their hikes. I gave myself the trail name “Turtle,” based on a necklace with a jade turtle given to me by a friend a few days before I left. Along with this gift came a card describing the turtle as a symbol
73 of persistence and connection to the earth. I knew that if I wanted to spend six months hiking, I would need perseverance and I hoped that I would become more connected to the earth. I also realized that my hiking pace was going to be a slow one, so the name Turtle seemed appropriate. Mark adopted the trail name “Toot” because of his flatulent tendencies. From the first days of our hike, we introduced ourselves by these names, and it is as Turtle that I was known for most of my thru-hike. The first several times I introduced myself to someone as Turtle, I laughed. It seemed odd, even comic, to be named after an animal. Eventually, however, I found answering to this name came naturally to me. I remember the first time I introduced myself as Turtle to a man who didn’t know about trail names. He looked at me quite oddly and said, “You are named after a marine animal. Very interesting.” Apparently he wondered what kind of sense my parents had. Having a trail name was an important part of being a member of the thruhiking community. In order to fit into the community, we also attempted to spend as much time as we could being sociable with other hikers. During that first two weeks on the trail, we spent every night camped near established shelter or camping areas. When we cooked and ate meals, we attempted to do so in common areas, so that we could meet and talk with other thru-hikers. During the day as we were hiking, we often ran into the same group of people, many of whom had begun their hikes on about the same day we did, and we made it a point to stop and talk to them. For example, on our second day of hiking, we stopped for water at a creek where another hiker was camped. After we filtered water, we sat and talked to this hiker, North Star, for about 20 minutes before heading on towards our own planned camping area, another 5 miles north.
74 We also participated in the common practice of reading and writing in shelter registers: blank notebooks left in shelters, in which hikers write their thoughts about the day, communicate with other hikers, draw pictures, etc. For example, at Gooch Gap shelter, where we spent our second night on the trail, I described in the shelter register my physical and mental exhaustion after climbing Sassafrass Mountain, and signed it “Toot and Turtle.” It was in this register, too, that I first read the names of others that I had met or would soon meet on my hike: Tenderfoot and Sure Pace, Chatty, Stecoah, and others. Of course, I was not the only person trying to be part of the community. We were all learning together how best to do this thing we had committed to doing. We learned together about the best way to set up our tents, to pack our gear, to hang bear bags, cook food, clean up, use privies, feed our bodies, and hike. We traded ideas on light but calorie-heavy food items, pieces of gear that would make life easier, such as alcohol stoves to replace white gas stoves, and most of all, we began the trail-long process of getting rid of unnecessary weight in our backpacks. After that first two weeks, Mark (“Toot”) had to go back to his job and I continued hiking north. Throughout the remainder of my thru-hiking experience, I continued these practices: viewing myself as part of the community of thru-hikers, using my own and others’ trail names, signing into shelter registers, and socializing with other hikers. Most importantly, perhaps, I continued to hike north along with other members of the thru-hiking community. My process of gaining informal access seemed to be fairly smooth and easy. I planned to thru-hike the entire Appalachian Trail, I was in company with others hiking the same trail, I participated in the community’s traditions and ways, and thus I was part
75 of the community. Ultimately, however, the smoothness of my identification with the community of thru-hikers began to backfire. As I began to become more physically fit and capable of hiking longer and longer days, I began to fall in with one of the thruhiking community’s strongest values: high-mileage days. Originally, I had planned to average 8 miles a day for the first two weeks, 10 miles a day for the next two weeks, and then 12 miles a day for the remainder of my hike. After about a month, I found myself pushing for more and more miles every day, so that by the beginning of May, I was averaging 16 miles a day. These added miles meant more time spent hiking, which left less time and energy for writing fieldnotes and analyzing data. During the last few days of April and the first 2 days of May, I paid little attention to my role as a researcher. I took no fieldnotes, talked to no one about my research, and began to think of myself as a thru-hiker, and only a thru-hiker. In early May, my body saved me and saved my research by rebelling. Climbing a steep set of stone steps out of Laurel Gorge, Tennessee, I pulled a muscle in my buttocks, which put pressure on the sciatic nerve, shooting excruciating pain down my right leg. I got a lift into the nearest town, Damascus, Virginia, and spent several days there attempting to get medical help and to handle the continuing and increasing pain, until I finally decided that the pain was unbearable. Mark drove to Damascus, picked me up and took me to the emergency room. By May 5th, I was off the trail, perhaps, or so I thought, for good. During a month and a half of recuperation, physical therapy, and thought, I began to see that by identifying so strongly with the community of thru-hikers, I had neglected the research that had brought me there in the first place. The goal of reaching Katahdin
76 had overshadowed my desire to learn about the multiliteracies of thru-hikers. This forced reminder of my two goals helped me to begin to balance them more carefully. When I returned to the trail in mid-June, I skipped a 400-mile section of the trail in Virginia. This was done partly to give me a chance to make it to Katahdin before it closed in midOctober and also to keep hiking with other thru-hikers that I had known before I was injured. After skipping this section, I knew that I would not be able to hike the entire trail. This knowledge helped alleviate some of the self- and communally induced pressure to hike big-mileage days. I went back to the trail with a clearer focus, once again planning on using my membership in the thru-hiking community to further my research. When I returned to the trail, I was also given an addition to my trail name reflective of my injury; instead of being known as simply Turtle, I became known as Bad-Ass Turtle. This is not to say that all was sweetness and light as the rest of the months continued. It was always difficult for me to be forced by my injury to keep an appropriately slow pace. I fretted when people passed me by and when they talked about their plans to hike 20-plus mileage days. I often wanted to hike longer miles than I could comfortably do, in order to feel that I was making better progress toward the goal of Katahdin. And sometimes I did do just that – choosing to hike two back-to-back 20 mile days in Pennsylvania, after which I was so exhausted that I could barely eat supper, much less write fieldnotes and think coherently. I did, however, continually attempt to maintain my focus on both hiking and research, which meant that I saw myself both as part of the community of thru-hikers and as separate from it, as is evident from this comment made when Streisand interviewed me:
77 Yeah, it’s funny. Because I mean I see myself as a thru-hiker, definitely. I have a trail name and I’m hiking every day. You know, I have the huge appetite and all that stuff like most thru-hikers. But in some ways I don’t see myself as part of THE GROUP. And also as a researcher, I think I spend a lot of time sort of sitting back and observing and not really being a mover and shaker. Like, I’m not the one who organizes a group of people to slackpack. But um, I don’t know, I see myself as part of the group, cause I’m a thru-hiker. But also I see myself as sort of being different, because I have this secondary or really primary purpose for my thru-hike that really no one else I’ve met has. The tension between my two goals can be seen in my hesitation over my “secondary or really primary purpose.” When I reached New England, I found it necessary to take some time off the trail for the sake of my mental and physical well-being. Because of the extreme heat in New England during the summer, the scarcity of water, and the emotional impact of being away from family and loved ones for such a long time, I took one week off in August, spending it with a friend in Connecticut, and another two weeks in September to spend with my parents traveling through Maine. Of course, taking this much time off from hiking and doing research meant that I was separated from my thru-hiker community and that I would have to skip even more miles before meeting my fiancée for the last two weeks of our hike and the summit of Katahdin. Skipping these additional miles led to an intensification of the feeling of separation from the community of thru-hikers. At a hostel in Monson, some weekend hikers asked me if I was a thru-hiker, and I began giving a wishy-washy answer about having been a thru-hiker in the past, but taking some time off,
78 and not being sure if I could currently call myself a thru-hiker. In the middle of this exchange, which occurred over the breakfast table, Buffalo, a fellow thru-hiker and research participant, leaned over and whispered to me “You’re a thru-hiker.” On October 2nd, my thru-hike ended with a summit of Mt. Katahdin, the northernmost point on the Appalachian Trail. Even this summit, which in many ways was a joyous occasion for me, was clouded by my uncertainties about my membership in the thru-hiker community, based on my failure to complete the entire trail. I believe that this uncertainty can be traced to a division within the community itself, over issues of how to define a complete thru-hike. Identifying Myself In a more complex way, however, I must account for the ways in which I identify myself and the effect that these identifications may have had on my research. This section will address some of these identifications and possible impacts on my data collection and analysis. Because I was an experienced backpacker when I began the trail, I did not experience some of the major adjustments and steep learning curves that many of my participants had to make when beginning their hikes. This is not to say that I did not have to do some learning of my own, but that the learning many of my participants were involved in was different from mine. Any other researcher with little or no backpacking experience who chose to thru-hike would have experienced the trail differently, would have viewed that experience through different lenses and come to different conclusions, simply based on their lack of backpacking experience.
79 I spent over a year planning for both my thru-hike and research project. I read books about others’ experiences on the Appalachian Trail, I participated in on-line forums, I interviewed other thru-hikers, and I bought, read, and used materials on how to plan for and undertake a thru-hike. All of this preparation meant that I was knowledgeable about many aspects of trail culture, such as the traditions of taking trail names and trail magic, and hotly contested issues such as slackpacking and blue-blazing. Knowing about these issues and traditions prepared me to see them as important in data collection, whereas if I had begun my data collection period as a rank novice, I might have picked up on other issues than these. However, if I had neglected to plan for my thru-hike, I don’t believe that I would have been capable of sustaining my involvement in the community in the manner I was able to do for six months. I also identify myself through the categories of white, heterosexual, and female. These categories are commonly discussed as categories of race, sexuality, and gender. I cannot be as certain of the sexuality of those I met on the trail, but I am certain that, in my whiteness, I have much in common with most members of the thru-hiking community. Of the thru-hikers mentioned in my fieldnotes and journals, 97% were white (from such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany) and only 3% were African American or Asian American. The community of thru-hikers and the AT community as a whole is overwhelmingly white. That I share this aspect of who I am with the thru-hiking community means that I see events and people and my research through this particular lens. I don’t see this similarity with the AT community as a negative, but simply recognize it as something that influences how I perceive what happens around me.
80 Similarly, my identification as a heterosexual female affects my perception of others and their perceptions of me. As a female, I was in the minority: Of those thruhikers mentioned by name in my fieldnotes and journal, 76% (173) identified as male and 24% (56) identified as female. Further, I was in a minority because I was a female thruhiker hiking alone. Of the 56 females mentioned in my fieldnotes and journal, 12, including myself, were hiking alone. The rest hiked with a partner. I also identified myself as engaged to be married and in my late 30s. I mention this because I believe these identifications had an important impact on my perceptions and the way others perceived me. I was concerned about being a woman hiking alone. I felt that hiking alone might be interpreted by others, particularly by men, as an invitation to take advantage of my aloneness by “hitting” on me, or making some sort of sexual advance. Because I didn’t want to have to deal with this, I made a point of mentioning my fiancée whenever I was speaking to someone I had not met before, both men and women. I wanted my “engagedness” to be part of how I was known, and I believed – perhaps wrongly – that this would protect me from unwanted contact. That I am engaged to be married did become part of how I was perceived by other thru-hikers. Two male thru-hikers once told me (in New York) that they were making a list of women who could be eligible for a thru-hiker calendar. They had strict rules for admission to the list: the female had to be pretty, to finish the entire trail, and to be single. No one with boyfriend, fiancée, or husband could be admitted to the calendar list. When I asked if I had made the list, Pony responded, “No, Turtle. You know you’re engaged. We would put you on the list, you know, but you’re engaged. You don’t qualify.”
81 My age also placed me in an interesting category. The majority of thru-hikers that I met were either in their 20s, having recently graduated from college, or in their 50s, having just retired. There were only a few of us in our 30s. I did develop relationships with thru-hikers of all ages, the highlight of which was an invitation to attend a 20somethings’ keg party in North Carolina after our completion of the AT. I chose not to attend, but the fact that I was invited meant, to me, that they viewed me as part of their group, even though by my age I was not. Because my data collection process involved participation to the extent that I physically participated in the activities and goals of the group of people I studied, the story of my own thru-hike is part of the written product of the research. I included my journals and interview transcript as data. My experiences and perceptions color my fieldnotes, description of the community and my findings concerning the community’s literacy practices. I attempt to make the effect of my “self” clear through a confessional tale (Van Maanen, 1988) told throughout my discussion of both the culture of the AT and the literacy practices.
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CHAPTER 4 DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTEXT “And oh, if I only had a pack strapped to my shoulders! To only have ventured here from Georgia, through wind and rain and endless mountains and ridges! To be able to hold my hand over my brow to shield the incredibly bright light of the sun, judge the day’s weather from the puffed white clouds in the sky, gaze out at a distant peak on the horizon, weary and sweaty with learn, hard, trail worn leg muscles, to pull out a map, glance up again, stroke my beard, and say something prophetic like, ‘We ought to be over that distant ridge by sundown.’ To be a Thru-Hiker!” -- Excerpt from Jaws’ AT journal When I moved to Georgia in 1998 from Texas to begin work on my doctoral program at the University of Georgia, I had never heard of thru-hiking. As my fiancée, Mark Jernigan, and I began backpacking on the AT, I was already experienced as a backpacker, but inexperienced in thru-hiking lore. I began reading about thru-hiking, beginning with Bill Bryson’s book A Walk in the Woods (1998) that helped to make the AT more widely known. I searched on the Internet for information about thru-hiking, finding a web page, www.trailplace.com, which helped many aspiring thru-hikers to plan and prepare for their treks. At first, I imagined myself thru-hiking at some much later date, perhaps at retirement or while on sabbatical from a job I had yet to obtain. Then, as I began learning more about multiliteracies, I began to imagine possible connections between the outdoor life of thru-hikers and the use of multimodal literacies. It was then
83 that I envisioned myself thru-hiking and doing research on thru-hikers at the same time, and it was then that I began planning and preparing in earnest. Many, if not most, of my readers will not have experienced an AT thru-hike. Many will perhaps not have camped in the woods, hiked on a trail, or carried a backpack. For those readers, this chapter will provide an introduction to the AT and to thru-hikers by opening a window into my own and others’ experiences during the thru-hiking season of 2001. For those not familiar with thru-hiking practice and lore, the AT community may seem an odd and disparate group of people. In an effort to make the community more comprehensible, this chapter will provide a description of the context of the study through three vignettes written in a narrative manner. These vignettes, or as I am calling them, snapshot descriptions, are drawn from events described in my person journal and fieldnotes and give a glimpse into different places, people, and seasons on the AT. Following the vignettes, I describe members of the AT thru-hiking community, a typical day in the life of a thru-hiker, and some thru-hiker traditions. Snapshot Descriptions The context of this study involves times, places, seasons, and people that were constantly changing as I hiked north throughout the six months of my data collection period. It is difficult to imagine a single context description that could include spring, summer, and fall; the myriad of people I met at different places on the trail; the widely varying terrain through which the trail passes; and the multitude of shelters, campsites, huts, hostels, trail towns, and roads I encountered. In order to account for these shifts, I will provide several snapshot descriptions, taken from my own experiences on the trail,
84 my fieldnotes, interview transcripts, and descriptions of people and places written during data collection. Georgia in March Mark and I stop for a break and the trail stretches ahead of us, a brown muddy path outlined by the whiteness of melting snow. Slushy and muddy from the footprints of the hikers ahead of us, the trail is the only piece of ground that we can see that is not covered by snow. The leafless trees allow fitful sunshine to illuminate the hollows and pockets created by snowmelt. Brown, twiggy branches reach toward the sky and each other, creating a web of knobs and sticks all around us. An occasional conifer lightens the mood, providing a break from the brown and gray of the trees with its green, piney branches. The wind is stiff, in spite of the brightness of the day, as it cuts through our rain pants and jackets, fleece outerwear, gloves and hats, and touches sweat dampened underclothes, a reminder that we are sweating in spite of the cold. Beside us on the trail are our backpacks, both stuffed to the gills and loaded with gear on the outside. Mine, a new Archteryx Bora 80, is a blue and black internal frame pack, with a narrow profile, designed to hug my body and place the weight of the pack on my hips instead of on my shoulders. It weighed 53 pounds when I weighed it at the beginning of my trek, much heavier than any pack I’ve carried before. My sleeping pad and tent are strapped on the outside, along with my mug, sandals, and water container. Mark’s pack is a well-used green Gregory Shasta, also an internal frame. His is even more heavily loaded than mine, with two added pockets on the outside where he stuffs his tent, and other things strung around on his pack. Both packs look heavy and unwieldy, and they are. Next to the packs on the ground are our hiking poles, red metal poles similar to ski poles, but designed to
85 aid in hiking. We find them handy for uphills, as they give some much-needed leverage, and for downhills, where they provide an extra foothold on slippery rocks. We have not seen several of the people we met in the first few days of our hike, mostly retired men in their 60s, and we wonder if any of them have quit because of the snowstorm. Rooster is a good example of these. He is 62, a white male born in Alabama who now lives in Florida. Standing about 5 feet 10 inches tall, his hair is white and his build is stocky. He’s a friendly guy: his blue eyes sparkle when he talks about his wife, his family, and hiking the AT. He served in the U.S. Navy for 25 years; afterwards, he applied for a civil service job and got one immediately, a job repairing airplane engines. His wife teaches English at a college; before that, she taught high school English. After retiring from his civil service job, Rooster began teaching web design and working as a substitute teacher for high school business education courses. We’ve leapfrogged with Rooster several times in the last few days: either we catch up with him or he catches up with us whenever we stop for a break or for lunch. He usually looks very tired, talks about how tough the hills are, and seems to be having trouble catching his breath. His difficulties make me wonder if he will make it all the way to Maine. Yesterday, our second day on the trail, Rooster caught up to us when we stopped for a break at Cooper Gap. Rooster said he had seen two red-tailed hawks flying into a nest. He said they screamed as they were going. Then he looked up and said, "There's two more right now." We saw what he was pointing at, but Mark disagreed, saying, “Those are buzzards.” I wondered at the time how either one of them could be sure of the identity of those birds. They seemed so small and I couldn’t see their coloration clearly enough to make a guess at an identification. Since we had stopped for a break, I pulled my Psion
86 5MX, a tiny handheld computer, out of its ziplock bag in an outside pocket of my pack, opened it up, and began writing about the experience. As I typed, fingers cramped on the tiny keyboard, 5 people riding dirt bikes came roaring through on the forest service road. They waved and went up the road a bit, then turned around and went back by us. Mark and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. The noise of the engines already seemed so unwelcome, after the quiet of the woods. Today, the cold makes us decide to cut our break short and keep moving. We needed to eat a Powerbar and to drink some water, and we have done that, but it’s time to move on. It snowed all day yesterday, with fierce winds and trees breaking from the weight of the snow and ice, but today, with the typical changeability of March in Georgia, the snow is melting and we sense warmer weather ahead. Ahead, but not yet here. Feeling the cold, we muscle our packs onto our backs, grab our hiking poles, and push on. Our boots slide and squish in the muddy, slushy trail, and my water-proof pants are coated with mud above my knees. We plan to hike 12 miles today, from Neels Gap to Whitley Gap Shelter, where we will stay overnight. We are making our way through the snow and slush northward on the Appalachian Trail. Connecticut in July Summer’s heat has been blasting us for weeks, but for the last few days in the middle of July in Connecticut, the heat has been unbearable. I am constantly wet, dripping with sweat, even my light running shorts soaked with sweat that seems to cascade down every inch of my body in floods. Since returning to the trail after my injury and physical therapy, I have sent home my internal frame pack and am now using my Kelty Trekker, an external frame pack that has a web mesh close to my skin. It’s
87 supposed to be cooler than an internal frame pack, but nothing could possibly be cool in this heat. My pack is much lighter than it was in March. I’ve whittled my gear down to around 40 pounds by getting rid of things I wasn’t using and by switching over to a lighter weight summer sleeping bag. I’ve also learned to pack my gear more carefully – streamlining my pack so that nothing dangles on the outside. My gear signals to others, whether they are thru-hikers or not, that I am an experienced backpacker, confident in my abilities. I’ve managed to pare down my clothing as well to fit the rising temperatures – there is no need for fleece jacket and rain pants in this heat! My hiking “uniform” now consists of a pair of black running shorts and a gray tank top, along with my signature turtle necklace. Putting on the same stinky clothing every day is routine for thru-hikers. I may stink, but so does everyone else. I am part of the community now. When I see other thru-hikers, I usually know them, and they greet me with “Turtle!” or even “Bad-Ass!” Getting enough drinking water has become a serious issue, here in the midAtlantic states, as the summer has been dry enough to turn springs and brooks into trickles or stagnant pools. The heat seems to sap the energy from my body, so that after just a couple of hours of hiking, I feel as though I had been hiking for much longer. The heat is made worse by the swarms of mosquitoes, gnats, and deer flies that are especially intent on sucking every bit of blood out me. The deer flies are the worst. They land on my hands or my face, and I don’t realize they are there until the stinging pain of the bite, which then swells and itches for days. And for some reason, they seem to always return to bite a second time at the same place I was bitten before.
88 It’s a serious heat wave, according to the radio station I manage to get on my tiny AM/FM set. The announcer says, “If you can, stay inside today. It’s doomsday out there. A high of 103.” We laugh about that, out here in the heat; warnings to stay inside are no good to us at all! My current hiking companion, Jumper, and I started hiking on this particular morning at about nine. The heat drags us down, makes it impossible to hike fast, and by the time we get to Pine Swamp Brook Lean-To, about 6 miles, it is 1:00. Neither of us can go further for now. We decide to wait out the heat in the shelter and move on in the cool of evening. Jumper and I have only been hiking together for a couple of days, but we’ve already grown close. Perhaps this is because we’re both from the southwest; perhaps because we’re both women in a largely male community. We shared a motel room in Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut, and spent the afternoon and evening just reveling in the air-conditioning and talking about our lives. Jumper is a 23-year-old white female from the southwest. She stands about 5 feet 4 inches, with chin-length black hair and dark brown eyes. An energetic, enthusiastic person, Jumper helped me get through some of my heat-induced doldrums by encouraging me to hike shorter days and make the best of a bad situation. Today, as always, Jumper is wearing a black sleeveless tank and a pair of faded green hiking shorts. She carries a large green internal frame pack and wears heavy leather boots with gaiters, shoe covers that strap onto her boots and cover her ankles to protect her legs from brush and mud. Jumper spent much of last night talking to Kevin, her boyfriend back home, about how much she missed him and how far she was from Maine. Working on a trail maintenance crew gave Jumper her first experience with the trail. She decided to thru-hike, she said, because she “loved the lifestyle.” Jumper started
89 hiking with a friend from high school, Butterfly, but eventually Butterfly quit the trail. Now Jumper is independent, although she likes hiking with others. She speaks Spanish fluently, is interested in diving and caving, and has visited Spain. Although there was a substantial difference in our ages, I found Jumper to be a congenial hiking partner for the week or so that we hiked together, and when I saw her again later on the trail, she greeted me with a big hug and an enthusiastic welcome. When Jumper and I reach Pine Swamp Brook on this hot day in July, we both breathe a sigh of relief. Here is our chance to take a break in some shade and to get some much-needed water. Belly Dancer is already at the shelter, a tall, thin white woman of 22, resting against a tree trunk on her sleeping mat, her dark brown hair in a ponytail. Beside her, sacked out in the dirt, is Alexander the Great, her canine traveling companion. Alex, a brown and black short-haired mutt, started the trail as a scared and nervous puppy, but now he is muscular and sleek, confident and calm. Belly Dancer grew up in the south and decided when she was 9 years old that she wanted to hike all the way to Maine: “That I was never going to get in a car, or drive, you know, or fly, or take a bus or anything like that. I was going to one day hike all the way up to Maine.” Clad only in a sports bra and a pair of shorts, Belly Dancer has hung her sweat-soaked shirt over a bush, with hopes that it will dry. As she stirs her lunch – Lipton’s Noodles and Sauce cooking over a small backpacking stove – she looks up at us with large brown eyes and a face smudged with dirt. “It was just one of those days,” she says. “I had to stop every fifteen minutes. This heat is killing me.” Jumper chimes in: “Hey, but that’s what we do. We’re hard-core. We’re thru-hikers.” We laugh and nod, agreeing. It has been a difficult day. But we all know that it’s just one day out of many, and tomorrow may be better. At least we have
90 each other, and the trail. The hardship serves to render our experience more valuable, and indeed, makes us proud to call ourselves thru-hikers. Pine Swamp Brook Lean-To is a typical AT shelter (See Figure 1 for a picture of an AT shelter). Although some shelters are built of cinder blocks, and one shelter in Tennessee is a converted barn, this one, like most, is a three-sided wooden building. Built of logs, the back wall is shorter than the side walls. The front of the shelter is open, and is surrounded by a low wall that separates the floor of the shelter from the open area surrounding it. The ceiling slopes down towards the back and flattens out at the front of the shelter, providing a small covered space in which to cook food, hang packs, or just sit. The wooden floor of the shelter is dusty, and it looks like no one has swept it out in quite some time, in spite of the broom provided by the shelter’s maintainer. Jumper and I unbuckle our hip belts, slide our packs off our backs, and thump them down onto the shelter’s wooden floor. I sniff the air and receive the customary shelter smell of mice, dirt, and sweaty hikers. Still, it’s good to be here. Figure 1. View inside an AT shelter.
On the floor is a shelter register – a spiral notebook with a pen, in a ziplock bag. I pick up the register and thumb through it, looking for entries from people I know.
91 Tenderfoot and Sure Pace signed in several days ago; I’m hoping to catch up with them in the next week or so. Several people who signed the register have complained about the mosquitoes at this shelter, this close to the swamp, but so far, I have not been bitten. I sign the register with today’s date and leave a note for Mole, who is a few days behind me. Slipping the register back into its ziplock, I place it into a small wooden cupboard on the wall designed to store the register, pens, and magazines, tracts, pictures, or notes. On the inside wall of the shelter is a sign with the name of the shelter, the trail club that maintains it, and some instructions, such as information about the locations of the water source and the privy, leave no trace reminders, and notices about the trail surrounding the shelter. Large nails are pounded into the beams of the roof, providing a place for hikers to hang packs, food bags, wet gear, boots, poles, or whatever else they want to get up off of the ground. Hiker-made contraptions to protect food bags from mice – both mice and these contraptions are permanent residents of most AT shelters – can be seen strung from several of these nails across the front of the shelter. Thin ropes tied to these nails are strung through upside down tin cans, usually tuna cans, and end in a small stick tied perpendicularly to the rope. Hikers hang their food bags on the sticks, and the mice are deterred from climbing down the rope because they can’t get past the tuna cans to the food bag. This is how the device works in theory, but some mice are clever enough to get around them. With a fond hope that my newly provisioned food bag will remain inviolable from the mice, I pull it out of my pack and hang it up. It’s not really necessary to hang my food in the middle of the day, but since I’m about to eat a bit of lunch, it will be handy for me.
92 The water source for Pine Swamp Brook Shelter, and the source of its name, is a brook that flows from a swamp near the shelter. Although a bit leery of getting water from a swamp, I am completely out of water and thus am forced to take a chance if I want to stay hydrated and get to the next water source. The trail to the brook is marked with blue blazes, rectangles of blue painted on the trees, and I follow them about 500 yards to a well-trampled spot near a sluggish stream that looks relatively clear of scum, although a menacing cloud of deer flies and mosquitoes swarms over the swamp. Perhaps this is what those register entries referred to! I quickly fill my water containers, treat the water with iodine to protect myself from parasites and bacterium, and move back to the shelter. The combination of heat and mosquitoes made the swamp a hellish location, and I choose to spend as little time there as possible. Other hikers arrive soon after us, and it looks like it’s going to be a women-only afternoon in the shelter, a rarity on the AT. Five of us, all thru-hikers – Jumper, Belly Dancer, Headset, Smokin’, and myself – spend the afternoon eating, sleeping, and trying to escape the heat. But then, in the heat of the day, nowhere but an air-conditioned motel room would suffice. After chowing down on my customary bagel and peanut butter, I try to rest, first lying on my sleeping pad outside of the shelter in the scattered shade, then inside the shelter. Neither of these places provides much relief. Outside the shelter, I might be able to catch a breeze, but the ants drive me crazy and the shade is not complete, containing holes that let in a bit of sunlight. Inside the shelter, there are no ants and I am definitely in the shade, but the walls close in around me and I feel like I am inside an oven, slowly baking at 350 degrees. During these hours, I occupy myself first by trying unsuccessfully to sleep, and then deciding I need to work a bit on fieldnotes. I pull my
93 3x5 spiral notebook out of its ziplock bag in the outside pocket of my pack, and jot down notes about the morning’s hike and my conversations with Jumper. On my to-write list is “description of a shelter,” so I spend about an hour writing a description of this shelter and the swamp. As evening arrives, the heat begins to subside, and by 5:30, Jumper and I are hiking again, heading another five miles north, towards a cold spring and an established campsite. New Hampshire in September With the coming of fall and the turning of the leaves comes cooler weather. With added mileage, now deep into northern New England, comes higher elevations, harder climbs, and better views: Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The closer we get to Maine, the more our excitement grows about finally reaching Katahdin, the goal of all northbound thru-hikers. My own hike and my research have reached some boiling points. I decided to take a week off when I reached southern Massachusetts, and I spent that week soaking up air conditioning and sleeping away the days at my friend Jeanine’s apartment in New Haven, Connecticut. When I reached Massachusetts, I was at the end of my rope, both physically and mentally. For days, I had been crying almost constantly while hiking, repeating my new mantra, “I want to go home; I want to go home” over and over. I decided that a break was in order, or else a breakdown would surely occur. I called Jeanine from a pay phone outside a diner in South Egremont, Massachusetts, after hitching a ride into town, and she immediately drove 2 hours to rescue me. Later, returning to the trail in New Hampshire, I hiked for a week with my mom and stepfather, and then took another break
94 with them. Together in their RV, we traveled north up the coast of New Hampshire and visited Acadia National Park in Maine. During this time off, I did additional thinking about my experiences. In spite of having to take these breaks from the trail, I was proud of what I had been able to accomplish, the way I had bounced back from injury, the way I had combined my research and thru-hiking. I felt that I was truly a member of a community, and that that community valued me as a member. Physically, I had lost 20 pounds of fat and gained muscle tone all over my body. I was in the best shape of my life, and this made me feel strong, confident, and proud. With 1200 miles under my belt, I was truly experienced as a backpacker. With the end of the trail approximately three weeks away, I decided to spend the majority of my research energy getting interviews. I had already conducted the majority of my interviews, but I planned to get about three more in this last bit of trail. The town of Gorham, New Hampshire looked like a good place in which to collect these interviews. In September, some time after my weeks off, I stayed for several days at a hiker’s hostel in Gorham while slackpacking through the famous White Mountains. Slackpacking is what thru-hikers call the practice of hiking without a full pack. Bruce, who works for the hostel where I stayed, charged me only a small fee and dropped me off at a predetermined point on the trail and picked me up at the end of the day at another, about 13 miles from where I started. Each day, I left my pack at the hostel and carried just enough food and water to get me through that day. In this way, I was able to hike the White Mountains, one of the most formidable sections of the AT, while still taking a hot shower
95 at night and sleeping in a bed, luxuries that really meant something after months on the trail. The Hiker’s Paradise Hostel in Gorham, New Hampshire, is both a motel and a hiker’s hostel. During the summer, peak time for thru-hikers to pass through, the hostel offers cheap accommodations with laundry service, shared rooms with kitchen and bath, and good access to the town’s grocery stores, restaurants, and post office. Like the owners of many hostels, Bruno and Mary Ann Janicki are accustomed to thru-hikers coming and going, and have set up routines to handle their needs. For example, they offer shuttles to and from the trailhead, about 4 miles outside of town, and they arrange shuttles for slackpacking, such as those I used when I slackpacked the Whites. They also have motel rooms available, at slightly higher prices than those for the hostel. While I was there, most thru-hikers chose to stay in the hostel, although some with more money to spare opted for hotel rooms. The hostel, where I stayed, is in the top two floors of a three-story structure that also houses the restaurant and office for the motel. A wooden building, painted white, the hostel/motel is on the corner of two busy highways, near a convenience store and several fast-food restaurants, including a Kentucky Fried Chicken and Dunkin Donuts. Access to the top two floors is provided through a staircase behind the building. The most important rule of the hostel, one that is strenuously enforced, is “No boots in the hostel.” The owners don’t like hikers tromping around in heavy boots over their heads all day long. On the third floor, where I stayed, there are three bedrooms. One, known as the “Honeymoon Suite,” is reserved for couples; another has three beds, and a third has only one bed. The third floor is equipped with a working kitchen, with a refrigerator, stove,
96 sink, table, telephone, and countertop space, and a bathroom with a shower and toilet. There is also a common area, with couches and a television. During the several days of my stay on the third floor of the hostel, several thru-hikers came and went, some of whom I had met previous; others that I met for the first time. Even slackpacking, the terrain of the White Mountains and the Presidential Range is challenging, so I decided to take a “zero” day, a day in town, without hiking any miles of AT. Zero days are hardly zero mileage days, of course; walking around town doing all of the typical town chores – laundry, grocery shopping, eating as much as I can – piles on the miles fairly quickly, and one can feel almost as exhausted at the end of a zero day as a day on the trail. Luckily, Hiker’s Paradise had bikes to lend to hikers, so I borrowed one. This involved filling out a slip of paper saying I bought the bike for $1 and was responsible for any injury to myself that I incurred. I rode to the post office and picked up my package from Mark, which contained maps, a couple of Snickers bars, rain pants, a hat, and overgloves, gear I would need for the upcoming weeks of hiking in Maine. Then I rode the other way down the town’s main highway a mile to Walmart. Outside Walmart were two women selling raffle tickets for a quilt to benefit a local program that helps victims of rape and domestic abuse. I bought a ticket for $1, and they agreed to watch my bike for me. In Walmart, I bought a book (Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood) and a phone card. After a stop at the grocery store, where I bought lunch meat and tortillas, I rode the bicycle back to the hostel, carefully balancing all of my purchases against the handlebars of the bike as I rode. I spent the afternoon reading in the third floor common room. It was a hot day in town, though certainly nothing to touch the heat I experienced in Connecticut, and I found myself wishing for the coolness of the mountains again.
97 That evening I decided it was time to get back to work. Enough lollygagging around! I grabbed my tiny tape recorder, checked to see that I had a blank tape and that the batteries were still good, grabbed a consent form, and rode my borrowed bike about a mile down the main highway to another hostel in town, The Barn. Binx, who had been slackpacking with me during the last few days, had told me that several thru-hikers, including Buffalo, were staying at The Barn. I had spoken to Buffalo before about doing an interview, and he had seemed willing, so I wanted to capitalize on his presence and get the interview done. When I arrived at The Barn, I was greeted by cries of “Turtle!” and of course, the ubiquitous “Bad-Ass!” Buffalo hikes with a large group of people, and they were all staying at The Barn, so the place was crowded. During our interview, in fact, conducted in the large common sleeping area, Artiste, Cornrow, and a few other thruhikers strolled in and out, made comments about the questions I was asking, dealt with gear, made decisions about dinner plans, and went about other of their own town chores. When I returned to the Hiker’s Paradise after interviewing Buffalo, I found that my friend Professor had arrived on Bruce’s afternoon shuttle. Professor is a young, white male, approximately 23 or 24 years old. He is of thin build, standing about 5 feet 6 inches, with dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark moustache and beard. He wears wirerimmed glasses and typical thru-hiker clothing. Professor is an intellectual. He is very interested in philosophy and the two of us had spent hours at shelters and campsites talking about and attempting to define various aspects of philosophy, such as poststructuralism and deconstruction. Professor has a yen for words that are new to him. He kept a list of words he had encountered that he didn’t know. When I saw the list, in New Hampshire, it covered the front and back of one page of paper with very small print
98 and 5 or 6 columns on each side of the page. Some of the words were marked with a check – these were the new words that Professor had learned during his hike. After Professor greeted me with his customary “Miss Bad-Ass,” he told me about his latest achievement. He had been reading a book of poems by T.S. Eliot, and he had memorized all of “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” over several days of hiking. He said that he had amazed several people who passed by him on the trail as he was shouting out some of his favorite sections while hiking. Green Light and I begged for a recitation, so standing on the second floor deck while Green Light and I sat on the stairs, Professor recited “Prufrock” for us and the three of us spent an enjoyable hour or so dissecting the poem and talking about our reactions to it. By 10:00, I was exhausted, and I knew that I had to get up early for the next day’s slackpacking, so I called it a night and headed up to my third-floor bunk. I knew that both Professor and Green Light were planning to zero the next day, so I felt sure I would see them again. These snapshot descriptions, although they give an idea of my own experiences and some general information on thru-hiking life, leave some elements of the context of this study unclear. The remainder of this chapter will discuss the people of the community, a typical day in the life of a thru-hiker, and some of the language and traditions of the community. Members of the AT Thru-hiking Community The AT thru-hiking community, as I have defined it, is made up of several groups of people, not all of whom are thru-hikers. Although I see thru-hikers as the leading elements in the community, and they are the focus of my research, I would like to devote a little time to describing other members of the community, most of whom are dedicated
99 to thru-hiking, and all of whom are connected by the Appalachian Trail itself. The Appalachian Trail brings together people, whether they are hikers or not, who are connected by the trail. My description of these people must be seen as coming from my participation as a thru-hiker. It is as a thru-hiker that I met people on the trail, and it is as both a thru-hiker and a researcher that I describe them here. The first group of members of this community that I will discuss includes trail angels, trail maintainers, and hostel owners and managers. Trail angels, as they are called by hikers, are individuals who live near the trail and provide free services for hikers. They may provide rides into town and back to the trail; they may bring food, water, and special treats to places where the road crosses the trail or to shelters, or provide other services as needed. I was a beneficiary of several trail angels. When Mole and I were hiking through Pennsylvania, for example, we hitched a ride from the trail into the town of Fayetteville in the back of a pickup, and stopped at the post office to pick up our mail drops, boxes of supplies sent from home. By the time that we had picked up our packages and repacked our backpacks with these new supplies, we had received 3 offers of rides to wherever we wanted to go. We took the last offer, one proffered by a young woman driving a Cabriolet, because she offered to drive us just as we were ready to leave the post office. She managed to stuff both our large packs and us into her tiny car and drove us up the road to the laundromat, where we washed our clothes. Once that was done, we walked across the street to a restaurant where we had an extravagant steak lunch. The same young woman drove by again when we were hitching back out to the trail, and she again gave us a ride, driving us straight to the state park where we were staying the night.
100 While getting rides into town happens quite often, other instances of what thruhikers call “trail magic” are more intense and less frequent. When I was hiking through New York, and the weather was extremely hot and dry, I ran out of water just before reaching a road. There I found about 10 gallon jugs full of water, left by the Tuxedo Hiking Club, along with a register to sign. I was relieved and happy to be able to fill my water containers and hike on. This occurred frequently in New York and New Jersey, but I also experienced it in Georgia early on in the hike (see Figure 2). Another common occurrence was for trail angels to leave styrofoam coolers with sodas, beer, fruit, and other treats at places where the road crossed the trail. These were usually marked with statements like “For Thru-hikers” but were shared by all who passed. Figure 2. Water as trail magic.
Other trail angels make special efforts to bring food and drinks to hikers. Moose, for example, was a regular trail angel at shelters in New Jersey, where he often left sodas and cookies in the bear box (a metal bear-proof container for hikers to place food in),
101 cleaned up the shelter, and wrote in the shelter register. Sugar, a former thru-hiker who lived near Leroy Smith Shelter in Pennsylvania, arrived the evening I stayed there with a backpack full of fruit and sodas for thru-hikers, treats that Belly Dancer and I eagerly accepted. He told me that he tries to make it up to that shelter at least once a week during thru-hiker season. Stories about trail magic are eagerly passed around among thru-hikers. Critter told me about a trail angel bringing a whole bucket of hot Kentucky Fried Chicken to a shelter in Georgia. Mole described eating a newspaper reporter’s lunch in exchange for telling her about his hike. Sassafras happened upon a trail angel handing out sausage biscuits and cokes to thru-hikers at a road crossing in Virginia. I was treated to lunch, dinner at a four-star restaurant, laundry, a shower, and a night’s stay at a lovely country home by a New York family just outside of Salisbury, Connecticut. Of course, most stories of trail magic, of trail angels, center around food and drink, as these are so central to the lives of thru-hikers, who are using up calories much faster than they can be replaced. Trail maintainers, members of the various trail clubs that are responsible for maintaining sections of the AT, are also members of the AT community. There are thirtyone trail clubs, all of which are independent but are connected to the Appalachian Trail Conference, which oversees the trail itself. As a thru-hiker, I had exposure to trail maintainers mostly when I came across them while hiking. For example, while hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, I happened upon a gentleman taking a break from working on the trail. A member of the local trail maintainers group, he had taken it upon himself to work on the trail during some free time on a Saturday. He was well equipped, carrying an axe and a shovel, and he was nice enough to share a wrapper of
102 Ritz crackers with a hungry thru-hiker that day. More commonly, I came upon groups of people working on the trail. In Shenandoah National Park, I encountered a group of people with scythes, cutting the long grass near the trail. Bob Peoples, the owner and manager of Kincora Hostel in Hampton, Tennessee, is also a trail maintainer. Interested in developing relationships between trail maintainers and thru-hikers, Bob organized work parties of thru-hikers who stayed at his hostel on Saturdays, taking them to Carver Gap to spread gravel on the highly used trails up Jane’s Bald and Round Bald. He also organized a large work party of thru-hikers to continue this work after Trail Days, an annual hiker festival in Damascus, Virginia. As both a hostel owner and trail maintainer, Bob is a good example of both. Hostels can be found in many of the trail towns, towns situated on or near the AT. Hostels often provide cheap accommodations and services for thru-hikers. Some hostels are designed as charitable institutions, offering services and asking for minimal payments on an honor system. Church hostels in Damascus, Virginia and in Vernon, New Jersey are exemplars of this type of hostel, and in hostels like these, thru-hikers rarely meet the managers. Instead, donation boxes are provided in which to pay a suggested donation for the night’s stay (usually $3-5) and chores are done by those who stay there. Other hostels are designed as money-making propositions for their owners, so in these the owners and managers are more visible. Bruno and Mary Ann Janicki, as mentioned earlier, own and manage the Hiker’s Paradise Hostel in Gorham, New Hampshire, are examples of these members of the trail community. Bruno and Mary Ann check hikers in, run shuttles between their establishment and the trail, and serve fantastic thru-hiker breakfasts in their restaurant downstairs from the hostel (including my favorite, the “Purist”: coffee, large
103 juice, 2 eggs, all you can eat pancakes, 3 bacon strips, home fries, and toast). Another well-known hostel owner is Keith Shaw, the owner of Shaw’s Boarding Home in Monson, Maine, the gateway to Maine’s Hundred Mile Wilderness. Keith Shaw has been a trail fixture for years, and the breakfasts he serves to thru-hikers are also legendary. Hikers make up the second group of people in this community, and include section hikers, day hikers, weekenders and thru-hikers. Those who identify themselves as section hikers are attempting to hike the entire Appalachian Trail in sections, usually one section per year. Section hikers are not able to take off the six months needed to hike the whole trail at once, but they are highly respected by thru-hikers because of the tenacity it takes to hike 2 to 4 weeks a year, every year, until they are finished. Those who are identified as day hikers are simply out for a day’s or half day’s hiking somewhere on the AT, whether as part of a vacation or because they live near the trail and enjoy hiking. Many day-hikers are aware of the goals of thru-hikers, and day hikers often asked me, “Are you going all the way?” Those that thru-hikers identify as weekenders are backpacking for anywhere from a few days to a week or so, whether or not it is during the weekend. The main difference between weekenders and section hikers is that weekenders don’t have the intention to hike the entire trail. The main difference between day hikers and both weekenders and section hikers is that day hikers are not carrying a full pack and do not intend to spend the night on the trail. Thru-hikers are the focus of this study, although they are certainly impacted by and often have interactions with the other members of the community. To discuss thruhikers, I will begin by describing a typical day in the life of a thru-hiker, and then move on to describe who thru-hikers are and some of the values and beliefs held by most thru-
104 hikers. The description of a typical day in the life of a thru-hiker is taken from observation, interviews and my own experiences, written about in my fieldnotes and journal. A Typical Day in the Life of a Thru-hiker Most thru-hikers attempt to rise early and get hiking early in the morning. The typical time for getting up is anywhere from 5:30 to 8:00. The time at which thru-hikers awake may occasionally be based on an alarm clock, especially for heavy sleepers, but more often it is based on a sense that it is time to wake up. This sense can be alerted by the singing of the birds, as in Critter’s case: “I usually wake up when the birds start, which is at 5:37, most mornings.” Or it may be from the sun beginning to rise, as in Kelton’s case: I sleep lightly anyway, so I’m usually up every so often in the middle of the night. I get up, oh, it’s still dark, go back to sleep. Get up, it’s still dark, go back to sleep. So when all of a sudden it’s light, I can basically tell when it’s six in the morning. Others rely on the call of nature to wake them up, as Tenderfoot relates: “Well, we usually get up about six thirty in the morning, and I have to say that our getting up out of the tent is usually directed by my having to get up and go the bathroom.” In the heat of the summer, hikers may rise earlier so as to get the larger portion of hiking out of the way before the heat of the day becomes too intense. Similarly, cooler weather means that some will snuggle down into their sleeping bags a little longer than they would normally have done.
105 Whatever time they get up, the routine for most thru-hikers is similar. Whether they have spent the night in a shelter – wooden structures provided by the trail clubs – or in their tent, they must eat breakfast, pack up their gear, fill water bottles, and head out. This routine can take from 45 minutes to a couple of hours. There are some differences, of course. Some like to eat a cooked breakfast, such as oatmeal or grits; others prefer a quicker, easier breakfast like a Powerbar or Poptarts. Some eat breakfast before hiking out; others prefer to get started early and eat while hiking, or to stop for a breakfast break later in the morning. Critter, in particular, wanted to get an early start because he, as a wildlife biologist, wanted to “see the critters. And whoever gets there earliest has an opportunity to see those things that are still there before the sun gets too bright.” Most thru-hikers have some kind of a routine for packing up their gear. Mole, for instance, slept with his backpack inside his tent, and upon waking, would pack everything into it except his tent, then get out, take down his tent, and put it in his backpack. I had a similar routine: I packed up everything I could that was inside the tent and got all of my gear ready to go before I had breakfast. Streamlining breaking down camp and packing up gear was an important way to extend the amount of hours and thus the amount of miles hiked each day. Others added their own idiosyncratic elements to the routine. Davenport, for example, liked to ease into her day, starting out with coffee and breakfast, checking her maps for the day’s hiking and places where she could get water, and heading out by about 9:00. Iron Foot and Kelton mentioned reading in the thru-hiker guide books each morning about possible places to stop for food during the day’s hike, and setting a goal for each evening. Buffalo, when he felt like it, did some stretching before starting to hike. After
106 my injury, I stretched for about 25 minutes every morning, without fail. Critter used the first hour of his hike to stretch out and warm up, reining in his tendency to hike fast to allow his body to wake up. Once under way, most thru-hikers alternate between hiking and taking breaks. Some plan their breaks around the amount of time hiked, as I did: “I usually hike for about an hour or an hour and a half, take a 20-minute break, and just continue that until lunchtime.” Others plan breaks around mileage hiked. Jennifer, for example, hiked 3 to 4 miles before taking a break in reasonable terrain, but stopped more often if the terrain was difficult. Binx was a self-confessed shelter-hopper: I basically take it shelter to shelter, usually. I usually don’t stop, otherwise, unless the shelters are too far apart, or I’m just plain tired. So go to a shelter, read the register, drink some water, eat something. Next shelter, same thing. During breaks, thru-hikers most often eat snacks such as Powerbars, Snickers candy bars, trail mix, or candy, drink plenty of water, and sometimes smoke, as in Jennifer’s case: “So we’ll take a break, eat snacks, smoke cigarettes, get back to hiking.” Breaks are often taken for reasons other than the purely physical need for rest, as Critter relates: I don’t make any conscious effort to deliberately break the morning in half with a stop. It more typically is based on either encountering somebody that I want to chat with, or a scenic vista that holds me, and so that’s an excuse to stop, drop the pack, and pull out some morning snack, crackers, cheese. As Critter notes, breaks are good times for thru-hikers to socialize with others. Lunch breaks are often taken around noon, though some do not take lunch breaks at all, preferring to keep going and snack all day. Lunches for thru-hikers are often
107 calorie heavy foods, such as bagels and peanut butter (one of my favorites), the everpresent Snicker bars, crackers, summer sausage and cheese, or sometimes a cooked meal such as macaroni and cheese or quick prepackaged meals such as Lipton’s Noodles and Sauce. An extended break is sometimes taken at lunch, especially if lunch happens at a shelter, where a hiker can take off his or her boots, lie down for a nap, read the shelter register, and generally relax. After lunch, thru-hikers usually continue hiking, and continue taking breaks, until they reach the location where they plan to spend the night. This may be a shelter, or just a congenial place for a tent. Those who elect to spend the night in a shelter reserve a space for themselves by spreading out their sleeping mats on the shelter floor. As more hikers arrive, they also reserve space with their mats until the shelter is full. Because of a full shelter, or because of a preference for sleeping in a tent rather than a shelter, others elect to pitch their tents. Shelters usually have a few flat sites for tents nearby and are usually placed near water sources as well, so thru-hikers often stay there by choice. After a home for the night is established, the evening chores begin, which include getting water, cooking and cleaning up after dinner, hanging a food bag, and setting up a place to sleep. Once these chores are accomplished, the thru-hiker is free to socialize, read the shelter register and write in it, write in journals, read, and sometimes listen to radios or play musical instruments. Thru-hikers are often in bed and asleep by the time darkness falls, unless they arrive in camp late. “Thru-hiker midnight” is usually 9:00, after which time snoring is the only sound heard.
108 Who are Thru-Hikers? The thru-hikers that I encountered during my northbound thru-hike in 2001 made up a fairly homogeneous group. In my fieldnotes and journals, I mentioned 229 hikers by name, including myself. I included both thru-hikers and section hikers mentioned in my notes, as both groups were spending a substantial amount of time on the trail, as opposed to day hikers and weekenders, most of whom I did not know by name, and who spent shorter periods of time on the trail. A brief description of these demographics should help to picture the community as a largely young, white, male group. The whiteness of the group is most predominant, as 97% of the thru-hikers I met were Caucasians from either Europe or the United States and 3% were either African American or Asian American. The breakdown of the group by gender shows that 73% of those I met were male, and only 27% were female. Looking at the age ranges, 65% of the thru-hikers I met were between the ages of 17 and 29; 25% were between the ages of 30 and 50; and 10% were between the ages of 51 and 75. Similarly, northbounders substantially outnumber southbounders, and thru-hikers substantially outnumber section hikers. Some comments about this information are in order here. First, these should not be interpreted to represent the entire thru-hiking community, rather the part of the thruhiking community that I met on my northbound thru-hike in 2001. Also, I did not ask for complete demographic information on all of the individuals I met; rather in most cases, I interpreted their appearances and made assumptions concerning their age, gender, and race. I did not include information about class or sexuality here, because I do not have definitive information on these points. It is my belief, however, that many, if not most, of
109 the thru-hikers I met in 2001 were middle- or upper-class people; in order to afford the gear required for such a venture and to afford the time off work or school that it took to thru-hike, adequate financial resources would be required. Similarly, although I do not have concrete information on the sexual orientation of hikers I met, I do know that several thru-hikers were homosexual; I met four women who identified themselves to me as lesbian, and one man who identified himself to me as gay. Thru-hiker Appearance There is a certain similarity in thru-hiker appearance that causes many thru-hikers to believe that they can spot a thru-hiker in any crowd of people. Most thru-hikers wear similar clothing. Always steering away from cotton, most prefer to wear hiking clothes made from wicking fabrics, fabrics that are made to pull moisture away from the body. Clothes that get this much use eventually become permanently stained and smelly, even after washing. Clothing certainly identifies hikers as either dayhikers or thru-hikers, as Sassafras described: Clean clothes – that’s a dayhiker. Or a newby out section hiker. There’s a certain amount – people wearing cotton and stuff – you know they’re not thru-hikers. Because by this point they probably would have died of hypothermia if they were wearing cotton all the time. Most thru-hikers wear tank tops or t-shirts made from wicking fabric and convertible pants with legs that can be zipped on or off, depending on the weather. Most thru-hikers wear boots, except when in camp, when most change into sandals, lightweight Tevas or Chakos. The boots chosen by thru-hikers vary. Some, like me, prefer heavy, stiff leather
110 boots, for the support they provide. Others opt for lighter weight and less support, wearing lightweight trail runners or tennis shoes. Thru-hikers themselves can often be identified by their hairiness. Males, especially, often let their hair and beards grow, resulting in an amazing variety of beard thickness and length. Females, who of course, do not grow beards, often let leg and armpit hair grow. Sassafras described the general appearance of thru-hikers in his interview: If they look really dirty, like unshaven, like shaven people are a pretty big clue. There’s a few guys, like Superfoot actually shaves out here. But there’s very few guys that actually go to the trouble to do that. And females – hairy legs are one. Most of them have armpit hair too – girls just – we just let ourselves go. It’s not important what we look like out here. Everybody smells the same, everybody looks the same. Perhaps it is natural for people who go six to seven days between showers to let themselves go, as Sassafras describes, but it also seems to be part of a thru-hiker aura to be smelly, dirty, and hairy. Thru-hiker gear is identifiable as well, especially as the miles pile on. It is usually smelly and dirty. It can become so bad, in fact, that drastic measures are required. In Front Royal, Virginia, Mole took his backpack to a coin-operated car wash and pressurewashed it for about 20 minutes because he had become so disgusted with the smell. Streamlined and stripped-down gear was the norm. Many thru-hikers, once warm weather was firmly established, streamlined their backpacks, stripping away whatever gear was not needed. This results in a typical thru-hiker pack: it’s dirty, it’s smelly, but there is no
111 extraneous gear hanging from it. It may be missing its lid or cover if it is an internal frame pack, as thru-hikers find that they are carrying so little that they don’t need that anymore. Sometimes these lids may weigh as much as a pound, so sending them home means a lighter pack. In the summer months, lightweight sleeping bags, minimal clothing, and hiking through the mid-Atlantic states where delis and towns are plentiful and thus less food is needed means more miles per day and a quicker pace. On a more subjective level, perhaps, is the look of a thru-hiker. There is a sense of confidence, of relaxation that develops as thru-hikers become more and more used to hiking all day, sleeping in the woods, and each other. Sassafras mentioned this confidence when I interviewed him in northern Virginia, approaching the halfway point: We just have an aura – I think we’re more confident looking than other people are too. I mean, I’ll walk up, I’m like, yeah, I’m a thru-hiker. So—excuse me, fat man, have you walked 800 miles this year? No. I think we have confidence cause we know that we’ve been out here this long. We’re almost halfway. Feels good. This sense of confidence, and the camaraderie that goes along with identifying oneself as a thru-hiker, meant that no matter where we went on the trail, we always felt part of a group. Jumper called it “a family of strangers.” Language of the AT Like most cultures, thru-hikers have their own language, their own vocabulary that links them and centers on issues that are of importance to them. Many terms used by thru-hikers center on hiking and how it is accomplished. For example, blue-blazing is a term used to refer to hiking on a trail other than the AT. Named for the square blue markings on trees or rocks that identify the trail and separate it from the white blazes
112 used to mark the AT, blue-blaze trails sometimes provide shortcuts to the AT, or perhaps a trail that intersects with the AT but passes by some sight, vista, or view that the AT does not. For some thru-hikers, blue-blazing is not part of a “pure” thru-hike. Stretchin’, in her journal, defines “purists” as “a hiker that follows all and only the white blazes. White blazes are the rectangles of white paint marked on the trees, rocks, etc. along the AT to guide you along the way.” For these “purists,” anyone who blue-blazes is taking a shortcut and thus cannot say that they have hiked the entirety of the Appalachian Trail. For others, a blue blaze is an acceptable alternative, perhaps providing a shorter, easier, or more beautiful option than the AT. Blue blazing does not always mean an easier hike, however, as Tenderfoot and Sure Pace describe in this excerpt from their joint interview: Sure Pace:
Yes, we read the maps sometimes, and occasionally we will use a side trail to go around something, if we think there’s an easier way to go to get there instead of staying with the AT. We’re not AT purists. But we are hiking from Georgia to Maine. Quite frequently the bypasses, if you will, are old AT relocations, anyway.
Tenderfoot:
Yeah, he’s good about looking at the maps.
Sure Pace:
And we don’t always luck out and get an easier run.
Tenderfoot:
No, no. He’s very good at looking at the maps.
Sure Pace:
We took this blue blaze one day, and it was a hike from hell.
Tenderfoot:
What was it, Three Ridges or whatever it was called? Our friend Eveready said maybe he was going to do that.
Sure Pace:
Yeah. It was going to save us four miles, but –
Tenderfoot:
Oh, brother, it did save us four miles –
113 Sure Pace:
It was the hike from hell.
Tenderfoot:
But it added about four hours to our . . . .
Sure Pace:
Yeah, it took us forever to get around that – that steep, rocky blue blaze.
Tenderfoot:
Supposed to see this forty-foot cascading waterfall, which turned out to be a putz.
Sure Pace:
We just thought we were going to save four miles, see a beautiful waterfall. Neither worked out. We saw a waterfall, that was mediocre. And the hike was –
Tenderfoot:
From hell.
Sure Pace:
Yeah, it was the hike from hell. It was the worst hike that we’ve had in this whole thing. It was very rocky, and some of the areas were just difficult to negotiate.
Tenderfoot:
Oh, it was hideous. Absolutely. And when we got to the shelter, our friend Eveready had written a note, “I’m sorry Tenderfoot and Sure Pace, I didn’t know it was going to be like this.” It was the old AT, I don’t know why they rerouted it. But they tried to take you over every hill there is in the – And actually, I don’t think the road – it was like three up and downs – we’d have been better off to do the three up and downs rather than the rocky. And oh, god, it took us several hours longer, and it was infinitely worse.
In this excerpt, Tenderfoot and Sure Pace note their disastrous experience taking a blueblazed trail, and at the same time show that they are not “purists.”
114 Yellow-blazing is another controversial practice. The “yellow blaze” in yellowblazing denotes yellow lines in roads, and the phrase refers to the practice of hitching a ride from one place where the trail crosses a road to another. Like blue-blazing, yellowblazing is condemned by some thru-hikers, who want to maintain the purity of their hike. Even so, yellow-blazing is a fairly frequent occurrence among thru-hikers. In fieldnotes taken on July 16, I noted that, “Smokin’ passed us by when I had stopped for lunch. She yellow-blazed the section we did yesterday.” I yellow-blazed myself in Connecticut, as I describe in this fieldnote written August 10: Belter's Campsite to Salisbury, CT -- hiked 3.5; yellow-blazed 7. Got up early this morning (5:30) planning to hike all the way to Salisbury before the middle of the day. When we got to Falls River, I decided to get a ride to Salisbury. I was doing OK, and I could have kept hiking, but the thought of the heat just made me want to quit. Instead of quitting, I'm spending as much of the day in A/C as possible, and Jumper will meet me here around 12:30. I tried to get a ride to Falls Village, figuring I could hitch from there to Salisbury. After about 30 minutes of trying to get a ride, a woman named Jane in a pick-up stopped. She gave me a ride all the way to Salisbury, though she wasn't headed there, and gave me her phone number so that if we couldn't find a place to stay, we could sleep on her living room floor. Right now I'm sitting at the White Horse Inn eating breakfast in the air conditioning, and will meet Jumper and then call Jane back later in the day. Yellow-blazing was a practice that not everyone approved of, and it was seen as especially problematic for thru-hikers who were hiking to raise money for charity, as in the case of Coach. In fieldnotes taken on August 6th, I wrote about a conversation with
115 Pony about this practice: “Pony and I talked about Coach yellow blazing. He's raising money per mile for a foundation. Both of us wonder about the propriety of raising money for miles that he never actually hiked.” Aqua-blazing refers to taking a float trip down the Shenandoah River, instead of hiking through the whole of Shenandoah National Park in northern Virginia. Stretchin’ and some of her hiking buddies decided to aqua-blaze, and she discussed it in her journal entries in late June: Up at the Lodge, I sat around on the porch with a bunch of hikers discussing the ‘Aqua Blaze’ possibilities. One of the guys had just finished up with this 90+ mile canoe trip and was now back to hike past the white blazes. Aqua-blaze= going by water (i.e. like canoeing). Arkansas Moe had discussed that the idea of an aqua-blaze sounded like fun, a little variety to the green tunnel. I was definitely against the idea when I first heard of it back in Damascus. Now, however, the thought of being off my feet for a few days doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. I have to come back to this lovely state of Virginia to make up miles from Pearisburg. What’s a few more? So a purist I am no more, but I guarantee that the miles will be included in the ultimate count. Stretchin’ notes that it is the aqua blaze that moves her away from being a purist, but she still insists that eventually she will make up the miles she has missed. She went on to aqua-blaze through that section, and reports in her journal that it was a restful and satisfying way to experience Shenandoah National Park. Approaching thru-hiker values of purity in a similar way is the highly controversial practice of slackpacking. Critter defined slackpacking this way:
116 Slackpacking has – it is a connotation to me of carrying at best a minimal daypack of what you deem are essential items, without the intention that you will overnight. You have left your pack, and are actually hiking back to it, having been delivered to some distant point in the opposite direction, typically from what you’ve been hiking, recently for people, but it can be either way. It’s a hike without carrying your normal full complement of thru-hiking gear. I’ve also heard it referred to euphemistically as ‘freedom hiking’ in recent times. Slackpacking involves hiking without a pack, day-hiking, in effect. In order to accomplish this, the thru-hiker must leave her or his pack with another person and make plans to meet that person somewhere. Sometimes this means being dropped off north of the thru-hiker’s current location on the trail and hiking south, back into the hostel or town where the hiker is staying. Other times, it may mean hiking north and being picked up by someone at a road. Many thru-hikers choose to slackpack, because it provides an opportunity to hike a high number of miles with less effort than that of carrying a full pack. Others choose not to slackpack because of purity issues, believing that slackpacking violates their goal in thru-hiking the AT, which for some is to hike the whole trail with their pack. Thru-hikers call terrain that seems to alternate between short, steep uphills and downhills without the benefit of reaching mountain tops or seeing vast views PUDS. PUDS is an acronym for “Pointless Ups and Downs.” Another acronym that is commonly used by thru-hikers is AYCE, which stands for All You Can Eat. An AYCE restaurant is highly prized by thru-hikers, because it promises a cheap way to obtain large quantities of food. Yogiing refers to the art of obtaining handouts from others. Thru-hikers who excel
117 at yogiing can scrounge anything from a simple soda to a full meal, just by chatting with dayhikers or tourists, and some even make a competition out of yogiing, as can be seen in Figure 3, a shelter register entry written by a thru-hiker describing yogi bingo. Figure 3. Yogi bingo.
Trail magic is anything received by a thru-hiker that was not yogiied, an unexpected, positive occurrence. Southbounders are thru-hikers who are hiking from Maine south to Georgia; northbounders are thru-hikers who are hiking from Georgia north to Maine. Hikers who flip-flop begin their hikes headed north, but skip up to Katahdin and hike from there south to end at the point they left off. Flip-flopping is usually occasioned by the need to get to Katahdin before it is closed for the winter. Thru-hikers who yo-yo do a complete thru-hike and then turn around and head in the opposite direction. Journey and
118 Tailgate, for example, did a southbound thru-hike in 2000 and when they reached Springer Mountain, turned and did a northbound thru-hike in 2001. Thru-Hiker Traditions The community of thru-hikers, like other communities, also has certain traditions. One of these, and perhaps one of the most important, is the taking of trail names. I have already described my own trail name, Turtle, and the manner in which I took it. When I returned to the trail after the injury I sustained to my hind end, I was renamed, rather appropriately, as “Bad-Ass Turtle.” Most thru-hikers that I met had learned about the practice of taking trail names prior to beginning their hikes, from reading books about thru-hiking, from Internet forums on thru-hiking, or from meeting other thru-hikers. Some received their trail names while on the trail. Others, like Mole and myself, named themselves or used an old nickname. (Mole’s trail name was an old college nickname.) Another important thru-hiker tradition is the celebration of Trail Days, held annually in Damascus, Virginia. An opportunity for thru-hikers of previous years to reunite, and for the current year’s thru-hikers to celebrate their progress, Trail Days is held toward the end of May and takes up the better part of a long weekend. In 2001, when the date of Trail Days approached, I was at home, recuperating from my injury. Mark had been recruited by Recreational Equipment Incorporated (REI), where he works part-time, to man their booth during the festival, and I wanted to be there to continue my research and to maintain my connection to the trail, so the two of us headed up to Damascus, Virginia on a sunny Thursday afternoon. When we arrived in Damascus, the first thing we saw was a line of tents and tables being erected along the narrow town park, bordering a creek that crosses the main road at the edge of town. This was the area for
119 commercial exhibits, including Superfeet, Mast Store Outfitters, Subaru/Leave No Trace, Southeastern Adventures, Hike for Hope 2001, Go-Lite, and Hennessy Hammock, among others. Toward the far end of the line of booths was a tent city, where we pitched our tent, designated as a quiet area by the people running the festival. Though designated as such, it was not actually quiet: the first night we were in Damascus there was a group of hikers camped near us who had thru-hiked the previous year. The continual roar of their reunion continued until well after 2:00 A.M. At the other end of the line of booths were a restroom building and the end of the park. Where the park ends, the road that runs through town (Highway 58, which becomes Laurel Avenue) crosses the creek. Along Laurel Avenue are several important hot spots for thru-hikers: Quincy’s, a pizza place with huge servings of calzones and pizza; the post office, where just about every thru-hiker picks up mail drops of food and gear; and The Place, an inexpensive hostel for thru-hikers run by the Methodist church. During Trail Days, I was on crutches, but I was able to get to a few events. One of my favorites, and one that was well attended by hikers, was the thru-hiker talent show. Thru-hikers signed up to perform and the audience was largely made up of past and present thru-hikers. The crowd gathered at the gazebo in the park, which has a stage inside and steps leading up to it. Everyone sat on the grass or the concrete to watch the show. The show was officiated by several people who are employed by the ATC. The master of ceremonies would call out a name and that person or group of people would get up on stage and do their talent; the time limit on each act was five minutes, and when that time was up, another official rang a cow bell at the performers. Most of the acts were musical. One man did a stand-up comedy routine. Another juggled. There was a poet
120 named Mud who read a rather lengthy rambling poem about thru-hiking. Journey and Tailgate, wearing bandana halter tops and short skirts, did a lovely song about defecation, the chorus of which was "Dig a hole, dump your load, dig a hole, dump your load. That's what you gotta do, do, do." Dancer, a female section hiker who was a music performance major, played some lovely bluegrass fiddle to a guitar accompaniment and won first place in the contest. Prizes included a tent, a Hennessy Hammock, a water filter, socks, t-shirts, and a jaw harp. During the show, it sprinkled on and off, but few people bothered to move or put on raingear, and no matter how amateurish the performance, all competitors received a round of applause. Other aspects of Trail Days I did not get to experience first hand, being limited in my ability to move about, but I heard about from other hikers. Many thru-hikers, especially some of the younger males, treated Trail Days as a week-long party. Sassafras, for example, arrived in Damascus a week before the festival started, and spent a total of 17 days there. During that time, he said, “It was, I mean, it was definitely a non-stop party.” Sassafras also told me about the drum circles, held near where many thru-hikers were camped: At Trail Days it was pretty much a couple guys in our tents, in our camp brought some guitars, and one guy brought like four just little like frame drums, so everybody just passed them around, and sat down, a guy walked over with some bongos, and another guy walked over with another drum, and people just going and having a good time. Like going from solo to solo all the way around the circle, it was pretty cool.
121 The parade, which is held every year on the last day of the festival, begins on the north side of town, and thru-hikers make up the bulk of the participants. When the parade gets to the south end of town, the thru-hikers and the people watching have a great water battle, using huge water guns and water balloons. As the festival begins to wind down, most thru-hikers begin making their way back to the trail, wherever they came from. Some had hiked into Damascus and just packed up and headed out on Sunday or on Monday. Others had hitched rides into Damascus from south or north on the trail, so they begin looking for ways to get back. I saw several people carrying cardboard signs reading “Thru-hiker headed for Troutville.” Or “Need to get to Waynesboro.” As the festival wound down on Sunday, Damascus began to return to its customary sleepy self until next year’s festival. Other thru-hiker traditions include mooning the cog railway that takes tourists up Mount Washington in New Hampshire’s Presidential Range. The Association of Mooners of the Cog (AssMoC) is a loose thru-hiker group that is made up of those who have bared their behinds to protest the cog railway’s visual, air, and sound pollution as it carries tourists to the top of Mount Washington, where they can enjoy the view and then ride the railway back down to their waiting cars. The very initials of the group name it as subversive, as they are the same as that of the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), a trail club that maintains huts, shelters, and trails in this area of New England. In Glencliff, New Hampshire, I was given a hand-drawn map of the AT through the White Mountains (“The Marauders Map: Being a Guide to Stealth Sites in the Territory of the AMC”; see Appendix F) that contained this comment under Mt. Washington: “Do not miss your opportunity to join the only AMC worth affiliating with: Association of Mooners of the
122 Cog! (aka AssMoC).” Another part of the mooning tradition is that the engineers on the cog railway throw lumps of coal at thru-hikers who moon them. When I hiked up Mt. Washington, I chose not to moon the cog, but I did see lumps of coal scattered over and around the trail near where it crosses the railway. Hike Naked Day, a celebration of the summer solstice, is held on June 21st. Several thru-hikers wrote in shelter registers and told me stories about their experiences hiking naked. For example, in Maryland’s David Lesser Shelter Register, one thru-hiker wrote on June 21st: “Happy vernal equinox! Now everybody hike naked! Happy Nude Hiking Day! I will stay fully clothed, but I wish you an eyeful of good looking nude hikers all day.” I saw only one individual hiking without clothing on that day. A southbounder, he had a towel covering his genitalia, but other than that, he was unclothed. On Hike Naked Day, I was hiking through Shenandoah National Park, a very highly populated section of the AT that crosses and recrosses the Blue Ridge Parkway, a scenic drive, many times during the day. Several thru-hikers that I spoke to decided against hiking naked because they were concerned about running into families with small children. Competitions are also part of the thru-hiking tradition. For example, at Pine Grove Furnace State Park’s General Store in Pennsylvania, the celebrated “Half-gallon Challenge” occurs. In this challenge, thru-hikers compete to see if they can break the standing speed record for eating a half-gallon of ice cream. According to the Susquehanna Appalachian Trail Club, this year’s record was 9 minutes and 10 seconds (http://www.libertynet.org/susqatc/contact.html. Accessed 1/9/02). Even if a thru-hiker doesn’t break the record, they receive a specially stamped wooden spoon if they manage
123 to down a complete half-gallon of ice cream. The spoon reads “Member of Half Gal. Club,” and is a prized treasure for many. Sherpa described his experience in his journal: After 12 miles, I reached the Park's camp-store, where I had my choice of various half-gallon flavors of ice cream. I chose Peanut Butter Twist. Rum Ball was on the scene and strayed me away from the Moosetracks flavor. "I did it yesterday. Trust me, stay away from the chunky stuff." I took my treat to the patio, and went to work. Hikers that succeed in finishing off a half-gallon get their name in the hallowed "half-gallon club" register log, not to mention the illustrious wooden spoon keepsake. The Four State Challenge is more closely related to hiking. It requires hikers to pound out 42 miles through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and on into Pennsylvania in 24 hours. The traditions of thru-hikers, including taking trail names, Trail Days, mooning the cog railway, Hike Naked Day, and a variety of hiking challenges, are all part of the fascinating lore of the thru-hiking community. The purpose of this chapter was to provide an introduction to the people of the thru-hiking community and especially to thru-hikers and their traditions. With this introduction accomplished, in Chapter 5, I will present the multiliteracies of thru-hikers.
124
CHAPTER 5 MULTILITERACIES OF THRU-HIKERS Multiliteracies, as described by the New London Group (1996, 2000), refers to a broad array of modes of meaning-making, including linguistic, audio, visual, gestural, spatial, and multimodal. These ways of making meaning are seen as increasingly important because of changes in society. Workplaces, once sites for routine jobs that required little skill, are now requiring workers who can complete complex, multi-tasking jobs. In addition, our increasingly diverse and global world creates a need for pluralism, so that all individuals need to be able to access and use different languages, discourses, styles, and approaches. The increasing influence of media and mass culture means that old narratives lose their strength, and we must negotiate with a wide variety of values, subcultures, and lifeworlds. The broad sweep of multiliteracies provides an arena in which these changing facets of society can be managed, as well as giving a greater sense of control. In this chapter, I present an overview of the multiliteracies of thru-hikers, as seen in the data collected during my thru-hike, using the multiliteracies framework to describe the literacies practiced by AT thru-hikers. Writing the descriptions in this chapter came as part of the data analysis I conducted once my thru-hike and data collection period was complete. I first read through all of my data and noted events that centered on literacy, defining literacy broadly as ways of making meaning. I placed these data on literacy events into the following categories: literacies that are primarily linguistic, literacies that are primarily gestural, literacies that are primarily spatial, and literacies that are primarily
125 visual and audio. I will provide definitions and examples of these forms of literacy in the following sections and will point out connections between the culture of the AT thruhiking community and its literacy practices. Literacies that are Primarily Linguistic I defined literacy events as primarily linguistic if they centered around written or spoken language. I use the word “primarily” here, because I believe that all practices of literacy are multimodal in some ways; language is used in linguistic literacy, but this involves, of course, other modes of literacy as well. Thru-hikers practiced linguistic literacies in two important ways. The first group of linguistic literacies served to benefit thru-hikers more as individuals than as members of the thru-hiking community. These practices included reading and writing for pleasure, reading and writing to gain and impart information, and journal writing. The second group of linguistic literacies served to allow thru-hikers to continually portray themselves as part of a community and to take part in the life of the community. These include reading and writing in shelter registers and story telling and re-telling. Reading and Writing for Individual Purposes Although I have separated individual and community-based uses of linguistic literacy here for the sake of discussion, I don’t see these as hard and fast categories without overlap. Certainly, some aspects of what I am classifying as individual uses of literacy serve a community purpose as well. This section describes these largely individual linguistic literacies, which include reading and writing for pleasure, reading for information, reading signs and writing notes, and journaling.
126 Reading and Writing for Pleasure During my thru-hike, I noticed many examples of thru-hikers participating in linguistic literacies in the form of reading, writing, and talking that I categorized as “for pleasure.” These included writing and reading letters and postcards; writing, reading, memorizing, and discussing poetry; and reading novels. One salient example of letter writing came from Soldier, a thru-hiker in his 60s, who had visited some third and fourth grade classrooms before he began his thru-hike. Soldier told me that he promised the students in those classrooms that he would write them back if they wrote him. Although Soldier described himself as “not a big writer,” he said that a few days previously he had written forty letters in one sitting. Tenderfoot and Sure Pace were also prolific writers of postcards. They kept a notebook with addresses of their friends and family members and put a check mark next to the names to indicate each postcard written. When I talked to them in Maine, they had written several hundred postcards. Many thru-hikers carried books with them, to read in the evenings or when taking a break. Binx read the Bible and a book of Catholic prayer meditation theory, Gulliver’s Travels, The Fellowship of the Ring, and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Other titles that I saw thru-hikers reading include The Hobbit, Contact, Bright Star, and several adventure and romance titles. Books were also passed from thru-hiker to thruhiker. For example, I picked up Contact, by Carl Sagan, at Pass Mountain Hut in Shenandoah National Park, where it had been left in the shelter by Davenport. Inside the front cover was written, “Please pass this book on to another thru-hiker when finished. Rufus.” Underneath Rufus’s signature was “4/07 Half Hitch AT ’01 Good Book!!” and then “6/25/01 Davenport GA-ME 01.” After reading Contact and signing my trail name
127 to its front page, I left it in a shelter in Pennsylvania, where it was later picked up and read by Rosy. I’m unsure of what happened to the book after this. Similarly, the Three Stooges told me that they had passed around a copy of The Hobbit among themselves, and all four of them had finished reading it by the time they reached Virginia. Poetry also played an important role for some thru-hikers. For example, in New Hampshire, Professor memorized “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot during several days of hiking. At the Hiker’s Paradise Hostel in Gorham, New Hampshire, Professor recited the poem for me and for Green Light, and we spent an enjoyable hour discussing the poem and our interpretations of it. Another poetry encounter occurred in Monson, Maine, where I first met Kegger as he was reciting his “The Rainy Day (AT) Poem” (see Appendix E) for a group gathered at a thru-hiker party at the Spring Creek Barbeque. His recitation was greeted with applause and laughter, and afterwards, he sold 12 copies of the poem for one dollar each, enough to pay for his campsite at Abol Bridge. In addition to providing personal pleasure for those who participated in these forms of linguistic literacies, some social elements can be seen in these practices as well. The passing of books among thru-hikers and the practice of signing those books with trail names and directional markers show the ways in which group identities were borne out in these linguistic practices. Reading for Information Most of the thru-hikers I interviewed had done extensive reading on thru-hiking the AT to prepare for their own thru-hikes. For example, Sassafras read Walking the Dream by Ellen Wolfe, The Backpacker Magazine Guide to Thru-hikes, a workbook for
128 planning AT thru-hikes, As Far as I Can See by David Brill, and Bill Bryson’s wellknown A Walk in the Woods. Jennifer described her preparation for the AT in this way: “I sat at the bar and read books about the trail. I read a lot of books, quite a few personal histories.” In particular, Jennifer read, as did I, A Journey North by Adrienne Hall. Tenderfoot and Sure Pace bought books about backpacking, a book and video kit on preparing for the AT published by the Appalachian Trail Conference, along with guidebooks and maps, and studied these before they left. Most thru-hikers also mentioned reading information about thru-hiking on the internet, at www.trailplace.com or other similar web pages, and reading journals posted by thru-hikers on web sites such as www.trailjournals.com. During their thru-hikes, most thru-hikers carried one or two trail reference books with them. The most prevalent of these was the Appalachian Trail Data Book (Chazin, 2001), which is published every year by the Appalachian Trail Conference (See Figure 4 for a sample of a page from the Data Book). Using tables to present mileage information, it also includes information on shelter locations, water sources, post offices, road crossings, supply sources, places to stay, and restaurants. Northbounders have to read the Data Book backwards, as it begins with mileage from Katahdin and ends with Springer Mountain in Georgia.
129 Figure 4. Sample of page from data book.
130 In this sample page from the Data Book, a northbound thru-hiker would begin reading at the bottom of the right-hand side. Looking in the column headed “South to North,” the hiker could see that from the Connecticut-New York Line, at Hoyt Road, he or she must hike 2.8 miles to get to the Ten Mile River Lean-To. Thru-hikers thus read the Data Book to ascertain mileage between important points on the trail. In addition to the Data Book, hikers might turn to either The Thru-hiker’s Handbook Bruce (2001), or the Appalachian Trail Long Distance Hiker’s Companion (Edwards & Mikkalsen, 2000), published by the Appalachian Long Distance Hiker’s Association, for more detailed information. Both of these guides provide descriptions of shelters, water sources, and towns. In The Thru-hiker’s Handbook, for example, the description of the Ten Mile River Lean-to reads as follows: Ten Mile River Lean-to: (w) [water] on side trail to the right 0.2 mile before reaching the Ten Mile River bridge; pump is the water source 0.1 mile north on A.T. in camping area. From here to Katahdin, the terms “shelter” and “lean-to” are used interchangeably. (290’) 8.4m→ As seen in this excerpt, The Thru-hiker’s Handbook provides elevation information (290’) and mileage to the next shelter (8.4m→) at the end of each shelter description. A sample page from The Thru-hiker’s Handbook is provided below (Figure 5).
131 Figure 5. Sample page from The Thru-hiker’s Handbook.
132 Most thru-hikers used some combination of the Data Book, maps, and either The Thru-hiker’s Handbook or The Thru-hiker’s Companion. On my thru-hike, I chose to use The Thru-hiker’s Handbook. I used topographical maps to obtain information about mileage and used the Handbook for information about shelters, water sources, roads, and towns. Mole used the Data Book to get information about mileage, so that he didn’t have to look constantly at the map. He used the Companion to give him information about what services were available in towns, and some elements of the history of the area through which he was traveling. It was quite common to see hikers reading one of these books during a break or in the evening, to see what was coming up for them on the trail and in the next town. In addition to providing information for the individual thru-hikers who used them, these informational books also passed on elements of trail culture and traditions. Aspects of life on the trail such as trail names, certain well-known trail towns, and competitions such as the Half-Gallon Challenge, to see who could eat a half-gallon of ice cream in record time, are described in many of these books that also provide information about the trail itself and how to prepare for a thru-hike. Reading Signs and Writing Notes Thru-hikers also read signs posted on or near the trail and often wrote notes and posted them near the trail. Signs posted near the trail often contained directions to certain places. For example, on the trail approaching New York’s Greymoor Friary – a popular place, where thru-hikers were allowed to camp in the baseball field and were treated to dinner in the friary – signs were posted giving directions. The first sign read “Hikers, welcome to Greymoor. Consider this a dirt road [it was actually paved] and continue to
133 the next road as it describes in the manual.” “The manual” refers to an entry in The Thruhiker’s Handbook, which contained directions to Greymoor that had been written before the dirt road had been paved. A second sign at Old West Point Road read “Welcome hikers to Greymoor. Follow the blue blazes to the baseball field.” The writers of these signs assumed that readers would be thru-hikers, familiar with thru-hiking guides. In addition to providing evidence of the linguistic literacy of reading signs, this particular example points out the widespread nature of what I am calling the AT thru-hiking community. The friars at Greymoor, because they lived near the trail, had been taking in and feeding thru-hikers for many years, and I would consider them part of the AT thruhiking community. By posting directions on the trail, they made clear the connection between linguistic literacy and the trail community. Hikers who left the trail sometimes posted farewell letters near the trail, encased in ziplock bags to protect them from the elements. Streisand left such a note at New Jersey’s High Point State Park, explaining her reasons for leaving the trail, and her happiness that her partner, Stormy, would be continuing. Another hiker posted a letter explaining that since he had been hit by lightning several days previously, he had decided to leave the trail and spend some time with his family. In his letter, he urged thru-hikers to be careful and to value their friends and family. These letters are further evidence of the importance of linguistic literacies in maintaining connections among thru-hikers and other members of the community. Lacking the opportunity to speak to other members of the AT community face-to-face, people leaving the trail chose to write letters to say farewell.
134 Notes on the trail were also used to alert thru-hikers to hostel services. In North Carolina, flyers were posted along the trail for a new hostel at Tellico Gap. In Maine’s Hundred Mile Wilderness, a business card for White House Landing, a lodge where many thru-hikers spent the night, was posted on a tree near the trail and contained brief directions for getting to the lodge. In New Jersey, someone had posted flyers in several of the shelters that advertised The Barn, a hostel in Gorham, New Hampshire. Thru-hikers also left each other notes and warnings along the trail and in shelters. In Shenandoah National Park, for example, I found a note to Charles from Hearty on a mile marker post. It said CHARLES on the outside and on the inside read “I will be at Pinefield Shelter. Got on the trail and went north when I should have gone south.” At Manassas Gap Shelter in Virginia, there were handwritten signs posted on the shelter wall warning of a large rat living in the shelter and of copperheads behind the fire pit and near the spring. Journaling Many of the thru-hikers that I met kept journals. Some, like Stretchin’, had made arrangements to have their journals transcribed and posted on web pages devoted to trail journals, like www.trailjournals.com. Others, like Tenderfoot and Sure Pace, had family members transcribe their journals and post them on individual web pages. Most thruhikers were writing their journals solely for private use. I often observed individuals writing in their journals, and this practice actually served my research well, since it provided me with several individuals’ journals to use as data, reinforced my own need to keep a journal for both personal and research purposes, and provided a norm that allowed me to take field notes unobtrusively.
135 That journaling was a highly valued activity among thru-hikers is evident in my fieldnotes taken one evening at North Carolina’s Hogback Ridge Shelter, as the thruhikers staying there sat around the fire in the evening, talking and writing: Flame has finished writing in his journal, which he always writes in extensively. Canoer is writing in his journal. Cheesy says, “Everyone is writing in their journal. That’s what I should be doing.” Flame says, “I’m glad to see so many people journaling. Lots of good memories.” Over and over again, throughout my hike, I saw thru-hikers writing in their journals in the evening or late afternoon, after they had arrived at their day’s destination and had some free time. The thru-hikers I interviewed described the topics they wrote about and the frequency of their journal writing. Jockey, for example, typically wrote one page per day about what happened during that day. If several days had gone by, and he couldn’t remember the particulars of a day’s events, Jockey wrote stories about events that he could remember, what he called “side stories – it’s part of the trail that I experienced.” Mole wrote his journal in a conversational tone, as if he was telling someone about what happened to him on any particular day. He also planned to use his journal as a guide to provide a framework for the book he wanted to write about his adventure. He wrote his journal as a tool to use in cross-referencing his memory of his experiences with his pictures and maps. Tenderfoot also kept a daily journal, in which she wrote about trail conditions, whom she saw, and whether the climb was steep and rocky. During our interview, she read from her journal about a day when she had encountered me, while I was hiking with my mom and step-dad in New Hampshire: “On the trail to the summit,
136 we met our good friend Turtle and her mom and step-dad. They live in Arkansas and are hiking with her for a week and they all tented at the summit.” Others that I interviewed had experienced disappointment with their commitment to journal writing and had changed their styles of writing or abandoned journals altogether. Sassafras began with a strong commitment to writing in his journal, writing in it every day for the first month and a half. By the time he reached Shenandoah National Park, when I interviewed him, he was 10 or 12 days behind in his journal writing. He explained to me how he had changed his approach: “I’ve got a lot of good picture records. I take pictures of everything.” Similarly, Buffalo began his trek writing every day in his journal, but by the time he reached New Hampshire, where I interviewed him, he was writing in his journal perhaps two times a week. This seemed to distress him and he made plans for writing more often during the last 3 weeks of his hike: Yeah, I’m going to try to, in this last month, start writing every day again. Just to make sure that I get, that I don’t forget, or, you know, all the stuff that I’m going to be thinking about here in these last three weeks. I think it’s gonna be pretty intense maybe. Getting near to the end. Like Sassafras and Buffalo, Jennifer’s attitude toward journal writing had changed since the beginning of her trek. When I interviewed her in Vermont, she said: Well, I had high hopes to begin with that it was going to be this very introspective, reflective journal, and really it’s turned out to be like the most boring thing I’ve ever written in my entire life. What I write in my journal is very, like – it’s a diary, it’s not a journal. So it’s got the date, the time, the place where we are, how many miles we did, what the trail was like, who we saw, who we’re
137 camped with, and probably what we’re eating for dinner. You know, very minimal, very just factual boring stuff. Binx began by keeping a journal, but decided early in his hike to send it home. “Long ago, I had already shipped my journal back home, and just kept a few sheets of paper. It didn’t last long.” Of all of the thru-hikers I met, Critter had the most elaborate journal. Because of his interest in wildlife biology, Critter combined his comments about the day, what he called his daily log, with drawings of flowers, insects, and birds; observations about changes in the forests and landscape; comments about the history of the area through which he hiked; and information culled from libraries in towns the trail passed through. He described his plan for a finished product: The intent is, when this is done, I will sit down and take the daily log, and the notes from other sources, and I will combine them into my version of what this hike has been. And that will be a little more philosophical than the daily log, hopefully a little more factual than my limited knowledge on the trail as I walk. Insightful? Probably not. But hopefully a little broader than just that daily log that most people keep. I would like something that I can look back at someday, and help to recall the sum total experience, and still have in it information that I find as knowledge. Things I’ve forgotten, things that maybe at the time I didn’t think were important, but next time I read it, they might be valuable. Because he wanted his journal to be more than simply a daily log of his experiences, he combined his experience as a hike with his increasing store of knowledge about wildlife and the history of the Appalachians into a piece of writing that he hopes will help him to
138 recall the “sum total experience.” Unlike some of the others, Critter planned a limited publication of his journal to selected friends, once he returned home and combined his writings. While I see these examples of linguistic literacies as primarily providing benefit for the individual thru-hiker, they do have some elements of cultural ways of being within them. Journaling, for example, is a practice sanctioned by thru-hikers, and thus receives the community’s blessing as an appropriate form of writing, whereas hostel advertising posted on the trail is a practice banned by the Appalachian Trail Conference (ATC Board Supports On-Trail Advertising Ban, http://www.atconf.org/trailnews/index.html. Accessed January 15, 2002.) In addition, several thru-hikers’ journals were published on web sites, including Stretchin’ and Tenderfoot and Sure Pace, and these journals have become part of the ongoing knowledge accumulation of the AT thru-hiking community. Similarly, the practices of posting and reading notes on the trail, circulating books to read, and even using the same reference materials, although I see them as primarily individualistic behaviors, denote community connections among thru-hikers. In the next section, I address reading and writing that is more closely linked to purposes that help to define and strengthen membership within the AT thru-hiking community. Reading and Writing for Community Purposes I classified forms of linguistic literacy that were closely connected to membership in the thru-hiking community as “reading and writing for community purposes.” These uses of language include storytelling and reading and writing in shelter registers.
139 Storytelling Thru-hikers used language to tell stories, stories that usually revolved around or illustrated some aspect of thru-hiker culture. On a night in North Carolina, for example, when the temperature was so cold that our drinking water froze solid during the night, Twice Shy told the story of the “Riders of the Storm.” In 1996, five thru-hikers, all but one of whom were go-liters, got caught in the Blizzard of ’96. They were on the trail just out of Unicoi Gap when the blizzard hit. Only one of the hikers was carrying a tent, so they all got inside that tent. With the help of a carefully tended stove, they were able to stay warm, if a bit cozy, during the night. What they didn’t realize, however, was that while they were staying warm, their tent was being coated with a thick layer of ice and snow, as the snow hit the tent, melted from the warmth of the stove, and then re-froze. It took them two hours to knock the ice off the zipper and open the tent. Thus the group of hikers received their joint trail names: “Riders of the Storm.” This story, which served to provide entertainment for a group of thru-hikers huddled around a fire on a cold night, also contains elements of thru-hiker culture. Goliters, for example, are ultra-light backpackers, who often choose to sacrifice what some consider essential gear; in this case, tents. The story also addresses how these particular hikers handled the adverse weather conditions in which they found themselves, and tells a story about how several individuals received their trail names. All of these aspects of the story relate to the culture of thru-hikers and help to pass on and strengthen that culture. Another story, this one told by Journey and Tailgate concerning the hut system in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, elaborates on an ongoing critique of that system and its involvement in what some thru-hikers consider questionable financial practices. As
140 Journey and Tailgate told it, they hiked into a hut in the White Mountains and wanted to work for stay. A night’s stay at the hut costs about $65, but a limited number of thruhikers are usually allowed to serve meals to the paying guests or do a couple of hours of other work and then get dinner and a place to sleep for free. Tailgate said that when the two of them arrived at this hut they only needed one more person to work, which meant that one of them had no place to stay or would have to pay $65 for the night. Eventually, a man who was a paying guest said that his friend hadn’t made it there and she could have his bunk, if she paid him for it. Implicit in this story is a critique of the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), the trail club responsible for maintaining the trail in this area. Tailgate and Journey, along with many other thru-hikers, called the trail club the Appalachian “Money” Club, and did not hesitate to critique the club itself and those who stayed at its huts. In particular, I heard several thru-hikers complain about the amount of money spent catering to the needs of the weekenders, perceived by thru-hikers as wealthy people dabbling in the outdoors, who paid top dollar for the privilege of staying in the huts and the relatively low amount of money spent on trail maintenance in the area. A final set of stories I heard told by thru-hikers are actually jokes, which I believe are very telling about the values of any community. Chatty told me these jokes over a beer in the bar of the Doyle Hotel, an infamous thru-hiker hangout in Duncannon, Pennsylvania: •
How can you tell the difference between a homeless person and a thruhiker? Gore-Tex.
141 •
Three hikers are sitting at a bar: a day hiker, a section hiker, and a thruhiker. All 3 order a beer. The day hiker looks at his beer, sees a fly in it, demands a new one and gets it from the bartender. The section hiker sees a fly in his beer, picks it out and throws it away, then drinks the beer. The thru-hiker sees a fly in his beer, picks out the fly, shouts "spit it out!" eats the fly, and then drinks the beer.
•
What is the difference between a bum and a thru-hiker? The bum smells better.
These jokes serve to point out some already salient features of thru-hikers. The first of these is that most thru-hikers can afford to buy fairly expensive gear, such as rain jackets made with Gore-Tex, a fabric specially made to repel water but to breathe, so that sweat can escape but rain cannot penetrate. The second joke points out differences among three categories of hikers: day hikers, section hikers, and thru-hikers. Day hikers are portrayed as fussy, demanding their way; section hikers as less fussy; and thru-hikers as ravenous and not at all concerned about the condition of their food and drink. This concurs with my experience: many times, I saw thru-hikers pick up spilled food off the ground and eat it – I did it myself several times – usually accompanied by some comment about it being a common practice among thru-hikers. The final joke points up another salient feature of thru-hikers, their smell, which is seen as both a source of pride and an annoyance. Thus, stories and jokes, examples of linguistic literacies, serve both to entertain and to illustrate community norms. As they are told and re-told, they strengthen thruhikers’ understandings of who they are, who is part of the group, and what their values are.
142 Reading and Writing in Shelter Registers Shelter registers are typically spiral-bound or hard-bound blank notebooks that are left in shelters. Usually, shelter registers are left either by hikers or by the trail club that maintains a particular section. Some trail clubs, such as the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC), have archives of shelter registers going back for many years. Hikers, including thru-hikers, dayhikers, weekenders, and section hikers, write in the registers, as well as ridgerunners and trail maintainers. Iron Foot mentioned her habit of stopping at shelters to read the register, a typical practice: But usually if we stop at a shelter, I spend some time reading the log, cause I really, really love seeing who’s where, and what people have to say. There’s usually a lot of good information, if there’s trouble, or no water or something. You get information from there, which is really helpful. A typical shelter register entry contains the date, some information about the day’s hike, and either an actual or trail name. For example, one entry in the Manassas Gap Shelter register reads as follows: 4/22/01 Stopped for lunch and a trail break. Scenery is great looking “away” from the shelter. Sun came out will dry the trail… was pretty wet from Denton Shelter this morning, heading North. Thank you for your work. Brian Hammond – Chicago. This entry contains the date, purpose for being at the shelter, and some information about the hike, as well as a signature, and thus is perhaps the most common of register entries. As Iron Foot mentioned, register entries provide information about water sources, trail conditions, and amenities available in towns. This entry, written by a trail maintainer
143 in the David Lesser Memorial Shelter register, provides directions to a spring for northbounders headed to the next shelter, the Ed Garvey Shelter: 5-5-01 Northbounders staying or stopping at Ed Garvey Shelter. There is a spring closer to the shelter than the one that is .4 miles downhill. Spring directions: go downhill on spring path from Garvey Shelter 4 blue blazes. On the 4th blaze you will see worn path leaving trail on left. Follow for 100 yards and you will come to 2 yellow with black striped ribbons on tree to the left. Walk behind tree to rocks. You will find spring with ¾” PVC pie in it. Enjoy! Installed by Mauritius 5-4-01 Still following the shelter register norm of providing a date and signature, this entry gives hikers much-needed information about a spring close to the shelter. Entries in shelter registers can also be used as a means of communication with hikers who are following behind. Mole mentioned this use of shelter registers in his interview: Some people use [shelter registers] to express themselves in poems or in songs, or just say, god I had a terrible day today, I twisted my ankle five times, I lost three tent stakes, et cetera. Some people use it to say, hey so and so behind me, catch up. The forms and reasons for communicating with others are as varied as the people themselves. Pepper wrote in the Calf Mountain Shelter register in late June about finding a water bottle on the side of the trail, and gave his email address so that whoever it belonged to could contact him; Fever used the David Lesser Memorial Shelter register to send messages to his buddies; and Ferret used the shelter register as a forum to say goodbye to his hiking buddies when he had to leave the trail to return to his job:
144 6/3/2001
“Ferret”
To all my hiker friends I’m sad to say that this is my
last night on the trail. This has been the greatest vacation that I’ve ever had! And I’m gonna miss the trail and all of you very much; everyone, hikers, trail angels, people along the way and the life, this is definitely the life. I figure I’ve been out here for about 75 days and it flew by so quick. Make sure you guys relish every moment this is a grand thing this AT. And I’m really gonna miss it. I don’t think that there could been a better bunch of people in any other activity. Of course, shelter registers are an incomplete form of communication, as they only operate in one direction. That is, they only provide communication with those following behind, and once the communication is complete, an answer is impossible, because the writer of the initial message has already moved on. Attempts at answers are still made, however, in the form of “register battles.” “Register battles” are discussions of topics on which hikers have differences of opinion within the context of a shelter register. Jockey described a register battle that he read about, in which a thru-hiker named Entish, an environmentalist, began criticizing hikers in the shelter registers for not meeting his environmental standards. Those coming behind him wrote register entries criticizing Entish, and so the battle began. A register battle over slackpacking – the practice of hiking without a full pack -that I encountered was begun in a shelter register in North Carolina. I had slackpacked 19 miles north of Erwin the previous day, and because I was hiking south for the day, had met quite a few people hiking north. One of these, Eagle, wrote these comments in a shelter register just north of Erwin concerning slackpacking:
145 I've been doing some thinking about all these people slackpacking. I guess I should be glad for them that they're out here enjoying themselves, but aren't they taking the easy way out? And their comment is always 'You'll do it too, one day.' Is that just to make themselves feel better? I'm vexed, this vexes me (from The Gladiator). The temptation is there for me, but I don't think I'll do it. Now that I've finished my rant. . . if this offends anyone, think about why. Eagle Eagle broached the issue of slackpacking and pictured it as ‘taking the easy way out.’ In response, Muckraker wrote the following comment: Re Eagle's comments about slackpacking, there is no easy way on the AT. I'm planning to do some slackpacking when my dad meets me in Boone. I'd love to do this trail without 50 pounds of crap on my back. In fact, I plan to aqua blaze the Shenandoahs. What's wrong with being out here to have some fun? Judge not lest you be judged. Muckraker Following Muckraker’s comment, I wrote my own: Well, Eagle's comments about slackpacking may have been precipitated in part by my 19 mile slackpack, during which she and I crossed paths. She is entitled to her opinion (as am I) but I emphatically agree with Muckraker: there is no easy way on the AT. My feet are witness: after slamming them for 19 miles yesterday, they are screaming for a break. So, a short day for me, and I'll tackle Roan tomorrow. Turtle This register battle probably continued after I wrote my entry, but this small piece of it shows that there is disagreement among thru-hikers on certain issues, and that shelter registers are sites for these disagreements to be aired and worked on, especially since the
146 community of thru-hikers is never together in one place. Instead thru-hikers are strung out across miles of trail, and shelter registers provide a meeting place for disagreements to be aired. Shelter registers also provide forums for storytelling about experiences on and off the trail. Herder wrote about surviving being struck by lightning in the Calf Mountain Shelter register; Twig wrote about being struck at by a rattlesnake and sprayed by a skunk in a shelter register in New Jersey, prompting her decision to quit hiking and head for home; Go Ahead wrote about a bear encounter in the Pinefield Hut register, and Tigger and Pooh wrote about their experience with a snake at Manassas Gap Shelter: 5/27/01
Arrived in time to fix dinner just before another thunderstorm. A
14-inch copperhead snake watched as we cooked from near the fire ring. He was digesting one of the mice, and was not too interested in what we had. You could see a lump in his “belly” move. Tigger and Pooh For writers like these, shelters registers provide a space in which to tell their stories, an opportunity that might not be available to them if they are hiking alone or if no one else is present. Other writers use shelter registers as an artistic outlet, a place to draw themselves or others, or to make comments on thru-hiker culture. This is the case in Figure 6 below, rendered by Rocker in the Calf Mountain Shelter Register in May of 2001.
147 Figure 6. Rocker’s pack explosion.
148 I see the literacy practices in shelter registers as providing “sites” in which cultural and personal expressions can be made, in which issues important to the community can be discussed, and in which the thru-hiking community’s values are expressed and strengthened. It is evident from these data that thru-hikers practice linguistic literacies by reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Thru-hikers read novels and reference books; read and write poetry; write letters, postcards, and journals; read and write in shelter registers; and listen to and tell stories. All of these literacy practices have been traditionally considered literacy, and all fit into the linguistic mode of meaning making described by the New London Group (1996, 2000). In addition, it is evident that these forms of literacy help to formulate and provide a forum for the discussion of cultural values and ways of being. In the next section, I discuss literacy practices of thru-hikers that are primarily gestural in nature. Literacies that are Primarily Gestural Gestural design, as described by the New London Group (1996, 2000), has to do primarily with the body. Making meaning using gestural design centers around body language and sensuality, which includes gesture, feelings and affect, kinesics (the study of nonlinguistic body movements), and proxemics (the study of the cultural, behavioral, and sociological aspects of spatial distances between individuals). I categorized data as pertaining to gestural literacy when they referred to these aspects of the body. The literacy events that I describe here, taken from field notes, interviews, and journal entries, cluster around two sub-categories: reading our bodies, and reading other people.
149 Reading Our Bodies Thru-hikers often spoke of the need to “listen to your body” or to pay attention to what the body needs. In interviews, several thru-hikers described their experiences in understanding their own bodily needs regarding calorie deprivation, dehydration, pain, and injury. The following sections provide a discussion of these elements of gestural design. Calorie Deprivation Perhaps the most important way in which thru-hikers learn to read their own bodies is learning when more calories are needed for the body to perform in the way thruhikers expect it to. Thru-hikers participate in strenuous exercise 8 to 12 hours of every day for five or six months, so they need an inordinate amount of calories, often more than they are able to carry for themselves at a time. Learning to gauge necessary calorie intake usually comes from experience, as is seen in this excerpt from my April journal: I eat breakfast around 7:30, usually oatmeal or granola or a couple of poptarts. After about an hour and a half of hiking (less, if it is a strenuous uphill), I begin feeling like I never ate. Eventually my stomach starts to growl, and by 10:00, I need to eat something or my energy level gets seriously depleted. The hills seem much harder and I have much less energy. If I eat a Powerbar at this point, I can keep going until about 11:30, when I begin to feel hungry again. I learned that I needed to eat something when I began to feel fatigued, washed out, and exhausted. As a result, I began carrying more snack foods and high calorie bars such as Snickers (a thru-hiker favorite) and Powerbars (which don’t taste as good, but got me up and over many mountains). It was a difficult lesson for me to learn, as over and over, I
150 experienced a sense of exhaustion that came from calorie deprivation. Binx described his own learning experiences with the same fatigue: “Sometimes I would just be slogging along like a zombie, and then I would eat something and I would perk up, you know. That just teaches me a little bit more about how to listen to my body, I guess.” Binx’s comment about “slogging along like a zombie” because of his need for calories was echoed in several thru-hikers’ comments about listening to their own bodies. Buffalo, for example, described a similar event that occurred in Vermont. He was hiking up Killington Mountain when he experienced a wave of faintness. His pace began to slow, and for a time he felt that he could continue, since he only had one more mile to his day’s destination. His body stopped him, however: It got to the point where I was like, whoa, I need to do something. And I didn't feel necessarily hungry, and I had eaten, sort of recently. I thought I had eaten enough, to the point where I was at, that I wouldn't have to eat right then. But I was like, well, let's try something, cause it's not getting any better. Sat down, and I was just feeling really weak when I sat down. Ate a quick bar, just inhaled it, ate a Snickers big one just like nothing. I ate it so fast and so easily, I was like, well, I must have been needing calories of some sort. Maybe sugar level or something. I got up, and I felt perfect after that. Belly Dancer also connected calorie deprivation, and in particular protein, to fatigue. She described several instances in which she felt that her body was lacking something, and she felt fatigued and weak. As a result, she “got off the trail and hitched five miles to a restaurant” because she felt that she hadn’t eaten enough protein. After eating a “big-ass hunk of steak,” she felt much better.
151 What makes these instances of gestural design so interesting is that our interpretation of our bodies’ need for food was not necessarily related to hunger, or to our typical understanding of how our bodies communicate hunger. Buffalo even says he was not particularly hungry. Instead, the need for calories is experienced as “slogging along like a zombie”: faintness, lightheadedness, fatigue, or exhaustion. There is an obvious relationship between the body’s need for food and aspects of thru-hiker culture. It is very possible that the need for extreme amounts of calories is what drives thru-hikers to value trail magic and yogiing so much, and to take risks such as those Belly Dancer described, hitchhiking alone to find enough protein to satisfy her body. Dehydration Drinking enough water, staying hydrated, is also critical for thru-hikers; thus, thru-hikers develop extensive knowledge concerning their levels of hydration and sensitivity to their bodies’ symptoms of dehydration. Symptoms of dehydration mentioned by thru-hikers include sluggishness, crankiness, headache, and fatigue. Binx described the feelings he experienced climbing up Justus Mountain, in northern Georgia: Pounding headache. That’s the first time I’d gotten a headache in a long time. I was really tired, my legs were rubbery, and my skin was cold and clammy, just the definite symptoms of dehydration. My mouth definitely felt like it had 15 cotton balls in there. Thru-hikers also pay attention to the color of their urine – darker urine means less hydration – and to long spaces of time between urination. Mole also used the consistency of his spit to gauge his level of hydration:
152 Based on whether I’m hydrated or not, I know by the consistency of the spit whether I need to drink more or not. If it’s really foamy, I know that I’m really dehydrated and maybe I need to sit down and chug some water. And this is a gradual process, and you can see the difference over a period of a couple of hours, and maybe 10 or 12 spits. Ignoring the signals or symptoms of dehydration can result in, at the least, a bad day of hiking. Ultimately, of course, dehydration can lead to serious illness or death. Frightening experiences with dehydration often lead to a changed value system, with water given a new, higher priority. Jennifer describes an especially grueling experience: We had one stretch in Virginia where – the day before this particular stretch, we had crossed the stream about 50 times. And so the next day we got to the shelter and the water was a half mile away and we thought – oh – we didn’t have that much water – we said screw it, we’ll just come across that stream that we did yesterday, probably. And so we had a quarter of a liter of water between the two of us, and we didn’t come across water for 10 miles. It was the most awful thing I’ve ever had on the trail. Panic. I tried – I was trying to cry, nothing would come out. It was so awful. Just because we were too lazy to walk half a mile, we ended up walking 10 miles to the next water. Yeah, it was awful. And ever since then, I don’t care how much water weighs, I will carry extra. If I have to, just psychologically to be ok. For Jennifer, this experience was a turning point in her thru-hiking education. After this experience with dehydration, she learned to value water differently, as she described in
153 her interview: “So first and foremost in my mind, as far as my body is concerned, I always am thinking about water, and where to find it, and how much to drink, and how much to carry.” This new value placed on having enough water translates into new actions and values, especially for Jennifer: planning the day’s hike around reliable water sources, carrying more water (up to a gallon a day in New York), and a new respect for the availability and cleanliness of water at home. Pain and Injury Part of thru-hiking is learning to understand the body’s messages about pain, and to take care of the body. Everyday pain is commonly experienced by thru-hikers, as Jumper explained: You have so many aches and pains. And you pretty much, at least for me – you kind of ignore them, and that’s part of the work out here. You know – you’re walking 17 miles a day with 40 pounds on your back. Your feet are going to hurt and they’re going to be all swollen and stuff like that. So what you do is you take care of them as best you can – you rub them down at night, wake up in the morning and walk a little tender until they warm up and get used to the fact that you’re still walking. And keep going, you know. Everyday aches and pains are an undeniable aspect of thru-hiking and are dealt with, as Jumper describes, by being sensitive to your body’s needs. For thru-hikers, this entailed massaging aching feet and knees, warming up and walking slowly and carefully. This was especially important in the morning, because of a strange sensation that I called “morning boots,” intense pain in my feet for the first 20 minutes or so of walking in the morning. Thru-hikers also commonly deal with pain by taking “Vitamin I” – ibuprofen –
154 in large quantities. Blisters, strained muscles, aching joints, and chafing are just a few of the everyday pains thru-hikers must walk through. Caring for our bodies also meant learning to take care of ourselves mentally and emotionally as well as physically. When I asked Davenport what it meant to her to listen to her body, she responded: “I’ve taken a day off because I felt like my body was saying, you know, I’m tired. But I think it also means emotionally and spiritually. It’s a lot of other things too, not just physically.” Dealing with emotional and mental conflicts was definitely a part of my thru-hike. I have already described, in Chapter 4, the mental and physical health breaks I took in New England. In addition, on several occasions, I chose to take extra zero days in town, when I felt that an additional day’s rest would help me to be more enthusiastic about hiking. In her journal, Stretchin’ outlined her emotional ups and downs on a day she called “Black Thursday.” Concerned over her pack weight, she had taken the advice of some go-liters, ultra-light backpackers, and pared down her cold weather gear to a minimum. As a result, she woke up cold and stayed cold on a damp chilly, Thursday in May: My mood was as black as the sky. I moved forward, onward, northward . . . There were some big ascents today, and I’m sure at some point I was sweating, however, I still felt cold. Cold to my core, cold in my heart. Cold – cold – cold. As she continued to hike, Stretchin’ became angry at herself and at the go-liters who had advised her. When she finally reached a shelter, her anger and anxiety overcame her: I completely lost control, went way over the deep end. I occasionally get anxiety attacks, and when they take hold, I’m lost. Nothing is rational. My heart
155 palpitates. I hyperventilate and most assuredly cry. So, here is Ms Backpacker USA, a huge mushy blob on a picnic table up on a 4500-foot mountain in a shelter. Thank God, alone. Eventually, Stretchin’ took action. She hung her wet clothes up to dry, drank some hot liquids, ate some jerky and candy, crawled into her sleeping bag, and fell asleep. Later, after reflection, she realized the root of her emotional dilemma: What brought on this terrible day really came down to one simple fact. Go-liters go out prepared to be unprepared to a degree. They would rather deal with a few miserable hours or days than have the weight of preparedness every day. In a way, I envy that. However, it is in my training, in my very being, to be prepared for whatever the woods may throw at me. When I found myself unprepared by my very own hand, it rattled me. I lost my self-confidence. I began to believe I had no business to be out here. The teacher had become the naïve student. After plenty of sleep, and finally getting warm and dry, she says, “I finally came to my senses.” By caring for herself physically, Stretchin’ cared for herself emotionally as well. In spite of our efforts to take care of our bodies and emotions, injuries happened. My own injury, a strained piriformis muscle, led to a month and a half of physical therapy off the trail before I could return. I realized after my injury that the only way to prevent another, similar injury from happening, was to stretch. As a result, I incorporated 25 minutes of stretching into my morning and evening routines. Half Hitch’s hike was ended when he fell from a bridge and injured his leg. Dishpan had to leave the trail because of a hernia and eventually had to have surgery.
156 Others developed strategies to protect themselves from injury by preventing it. Jockey had experience with an earlier knee injury, so he chose to use hiking sticks to prevent further injury to his knees. He believed that the hiking sticks helped him to prevent knee injury. On those occasions when he did experience knee pain, he altered his pace or his gait to allow his knees to loosen up. Struggling with sciatica early in her hike, which felt like stabbing pain in her legs with every step, Stretchin’ decided to lie down at the side of the trail for almost an hour to relieve her pain. “Taking the pressure of the pack off,” she wrote in her journal, “and lying flat seemed to help.” Interpreting pain can be made more complicated by a lack of sensitivity to it. Buffalo, for example, didn’t feel “in tune” with his body: I don't know if I'm that in tune with my body. And I don't really think my body needs me to be, actually, for the most part. It's more like, I just, ok, I make sure, if it's, if I'm hungry, it'll let me know, feed it, ok, that's the pretty standard one that everybody can do. Um, my knees have never really done bad, my ankles neither, I've never had too many foot problems, other than blisters, um but I think what it's really referring to more is the question of like, um, if you're pushing yourself hard and you're like, how many more miles can I do? Am I going to be able to do this day? Am I hydrated enough? Buffalo seems to pay attention to calorie intake, but feels that he doesn’t need to be carefully attuned to what his body is saying, because he has never experienced serious problems or injuries. Iron Foot and Kelton, partners who hike together, described their differing sensitivities to pain in terms of conflict resolution. Kelton was capable of overriding his
157 pain, while Iron Foot’s pain discouraged her and made her want to stop, as they noted in their joint interview: Iron Foot:
Yeah, he can override signals. I won’t, I’m really – I think pain cripples me much more than it does him. He can override the pain and keep going, whereas I get completely discouraged by the pain and want to stop. One day he takes off his shoe and there’s this big gigantic thing on the back of his foot. You know, like, he didn’t even say ouch. How did it get there? But he doesn’t like – he never voices complaint, really. As opposed to me,
Kelton:
I had to get used to the point every time you said ouch might have just been –
Iron Foot:
A branch –
Kelton:
A branch or a wisp of grass brushing on her leg or something. When I say ouch, it’s because my –
Iron Foot:
It’s because his leg is broken! [laughs]
This difference in sensitivity to pain meant that Iron Foot and Kelton had to negotiate how their hike was to be accomplished. Because they hiked together, their situation is more complex. They had to learn to read their own bodies, but also to cope with their partner’s readings. As thru-hikers, our bodies changed, sometimes dramatically, as we continued to push north. Weight loss, sometimes extreme weight loss, was common, with men tending to lose more weight than women. Mole lost over 40 pounds on his thru-hike. Jennifer lost 15 pounds, which caused her pack to fit differently and rub her shoulders. Jennifer said
158 that she often worried about some of the male thru-hikers she had met because of their extreme weight loss, mentioning a common saying on the AT about weight loss: I think men – the men that I’ve met lose a lot more weight a lot faster and it’s a lot scarier for them. Women tend to not lose as quickly and they tend to tone. You’ve heard that, you know, when women finish the trail they look like aerobics instructors, but when men finish they look like P.O.W.’s? And that seems to be the case, so I get concerned for some of the guys that we hiked with, how quickly they lose weight. I lost 23 pounds in the six months of my hike, and both my legs and arms became more heavily muscled than they had ever been. I hadn’t expected muscles to develop in my arms, but they did from the use of my hiking poles. Our feet, after several weeks, became used to the daily drubbing they were receiving, and developed thick calluses and numb toes. When I interviewed Jennifer, she tracked changes that were happening in her body as well. She said that for the first few months of the hike, she felt “like crap” every single day. “Just walking 8 miles a day, 10 miles a day, carrying 40 pounds of stuff on your back is not natural, it’s not normal.” After hiking about 600 or 700 miles, she found that it felt better to walk than not to walk. She especially experienced this during zero days, days spent in town without hiking: “Like we would take zero days, and I love zero days, but my body would hurt worse lying down or sitting down than it would walking. Even if we were doing 20 miles, it would still feel better.” I had the same experience: after days of hiking every day, I sometimes felt worse physically during a zero day,
159 perhaps because my muscles were not being used in the ways that they were accustomed to. The sense of being physically fit became very strong. I heard many people, including myself, say “I have never been as physically fit in my life before.” Perhaps the best way for me to describe this is to show the difference between hiking with Mark in Georgia, and then six months later, in Maine. In Georgia, Mark always hiked ahead of me, because his pace was faster. He could do the ascents much more quickly than I could, and often moved far ahead of me, waiting for me at the top for sometimes as much as 30 to 45 minutes. When he rejoined me in Maine, our situations were reversed. The trails that we hiked in Maine were very steep, and often I would find myself far ahead of him, ready to keep hiking for hours when he would call a break. Once he even shouted up to me, “Don’t you ever get tired?” I did get tired, but I was physically fit enough and comfortable with my own pace so that I could continue climbing steep hills for hours at a time without stopping. Dealing with pain and injury also brings up some interesting cultural connections. Many thru-hikers take ibuprofen on a regular basis; so much ibuprofen, in fact, that it is commonly called “Vitamin I” by many. In addition, the common admonition to “Hike your own hike,” although it is often used to excuse differing hiking practices such as slackpacking and blueblazing, is sometimes interpreted as an imperative to care for the body by hiking lower miles at a slower pace. Reading Others In addition to reading our bodies, thru-hikers, because we were in company with others so much of the time, developed strategies in reading other people. The data in my
160 study that I classified as reading others fall into two categories: women reading men and categorizing hikers. Several women who were hiking alone described experiences in which they were concerned for their safety because they were alone with a man they didn’t know. In the following section, I describe the commonalities of these experiences, in which women interpreted the behavior and appearance of the men they encountered. Women Reading Men I was often asked if I was not afraid to be a woman hiking alone on the Appalachian Trail. While there were very few occasions when I experienced fear, I did on two occasions feel a vague unease when alone with one other man. I wrote about this in my journal: The last couple of nights in shelters there was a time when I thought it would just be me and Rainbow in the shelter. I don't completely trust him, although I am not sure why. I thought about what I would do if he attempted to attack me during the night, and I made a point of mentioning that I have some mace with me. On both nights, several people ended up staying at the shelter, and this made me feel more comfortable. I have no concrete reason to distrust Rainbow, but I guess I don't know him well enough to be sure. I need to think more about what makes me distrust him like that. Is it his age? His solitariness? The way he doesn't say much? I'm just not sure. Stretchin’, Jumper, and Twig all told me similar stories about their experiences with men they weren’t sure they could trust. All four of us are women and hiked for the majority of the trail without hiking partners. Stretchin’ told me a story, very similar to mine, in which she arrived at shelter in the evening and found only one other person there, a man. She
161 said she got a “weird vibe” from this man and was about to move on, when two other men arrived at the shelter, after which she felt more comfortable and decided to stay. Neither Stretchin’ nor I could articulate concrete reasons for our distrust of the men in our separate incidents, but the presence of more people made both of us feel more comfortable and protected. Jumper started her thru-hike hiking with Butterfly, her best friend, but she and Butterfly split up in Virginia, and later Butterfly left the trail in Waynesboro. Hiking alone, Jumper arrived at a shelter to find a man “laying along the back wall of the shelter.” The position that he had taken in the shelter, horizontal to the entrance, signaled that he was not a thru-hiker, because thru-hikers most commonly sleep vertically in shelters, like sardines. This individual was asleep with “all his stuff just spread out everywhere,” a violation of thru-hiker etiquette, which calls for taking up as little space as possible in a shelter. In addition, Jumper noted that this individual’s gear wasn’t “typical thru-hiker gear.” In order to assess the situation without committing herself to staying in the shelter, Jumper began to read the shelter register, choosing not to pull her sleeping mat or other gear out of her pack – the typical thru-hiker method of reserving a space in a shelter. As she says, “I hadn’t pulled anything out because I wanted to be able to leave quickly without raising any suspicion or anything like that. Like I was just going to keep hiking.” Meanwhile, the man in the shelter had gone to brush his teeth, and when he returned, toothpaste was dripping from his mouth and smeared over his face. “He just looked like a rabid dog,” Jumper said. “This person is not normal.” The man then began asking Jumper about her gaiters, boot covers that protect the ankle and keep rain, dirt, and
162 mud from getting inside boots. The finishing touch for Jumper’s reading of this individual came when she asked him how far he had hiked and how long he had been at this shelter. He responded that he had come three miles, and had been in the shelter for three days. Jumper’s mind was made up: “OK, he’s hiding out from something, or he has been doing some kind of drugs that have made him sleep for a couple days or something. I didn’t know what was up with him, but I knew I didn’t want to be around him.” She chose to leave the shelter and move to a nearby tentsite where “four rather large, very clean-cut 26-year old guys” had already established a campsite. She told them about the man in the shelter, and they promised to look out for her. As a result, Jumper said, “I went down and got my stuff, camped with them that night. Wound up waking up at 4:30 in the morning with one of them and going up to McAfee Knob to watch the sunrise.” Jumper’s story has some of the same elements as that experienced by me and by Stretchin’. She arrived at the shelter alone and found one other person there – a man that seemed a bit odd to her. Jumper was able to articulate the behaviors that seemed odd to her, perhaps because they were so salient. The individual was using the shelter incorrectly, lying horizontally instead of vertically in the shelter. His gear was spread out, and “it wasn’t thru-hiker gear.” When he brushed his teeth, he “looked like a rabid dog” and then he didn’t seem to have knowledge she expected him to have (what gaiters are for) or behave the way she expected him to behave (hiking only three miles in three days). Thus, Jumper interpreted this man as a possible threat and took steps to protect herself – camping near a group of men who seemed less threatening, who even offered to protect her if she “let out so much as a peep.” In fact, Jumper trusted these other
163 individuals so much that she hiked up McAfee Knob with one of them to watch the sunrise. Twig told me about her experience with another thru-hiker she first met in Waynesboro. When she saw him again at the entrance to Shenandoah National Park, she said “he looked at me weird.” When I asked her what that meant, she said he looked at her too long, and that while he was having a conversation with someone else, he was staring at her. The next time she saw Castaway, was on the trail. Again, she felt that he was staring at her, and when she asked him what he was doing, he said “Nothing.” She resolved the situation by hiking faster in order to get away from him. However, they ended up at the same shelter that night, where he made some comments to her about how dangerous it was to hike through the Shenandoahs, especially for a girl to be out by herself. He mentioned two women who were killed in this area in the past. Later, when Twig was in her tent changing clothes, she said that Castaway stood outside her tent and stared at her through the opening in the fly. When she realized that he was there, she zipped up her rainfly and finished changing clothes. Twig saw her ability to read people as one of her strengths: “I read people – perhaps too much – but I’m usually right about them.” Categorizing Hikers As I mentioned in Chapter 4, hikers were often classified by thru-hikers as falling into 1 of 4 categories: day hikers, weekenders, section hikers, and thru-hikers. I asked two thru-hikers, Jumper and Sassafras, to talk about differences among categories of hikers, and much of their response shows that they were paying attention to bodies, behavior, and attitude to make these distinctions.
164 Day hikers, hikers on the trail for less than a day, were described by Jumper as looking “like little kids.” Both Sassafras and Jumper said that dayhikers don’t carry large backpacks or hiking poles, wear clean cotton clothes, smell nice, and are usually wellgroomed. They typically ask the same set of questions of thru-hikers, such as “Are you going all the way?” and “Where did you start?” and “How long have you been out here?” Section hikers, as described by these thru-hikers, may be wearing clean clothes, carrying oversized packs, and inappropriate gear. They usually smell bad, but complain quite often about their smell. When describing how they distinguish thru-hikers from other hikers, Jumper and Sassafras mentioned a few criteria, such as gear, body odor, and obsession with food, but Jumper said, “You just get a sense about them,” and Sassafras’s comment was “Everybody smells the same, everybody looks the same.” They both described thruhikers as dirty and unshaven (both men and women); they smell bad and their gear smells bad. Instead of complaining about their smell, they tell jokes or say nothing. They are obsessed with food, according to Jumper: “They’re too busy picking food off the floor to talk anyway.” The thru-hiker obsession with food can also be seen in one of the “You know you’re a thru-hiker if . . .” statements, which goes, “You know you’re a thru-hiker if you find food in your beard an hour after eating and are excited by it to the point of tears.” Similarity in appearance, especially among male thru-hikers, was also a common joke on the AT. When describing a male thru-hiker, we would say something like, “You know, he’s a skinny guy; he’s got long hair and a beard; he carries a backpack” and everyone would laugh, because that description could apply to almost every male thruhiker on the trail.
165 Both Jumper and Sassafras noted the aura of confidence and relaxation that they saw in thru-hikers, which didn’t seem to be present in others, and many thru-hikers I spoke to described the sense of confidence that they felt. Jennifer described this sense for herself: As far as like psychological, emotional changes -- I’m a lot more self-reliant for sure. It definitely opens doors, when I think that I’ve hiked almost 1600 miles at this point, I just think, man, there is really nothing that is going to be much harder than this. Because when you wake up and consciously know that you’re putting yourself in what could be an uncomfortable or physically challenging situation and you do that every single day, like – it just makes everything else look like peanuts. I mean, to say, ok, it’s the tenth day of rain, but I’m still gonna hike 15 miles. It changes your perspective a lot. My experience as a thru-hiker helped me to be confident that I could take care of myself in the wilderness and enhanced my feeling of self-worth. I remember sitting on a Greyhound bus riding from my friend Jeanine’s apartment in Connecticut back to the trail, looking out at the forest passing by, and saying to myself, “If the bus broke down now, I could grab my pack from underneath, head out into those woods, and I would be fine. Just fine.” I smiled as I realized that that was an important moment for me, one in which I became less afraid of the “what-ifs” in life and more confident in my ability to handle whatever would come. All of these forms of gestural design or literacy, reading our bodies and reading others, could surely be experienced by those outside the AT community as well as thruhikers, if individuals were placed in similar physically taxing environments. Because
166 thru-hikers depended so heavily on their bodies, they learned to read them well. In addition, they learned to read other people, to judge their own safety, and to identify people as belonging to certain categories that they had established through experience. The criteria for categorizing others, I believe, were culturally developed, and they helped to shape issues of division between thru-hikers and weekenders, as well as feelings of belonging to a group. Literacies that are Primarily Spatial Spatial literacy is described by the New London Group (1996, 2000) as interpreting meaning related to environmental or architectural spaces. In this study, I have designated data on map-reading as spatial literacy, as it requires readers to interpret symbols and lines on paper and to relate those to the environment surrounding them. The following section describes map-reading among thru-hikers. Many thru-hikers carry maps of the Appalachian Trail. These maps are published by the Appalachian Trail Conference but designed by individual trail clubs for the area they are responsible for maintaining. All of the maps are based on the USGS quadrangle maps, but they focus on the AT in specific.
167 AT maps include topographical maps and elevation profiles. Topographical maps show elevation change through contour lines. Each contour line represents a different elevation, so following the line would be a level walk. The closer together these lines are, the steeper the elevation change. In addition, topographical maps may show water sources, towns, state and county lines, etc. Elevation profiles are graphs designed to give a quick visual overview of the rise and fall of the trail itself, without reference to the surrounding terrain. They are set up as a grid, with elevation markers on one side and the mileage marked out on the bottom. Place names such as shelters, roads, and mountain tops are marked out on the profile. Figure 7 provides an example of a portion of a topographical map and of an elevation profile.
168 Figure 7. Topographical map and elevation profile.
Hikers use elevation profiles and topographical maps for different purposes. Elevation profiles give hikers an easy-to-read, quick estimation of the terrain and
169 mileage. Thus, they can be used to get quick information, such as distance to the next water source or break spot. They can also be used to time hiking, so that big climbs can be tackled early in the morning, when the weather is cool and the hiker is fresh, or to pinpoint the hiker’s exact location, when he or she gets to a mileage point that is listed on the profile. Topographical maps provide different types of information in a more complex form. Some thru-hikers used topographical maps to identify the names of places, such as mountains, rivers, and towns, and also to find stealth campsites. Other thru-hikers use topographical maps to make decisions about taking blue-blazed trails, optional trails that may cut off a portion of the AT, as opposed to staying on the AT. Another important use for topographical maps is as a guide for finding water sources, stream crossings or places to bushwhack off the trail to find water, or to provide helpful information about the quality of these water sources. This becomes crucial in seasons such as the summer of 2001, when the weather was extremely dry and many springs dried up. Because they provide beneficial information, maps are a part of many thru-hikers’ daily routine. I observed thru-hikers reading and studying maps in the evening while cooking supper and in the morning before heading out for the day. In interviews with thru-hikers, several of them mentioned checking maps as part of their morning routine. Others chose not to purchase AT maps, as the cost for a full set of maps is around $150, and either looked at others’ maps or made do without them. One technique that thru-hikers utilize when reading maps is visualization. Kelton, who sees himself as possessing great abilities in reading topographical maps, believes that his job, which requires him to read blueprints, helps with abilities. He told me that
170 when he looks at the map, he can visualize the mountains portrayed on it. In a similar vein, Jumper talked about visualizing the map, the surrounding terrain, and herself as she walks through it. One of Jumper’s goals for the trail was to get better at reading topographical maps, so she looks at the maps quite often. When I interviewed Jumper in Connecticut, she said: Now I find myself really being able to visualize as I’m hiking what the elevation profile’s doing, and then what the topo looks like, and which way we’re going to curve after we go up this mountain, and what we’re going to pass, like if we’re going to pass this brook, and then what happens after we cross the brook. So it’s – really you’re trying to take a picture of what’s on the map and imagine yourself walking through that picture. Here, Jumper portrays the visualization that she practices when using the topographical map. Much like Kelton, Jumper pictures the map and then places herself in her visualization. Then she pictures herself walking through the map as she walks through the terrain. Her visual and spatial interpretation of the map, thus becomes translated into a gestural and ecological experience. Through this spatial interpretation of the map and comparison to the terrain through which she walks, Jumper keeps track of her location and its relation to the surrounding terrain as she moves. Visualization is also utilized when thru-hikers interpret elevation profiles. One thruhiker, Mole, spoke of the need to correctly visualize what the elevation profile represents: They give you a profile of where the trail is supposed to go, which is very different, and it took me a little while to figure this out, than the actual mountain that you’re looking at. You know, instead of going straight up the mountain like the profile of the
171 mountain, that’s what the profile should be? It’s not. The trail zigzags back and forth on its way up, and that’s the profile of the trail, not of the mountain. Mole learned from experience that his initial interpretation of the elevation profile, that the slant of the line depicted the shape of the mountain, was incorrect. By experiencing the terrain as different from his interpretation of the elevation profile, he learned a better visualization: that the line depicted the shape of the trail as it climbed the mountain. I experienced this incorrect visualization in the beginning of my trek as well. I found myself looking at the profile and then looking at the outlines of the mountains ahead, trying to match the shape of the profile with the shape of the trail. The profile, however, represents not the shape of the mountain, but the rise and fall of the trail as it either summits or goes around the mountain. For thru-hikers, visualization is an important tool used to read maps and orient the body to the terrain. Visualization, then, is an important aspect of spatial literacy that has not been previously applied to this form of meaning making. The next section addresses literacies that are primarily visual and auditory in nature. Literacies that are Primarily Visual and Auditory Compared to the larger amounts of data on linguistic, gestural, and spatial literacies, I found relatively small amounts of data on visual and auditory literacy. The New London Group’s (1996, 2000) description of visual literacy seems to pertain largely to art, as it describes elements of color, perspective, foregrounding, and other ways of interpretation of visuals. Aside from a few drawings in shelter registers, I did not see thru-hikers involved in these types of visual literacy, except as a multimodal form, as I will discuss in the next chapter.
172 Thru-hikers are required, however, to interpret visual symbols in the form of trail blazes, usually rectangular painted markings a little above eye level on trees or rocks along the trail. Several kinds of blazes were evident on the AT and other trails that intersected with it. White blazes are used to mark the AT. A double white blaze, one above the other, means that the trail takes a sudden turn, perhaps a switchback – a zigzagging trail that protects a steep hill from erosion – or a place where the trail has been rerouted. Blue blazes are used for other trails that intersect with the AT. Some of these intersecting trails are named, like the Freeman Trail that leads from Bird Gap to intersect with the AT just south of Neels Gap in Georgia. Blue-blazed trails may also be used to connect the AT with water sources, and in Georgia these trails were marked with a blue W above a blue arrow pointing toward the direction of the water. Trails to shelters are also marked with blue blazes; blue blazes may also lead to other attractions, such as a particular waterfall or vista. Following the blazes did not prove difficult for most thru-hikers, although certainly all of us experienced getting lost at one time or another. While hiking through Pennsylvania, I was so lost in thought that I forgot to look for a blaze; after about 30 minutes of hiking without seeing one, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t seen a blaze in quite a while. I turned around and headed back the way I had come. When I found the trail again, it had taken an abrupt turn, marked by a double white blaze that I didn’t see, and I had followed what was apparently an older trail for at least half a mile. I found even less data on audio literacy, aspects of music and sound effects, than on visual. Certainly, several thru-hikers listened to music as they hiked – tiny AM/FM radios, CD players, and cassette players were common – but most did not attach enough
173 importance to this to bring it up in either interviews or in their journals. I chose, most often, not to listen to music, as I felt that it detracted from my experience of the woods. Mole was the only thru-hiker who mentioned his interpretation of sounds, which he used to trace his proximity to town. Mole described in his interview how he was able to tell that he was getting near to a town: Different elevations you hear different things. You get close to a town, farther away you hear a train, then you’ll get closer and you’ll hear a truck, soon you’ll hear a motorcycle, then you’ll hear some dogs barking. Then you know you’re getting close to town and you can eat like a pig. I have to tell you. These are things you learn. Sometimes you just get bored of hiking and you just listen. Highly motivated because of his desire for food, a common thru-hiker trait, Mole became adept at gauging his distance from town. Because of his experience with the trail as it came close to towns, he was able to discern a pattern, based largely on his sense of hearing that he learned to interpret as “near town.” I had one similar experience as I was hiking into Hot Springs, North Carolina. It was snowing as I hiked down into Hot Springs, and I was extremely hungry. Just like Mole, I had big plans for eating a huge meal at a local diner in Hot Springs and finding a motel with a warm bath and a soft bed. The trail wound down the side of a steep mountain and near some private homes before heading into the main part of town. As I was hiking through what appeared to be a typical forest environment, just like those I had been hiking through for so many days, I heard a dog barking, and then heard a couple arguing, probably in their back yard. It was the argument, in particular, that let me know I was getting close to town.
174 In spite of these examples, it doesn’t seem that visual and audio literacy play a particularly critical role in thru-hiker literacies. What I did find to be of special importance is ecological literacy, which I will discuss in the next section. Ecological Literacy I characterize ecological literacy as the ability to read the world around us, to read nature in its interaction with ourselves. I chose to use the term ecological literacy to describe this category because of the connections I saw between the content of these data and the writing about ecological literacy done by Orr (1992). Orr’s concern is that we as humans must develop an understanding of our relationship to the earth. He believes that an important precursor to the development of this understanding is what he calls “the more demanding capacity to observe nature with insight” (p. 86). The data that I have classified as ecological literacy in this study center around thru-hikers interacting with the natural environment in various ways. When I began my analysis, by coding and categorizing data, most of these data were initially placed into either spatial literacies or visual literacies. On further reflection, however, I began to see that the one element that tied these data together was the nature of the texts involved. The texts that were being interpreted by thru-hikers in these data were all natural ones, instead of texts created by humans. In this section, I address data that I have categorized as ecological literacy, data that center around interaction between thru-hikers and the natural environment encountered during the hike, including plants, animals, landscape, trail, and maps. In an entry in the Calf Mountain Shelter register, Shrinking Violet, a northbound thru-hiker, described her increasing connection to nature, to her environment, and to her own body:
175 It will feel great (it already does) to fall back into our rhythm and continue north. Being out here I’ve become so attuned to not only the natural rhythm and cycles of our environment, but also and equally important, my own. When I am out of my rhythm – in town – my balance is all disrupted, and my mind, body, and spirit cry wild. It is this increasing connection with and ability to read the natural world that I call ecological literacy. The first aspect of ecological literacy that I would like to explore concerns an awareness and interpretation of plant life. Thru-hikers experience a variety of forms of plant life, due to changes occurring as the seasons progress and hikers move through differing ecosystems. From the barren starkness of northern Georgia in March to the summer hay fields and farm country of Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Gap, to the rocky heights above treeline in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, to the changing fall foliage in Maine, hikers experience change every day. One type of forest, in particular, provoked much comment in both interviews and journals. Mole described these dark pine forests as “Mirkwood forests,” a reference to the dark and evil forest visited by the characters in The Hobbit. Python described this type of forest as “very dark and moist. If someone asked me to describe a medieval forest, this would be it.” Jumper described the same area as “a primarily pine forest. Cool dark shady areas, spooky twiggy and downed trees everywhere. Beautiful. Definitely more of a fear of bears on this side.” Within a three-day period, Stretchin’ moved from journal observations regarding the fresh, lush greens of new spring growth to description of the same type of dark pine forest that the others had described:
176 The forest today was very different from the past few days. Instead of the bright, effervescent greens, the forest floor was made up of dead leaves and pine needles. This made for a very soft duff, easy on the feet. It gave me a sense of sadness. The forest was old, lots of decay. Even trees that were pushing out another year's worth of buds seemed to be struggling. There were tall trees that looked as if they hadn't produced any green in years. Huge, old logs laid scattered about, returning slowly to the dirt they had once pushed through as saplings. It also came to my attention that there seemed to be fewer birds. I found I didn't have to step over as many caterpillars, beatles or bugs. There was no pop-pop of the hundreds of little grasshoppers I had encountered yesterday. Can one actually feel sad for a forest? Just the strange musings of a solo thru-hiker. All four of these hikers created interpretations of the elements they experienced around them, including smells, air quality, temperature, and sights, and produced varying interpretations. Mole brought up a literary allusion, Python a historical allusion, Jumper a concern for increased danger from bears, and Stretchin’ a sense of sadness related to what she perceived as the lack of growth. These interpretations were all created from their individual backgrounds, as well as their experience and new awareness as thru-hikers. Although I certainly did not become an expert on identifying plants during my thru-hike – and I know few other thru-hikers who did, either – many of us did learn to identify and use ramps. Ramps are wild leeks, with a taste somewhere between garlic and onion, that are native to the southeastern Appalachians. Flame, a northbound thru-hiker, taught me to identify ramps by showing me what their leaves look like and letting me smell the bulbs, which look much like green onions. Flame said that a local preacher he
177 had met while hiking had showed him what ramps were and how to collect them. Later I saw some ramps growing by the trail and recognized them by their long, flat leaves. I was hesitant to collect any, being unsure of my newly acquired identification skills and concerned about their taste. Later, I saw several people cooking ramps with their dinners at a shelter in Tennessee/North Carolina, and the lovely oniony smell convinced me to risk gathering some. The next day, when I saw ramps on the side of the trail just before Roan Mountain, I stopped to dig. Traveler, a thru-hiker from the southeastern United States, caught up with me and stopped to see what I was doing. I showed Traveler how to identify ramps, and we both dug enough up for that night’s dinner. When I cooked the ramps that night in my dinner at Overmountain Shelter, they gave an extra zing to my instant rice and dehydrated beans. A couple of days later, at Kincora Hostel near Watauga Lake, I observed Traveler describing to some other thru-hikers how to identify ramps and how to cook them. Python also wrote in his journal about enjoying ramps: Before getting to Clyde Smith Shelter, we met two hunters who were locals to the area out hunting turkey. They showed us how to collect “ramps” which are wild mountain onions that taste like garlic. We gathered some and cooked them with dinner that night. Rice and stuffing with wild ramps cooked in . . . hit the spot. Although ramps only grow in this area of the AT, knowledge of how to identify and cook them spread throughout the community in similar ways. In addition to encountering and learning about plant life, most thru-hikers experienced encounters with animal life. While there is not enough space here to record all of the encounters with wildlife I and other thru-hikers I know of experienced, I do
178 want to provide a few that I think give some information on how we responded to these. Thru-hikers seemed to relish opportunities to talk or write about seeing and interacting with animals, and certain areas of the trail had reputations as good places to see animals. In Shenandoah National Park and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, for instance, many thru-hikers expected to, and did see, bears. When a thru-hiker saw an animal – a large and unusual one, such as a bear, or a typical one acting strangely – they often told these stories with great relish, in shelter registers, in person, and in the interviews I conducted. When I asked Jockey, for example, to describe a moment in his thru-hike that stood out for him, he told me this story about interacting with three goats. Like one time, in Virginia, I was walking along up on this ridge, and I came across like three goats, just randomly up on top of this mountain. And I was gonna take a picture of them and they started chasing me around. Cause they thought I was gonna give them food, cause I put my pack down to get the camera out. And so they were chasing me around, and I ran a little ways away. And as I was about to take a picture, this one goat digs in my pack and pulls out a day’s worth of food. I took the picture and I ran over – I grabbed the goat and I’m like shaking him, and I sort of pushed him, and he dropped the food. It’s kind of a funny story. Jockey provides his interpretation of the goats’ reasoning: They chased him around because they thought he was going to give him food. While he thought the incident was an important one, it didn’t strike terror into his heart: He described it as a “funny story.” In the same way, Stretchin’ described her interaction with wild ponies with no sense of
179 threat: “Beautiful hike through Grayson Highlands, home of the wild ponies. Came across 3 herds. Some had foals that looked to be a week or younger. One gave me a tongue bath.” The wild ponies of the Grayson Highlands are known by many thru-hikers because they are mentioned in many books about the AT as well as in The Thru-Hikers’ Handbook. Other encounters with wild animals provoke fear, and seem also to be motivated by a desire on the part of wild animals to get food and a conflicting desire on the part of thru-hikers to hold onto the food they’ve got. Stretchin’s interaction with a bear that visited her campsite is a case in point: Last night I opted not to stay at the shelter, moving about a mile north. Saw two trees that looked so inviting I just had to stop. I hung my food, as I had read about various bear sightings in the shelter register. Good thing. Around 1 am a bear came moseying into my little camp. Hanging in the hammock always makes me feel as though I am the easier, more accessible food bag! So I began singing real loud (that would scare anyone!!) The bear turned tail and made a thunderous descent down the mountainside. Didn't figure I would be able to go back to sleep, even contemplated packing up and hiking on. Before I knew it I was back in dreamland. Around 3 am Mr or Mrs Bear was back for a little further investigation. Again, I sang. Didn't seem to scare him this time. I clapped my hands, yodeled, etc. Finally he left. As an experienced backpacker, Stretchin’ knew that a bear could be scared off by making noise, a tactic that seems to be common knowledge among thru-hikers, myself included:
180 Got to Black Swatara Spring at 6:30. Got water, cooked dinner, set up tent and hung the bear bag. I was just sitting and enjoying the last bit of light when I heard a rustling in the bushes off to my left. At first I thought it was a deer or a squirrel, but then a huge male black bear came out of the bushes and headed toward me. And of course this is my FIRST night camping by myself. I yelled at the bear and banged my sticks together, and it turned and went around my campsite. It stopped once and looked back, as if to question whether I was serious, so I continued yelling at it as it went on its way. Just as the bear left, the rain started pouring down, so I quickly gathered my clothes where they had been drying on a tree and dashed into my tent. I then began to wonder what bears do when it's raining. Do they go back to their dens? Just continue foraging in spite of the rain? And what about the smell of my food bag? Would the rain make the smell go away? Or get stronger? My knowledge of bears and their behavior was enough to help me scare the bear away, but not sufficient to keep me from having a sleepless night worrying about whether or not the bear would return. I did think later, that if I had been camping with other people and talking or laughing, the bear probably would not have come near my campsite. As I was just sitting and looking at the sky, it felt that I was not a threat, until I started yelling at it, waving my arms, and banging my poles together. In all of these wildlife encounters, the thru-hikers involved were able to read the situations and make some evaluation about the threat involved and what should be done to counter that threat. Jockey, for example, did not feel threatened in a serious way by goats chasing him around at the top of a ridge, until the goats started stealing his food. At
181 this point, he intervened and took back his food. When the ponies crowded around Stretchin’ and interacted with her, to the point of licking her, she did not feel unduly threatened and was able to continue hiking. Both of the bear encounters (mine and Stretchin’s) were also about food. The bears were trying to get our food, and both of us scared off the bears by shouting and singing. At times, thru-hikers became concerned with identifying specific plants and animals, as can be seen in the interactions with ramps, which were useful to provide some variety in our diets. Critter, as a wildlife biologist, was particularly interested in identifying the plants, flowers, butterflies, and birds that he saw. He carried 4x6 cards with him, on which he sometimes drew sketches of unfamiliar species. Later, when he arrived in town, he would find a wildlife guide in a local library or bookstore and spend some time reading about what he had identified. Others of us proved less knowledgeable and less diligent about tracking down the unknown identities of the flora and fauna we saw. In Virginia, I had close encounters with two snakes, and my lack of ability to identify them made me especially careful about dealing with them: I saw 2 snakes lying across the trail today. The first one had a diamond pattern like a rattler, but I don't think it was one. It was lying very still, as if dead or nearly so. When I pounded my feet or scratched the ground with my pole, it didn't move. When I tried to go around it, it's head moved. So I knew it was alive. I didn't want to get way out in the bushes to go around it, because I thought there might be more snakes out there. Eventually, I just took a run around it as fast as I could. It never moved. The second snake was a black snake. It was pretending to
182 be a rattler, shaking its tail with a feeble semi-rattle. It even coiled up into striking position. As I gave it a wide berth, it followed me with its head all the way around. My lack of experience with snakes led to a rather dangerous move, running past the snake in an effort to get around it without getting into the underbrush, where other snakes might be living. We could occasionally, get some information from more knowledgeable hikers, as in this interaction taken from my June fieldnotes, in which Twinge (a section hiker) explained to me and to Blisters (another thru-hiker) the difference between a vulture and a turkey buzzard: A bird flew by, and Blisters said “Oh, it is a vulture.” Twinge said “It’s a turkey buzzard.” Blisters asked what the difference was between a turkey buzzard and a vulture, and Twinge said, “A turkey buzzard has a red head. A black vulture has a black head. Both of them have naked heads.” Interactions such as this occurred when we encountered each other at rest stops or lunch breaks, or in the shelters in the evening. In this way, the community’s knowledge was shared. Perhaps the most interesting interaction with nature came in the latter half of the trail, when some thru-hikers began telling time by the behavior of birds and bugs. Stretchin’ describes the “birds as alarm clock” phenomenon in her journal: “6/19 At 5:30, the song birds burst into song. It was like an alarm clock. They all started at once. Their songs were pretty, and it was time to start the day.” Critter also told me that he tended to wake with the birds, when they began singing at about 5:30, and I experienced this
183 myself once spring and then summer were firmly established. Smoker, another thru-hiker, never used or carried a watch, but she told me that she could tell it was 4:30 in the afternoon, in the height of the summer, because the bugs began to come out and bite in force after having taken a two or three hour hiatus during the heat of the day. As the thru-hiking season progressed, we became fairly adept (though certainly not perfect) at interpreting patterns regarding hiking and trail conditions. Perhaps because so many hours in the day were spent staring down at our feet and at the trail, we became not only physically strong enough to handle the sometimes very tricky trail conditions, but also learned about places to step and how stepping in certain ways on certain surfaces would lead to problems. Jumper, when I asked her about what skills had improved as a result of her thru-hike, described her improved visualization of rocks in the trail: You look at a rock and now you don’t see a rock, you see how your foot’s going to step on that rock. You know, whether or not it’s going to wobble or what you’re going to – you know, that has definitely changed, the walking. I experienced a failure in this regard, in Maine, when I arrived at a shelter with mud up to my knees. I explained to Redbird that I had stepped on what looked to me like fairly solid mud and had sunk up to my knee. Redbird said, “I can tell where that kind of mud is.” The next day, I began paying closer attention to the mud I was hiking through, and never experienced that type of failure again. Similarly, Bug, as he passed me on a particularly rocky and slick section of trail in the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, talked about how difficult it was to “read” the rocks on the trail. He said that some rocks were wet and slippery, while others were wet and not slippery; some were dry and slippery, others were not dry and slippery. This meant that we couldn’t always judge by whether a rock was
184 wet if that meant it would be slippery – which was normally the case. The difficulty in reading these rocks caused many a slip and fall in this section of the trail. Thus Jumper, Bug, Redbird, and myself were learning through experience to interpret patterns of mud and rocks so as to protect ourselves while hiking. Only three days out from Springer Mountain in Georgia, Mark and I experienced the worst weather that was to occur for me on the trail. There was a snowstorm beginning in the early evening that lasted all night and resulted in several inches of snow covering the ground, high winds, and continuing snow blow in the morning. On this particular day, we were slated to hike up the backside of Blood Mountain. Having hiked this section of the trail before, we were familiar with the descent from Blood, which includes a series of rock faces that can be slippery when simply wet, much less when covered with snow and ice. We decided to take a blue-blazed trail, the Freeman Trail, which goes around Blood Mountain and down into Walasi-Yi, a store near Blairsville, Georgia, where we thought we could get a ride into town and out of the weather for the time being. The Freeman Trail is not a well-maintained trail, and we found it difficult to ascertain, at times, where the trail went. Many of the blazes were covered with snow, as was the trail itself. Often we stopped and scraped snow off of the trees in order to see if blue blazes lay underneath the crusty snow. Mark, who was leading, was forced, occasionally, to stop and look around, trying to find the trail again when we had lost it or couldn’t figure out where it should go next. After several hours of scrambling through the horrible weather on a poorly maintained trail, we made it into Walasi-Yi, where we treated ourselves to hot chocolate, Snickers bars, and microwave burgers. Later that evening, I asked him how he found the trail, with snow covering the ground and often the blazes. He responded that he
185 looked for flat spaces that looked like a trail under the snow, as well as patterns of rocks and trees “that looked like trail.” Another example of reading the trail came when I became injured, after about a month and a half of hiking. In excruciating pain, I hiked for about half an hour and then realized that I was unable to hike further and would have to temporarily leave the trail. I needed to make a call with my cell phone to arrange for a friend to pick me up at a road, and at first I thought I would wait until I got to the road to make the call. After hiking, slowly, a bit further, I realized that the trail was moving off the ridgeline where I had been hiking and down into a valley. Not only could I see this from the abrupt turn and descent that the trail took, but also from the zigzagging pattern of switchbacks that I saw unfolding ahead of me. I knew that if I went down into that valley, I would not be able to get a cell phone signal. So I went ahead and called from the top of the ridge. This was a common occurrence; I learned that foggy days were not good for reception, and that the tops of mountains or ridges were better. All of these interpretations, from identifying a snake on the trail to visualizing the way a boot will fit on a rock, rely on the context of a thru-hike. Anyone reading nature on a day hike, or from a car window, would have experienced them differently. I believe that thru-hikers, in particular, develop a special and unique sense of awareness of nature that comes from their constant and continued presence in the natural world. Stretchin’ describes this enhanced awareness beautifully in her journal of June 2nd: It's funny but when you are out on the trail your senses seem to become so sharp. On the other hand you learn how to let your mind totally wander. You are on this planet, you are watching your steps, you can smell the slightest change in the air,
186 hear the smallest of noises, see movement all around you, BUT you are really not focusing on anything in particular. You kind of dreamwalk, you are just there. Well, at least that is how it is for this hiker. Perhaps it is this divided sense of awareness – dreamwalking – that provides for the interpretations we have been discussing above. Conclusion Thru-hikers utilized multiliteracies in unique ways during their experiences on the Appalachian Trail. In fact, it seems that much of their time was spent in a variety of modes of interpretation, including writing and reading in traditional forms and interpretation of less widely acknowledged forms. Whether practicing literacy in traditional ways by reading novels, writing in shelter registers, and memorizing poetry, or reading less traditional materials such as trail blazes, plant life, and our own bodies, thruhikers, perhaps like all humans, were constantly involved in interpreting and making meaning from their surroundings. Broadening our lens to include multiple forms of literacy can help to make us aware of different processes that are used in interpretation, such as the visualization used by thru-hikers in reading maps. In addition, the inclusion of ecological literacy in the multiliteracies framework paves a way for a first step towards Orr’s definition of ecological literacy: a merger of landscape and mindscape. This study shows the importance of placing ourselves, bodily, in an environment that is more natural, less manmade, in order to fully learn from it. The use of multiliteracies in interpretation is critical in this kind of learning. Thru-hikers learned to see themselves within a natural ecosystem
187 and to orient themselves to that environment. This kind of relationship between humans and the environment cannot be developed without exposure to the natural world. While we gain a sense from these data that these literacies are multimodal, meaning that several forms of literacy are used together, it is as yet unclear how multimodality works in interpretation. In the following chapter, I work more closely with data excerpts to examine the multimodality of multiliteracies. In a similar way, it is evident that these multiliteracies are both individual and cultural, in the sense that they are used to meet individual needs, but at the same time they help to strengthen the individual’s bond to the community and often help to advance the community’s norms. We are accustomed to seeing these connections between culture and literacy in linguistic literacy, but perhaps less accustomed to examining connections between literacy and culture as they are seen in gestural, spatial, visual, and audio literacies. This, too, is a topic that I wish to discuss more fully in the next chapter.
188
CHAPTER 6 THE DESIGN PROCESS AND MULTIMODALITY In Chapter 5, I illustrated the nature of multiliteracies within the AT thru-hiking community by providing examples from my data of literacies in the categories of linguistic, gestural, spatial, audio, and visual design. I also presented a new category, that of ecological literacy, which springs from the natural setting in which this study took place. The analysis used to develop these categories, following the fieldnote based analysis described by Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (1995) involved coding all of the data I had collected, and writing about these categories of literacy practices in descriptive and analytic ways. In Chapter 6, both my analysis and discussion take a different turn. Having established that multiliteracies exist in the thru-hiking community, I want to examine more closely how the culture of the thru-hiking community and the interplay of multimodalities operate within specific moments of interpretation or meaning making. Thus, I chose to analyze closely a much smaller group of data excerpts through methods that allowed me access to the work of multiple modes of meaning and of culture. I found that the Design process provides an appropriate model for understanding both multimodality and the culture of the AT thru-hiking community. The following sections outline the methods and theoretical framework that shaped my analysis in this chapter, present the data used in this analysis, and describe my findings. Method of Analysis I began the analysis presented in this chapter by choosing data to examine. To make these choices, I reread all of my data and chose 10 data excerpts for further
189 analysis. In making these choices, I looked for data excerpts that contained detailed descriptions or stories, as I believed that rich, vivid data excerpts would provide adequate material to examine how elements of multimodality operate and how culture and literacy interact. I also chose excerpts that varied by source, including data from interviews transcripts, journals, and shelter registers. My choice of these excerpts, in some ways, depended on the degree to which I felt that the story told within portrayed some compelling aspect of thru-hiker life. Thus, the excerpts that I chose are detailed stories, explanations, and drawings taken from a variety of sources. In addition, these excerpts contain aspects of thru-hikers’ ways of being. I used what seemed to be natural boundaries within the data to provide beginning and ending points for the excerpts. For example, in those data excerpts from interviews, I included what seemed to be the participants’ complete answer to a question, using participants’ “entrance and exit talk” (Reissman, 1993, p. 58) as cues to make these determinations. I used journal and shelter register entries for a particular day and from a particular person. Because I wanted to make sure that several different forms of data were collected, I chose excerpts from interview transcripts, my personal/research journal, and from shelter registers. Among the 10 data excerpts I chose, 2 are from shelter registers, 7 are from interview transcripts, and 1 is from my journal. After choosing the data excerpts, I analyzed them systematically, one at a time, in two different ways. In the first step of this analysis, I analyzed for multimodality, or connections among linguistic, gestural, spatial, audio, and visual design. For each data selection, I created a Multimodal Connection Map (see Figure 8 for an example).
190 The maps were designed to show the connections among the modes of literacy within each data selection. I titled each map with the name of the thru-hiker from whom it came and wrote the phrase “multimodal literacies” in the center with a circle around it. Then, as I read each data excerpt and noticed an aspect of literacy that fit into one of the modes of meaning making I have described as multiliteracies, I drew a line out from the circle, wrote the category (i.e., visual, linguistic, etc.) and then wrote down the relevant piece of information. When I saw that a piece of information connected to more than one category, I drew an arrow between the two. I made a separate map for each of the 10 data excerpts.
191 Figure 8. Multimodal Connection Map.
After all of the maps were completed, I wrote integrative memos (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw, 1995) in which I described the presence of linguistic, gestural, visual, audio, and spatial modes of design within each piece. I then went back to the full set of maps and took notes on places in which these modes of design were connected – as indicated by arrows drawn between categories – and wrote integrative memos on those connections. (For examples of these integrative memos, see Appendix G.) This analysis
192 produced findings on multimodality within the data selections, but I still questioned the role of culture within these moments of meaning making. To examine connections between the culture of the thru-hiking community and the interpretations thru-hikers were making in these data excerpts, I analyzed them in terms of the Design process (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000c; New London Group, 2000). For this analysis, I created Design charts for each of the data excerpts (See Figure 9 for an example). Using descriptions drawn from the New London Group’s (2000) work on Design, I analyzed each data excerpt for its Available Designs, Designing, and Redesigned. Following this process, I wrote integrative memos on the common elements I found in each category across all 10 data excerpts. This process of analysis showed that multimodality is part of the Design process, in particular, a method of Designing. Thus, in the findings section of this chapter, I located the work of multimodality within Designing, as part of the Design process. Figure 9. Design chart on map-reading data excerpt Available Designs
Designing
The Redesigned
Structures of Map-Reading Directionality Scale Color Contour Lines Other Symbols
Visualization Cross-Referencing Asking specific questions Distrusting the map Using time Multimodality – spatial and visual and gestural
Visual image of the terrain, map, and the hiker together Comments about maps in shelter registers and journals Cross-referenced location Reports to other hikers about the map and the terrain
Orders of Discourse Reaching Katahdin Shelter System Roads Water Sources Mileage between shelters
193 In the following section, I present all 10 of the data excerpts with background on the participants and how the data were obtained. Introduction of Data Excerpts Data Excerpt #1: Binx’s Sunset on McAfee Knob Binx is a white, male northbound thru-hiker, aged 19. Standing about 5’6,” Binx has dark blonde hair and a thin beard, blue eyes, and a congenial manner. I first met Binx just south of Glencliff, New Hampshire, and then spent several days with him in Gorham, New Hampshire, where we were slackpacking through the White Mountains and the Presidentials. I interviewed Binx in early September of 2001, sitting outside the public library in Gorham, while we were waiting for our turn to use the computer connection to access our email. When I asked Binx to tell me about a memorable experience on the trail, he told me about his experience of a sunset on McAfee Knob, in Virginia. McAfee’s Knob. Sunset on McAfee Knob. It was almost like a religious experience, being up there – it was amazing, that whole section of sky was covered in clouds at the time, and the sun was behind it and coming down, and then there was a gap, and then mountains. So the sun came out of the clouds and into the gap of open air, and as it did that, it lit up the valleys individually coming toward me. And I could see the light turn on in that valley and then the light turn on in that valley and then the light turn on in that valley, and it came closer and closer. And the sun had come basically between the clouds and the bottom, and the wind was just howling, that was the strongest wind that I had felt up to that point, really. Of course, the Whites here. [laughs] The wind is like a cool breeze on McAfee Knob. But I just had to start getting down before it got dark, but as I
194 was going down, I could tell that – and just what I had seen there was absolutely amazing, like more than anything I had seen before, but I could tell it was going on, it was taking, it was going way beyond that, even though I wasn’t watching. Just because the way the colors came down – it was the reddest red – the places that were illuminated by the sun, the forest was just absolutely ruby red, and the clouds had this pattern that was just – oh man. I can’t really describe it, that’s how amazing it was. I sort of feel sorry that I didn’t stay up there the entire time, but if I had stayed up there, I wouldn’t have got down to the shelter in time. That was amazing. I’ll remember that forever. Definitely. Data Excerpt #2: Turtle’s Hot, Emotional Hike During my thru-hike, I kept a personal journal of my experiences. In large part, these were made up of comments about people I had met, distance hiked, the weather, and my emotions, as well as my thoughts and decisions about research, data collection, and analysis. In the journal entry that I selected for this piece of analysis, I wrote about my experience on August 7 in Connecticut, at the beginning of a two-week heat wave that blistered New England. Wiley Shelter to Kent, CT — 12.3 miles Horrible, hot day. The first 4 miles flew by, and I was at Ten Mile Shelter by 10:00. I saw Baggins there. There was a pump that I got water from, just before a bridge over the Ten Mile River. A little bit further, to a road, and I went .2 to a deli. As I was walking toward the deli, I ran into Player and Oceanside coming back with no packs. I think they must have hidden their packs near the trail. At the deli, I bought a huge bottle of Gatorade and called Mark, and that's when the
195 crying began. It was already getting FUCKING hot by then and I started feeling all alone and miserable. Halfway up Schagticoke Mountain I had to stop for a break to cool off. I could feel the heat rising in my body and was afraid that if I didn't stop, I would get heat stroke or something. I was also crying pretty steadily and I thought that if I stopped I could get myself calmed down and cooled down. Climbed on up the mountain after a 30 minute break, and made it to the campsite at Schagticoke Mountain. According to the map, there was supposed to be a brook there, but it was dry. Once again, I had another big cryfest. Smoker arrived and was also concerned that she was just about out of water. After Smoker left, I continued on. Eventually, Jumper caught up with me. When she came up behind me, she first asked how I was doing, and we agreed that it was bad being out of water on a hot day like that. She had read my register entries, so she knew my name. She said at first she thought I was being pompous, but then Abel told her how I got the name Bad-Ass. Jumper was completely out of water, and I offered her some of mine. She asked if I had extra. I said "not really" and she said she thought she could make it to Thayer Brook. I told her I was planning on staying at Mt. Algo Lean-To, but I was afraid there would be no water there. She was being slackpacked by Beatnik's friend Donald, and she said "We'll make sure you're ok." When I got to Mt. Algo, sure enough there was no water, so I rushed down to the road (another .3) and lo and behold they were still there! I got a ride with them into town, where we stopped at the outfitters so that Abel could get a new pair of hiking shoes.
196 Data Excerpt #3: Rattler’s Trail Name Story Rattler, a 22-year old female thru-hiker from Alabama, is a tall, thin white woman with dark hair and eyes. Rattler hiked with her dog, Alexander, and for a period of several weeks, we saw each other almost every day. I interviewed Rattler in Woodstock, Connecticut. During the interview, I asked her about how she got her trail name, and she responded by telling me this story. My trail name, Rattler, was given to me by a man – I can’t remember his name. He was only on the trail for a week or so. He made it to Dick’s Creek. And I had been telling him my story. What happened was, as I was hiking in between the road that led to Suches, in Georgia. I was hiking along, and my dog was in front of me, and he ran up ahead, when I noticed that he was sniffing underneath this huge, gigantic rock, that was kind of like draped over the trail, almost. And he goes running off, and you know – so I walk up to the rock, and you know, I don’t hear a rattle at first, so I stepped down, and basically I heard the rattle, I had no idea where the snake was. My pack is like 50 pounds at the time, I didn’t have trail legs at all. I was going at this horrendous speed, and I could only like lift my feet up a little bit at a time. And the speed that I was going was the fastest that I could go, you know, so I couldn’t even jump out of the way or anything. I felt it pop the back of my gaiters, and I screamed. And actually Windmill was behind me that day and she heard me scream, and she’s like “What’s going on?” So we walked to the road and then not an hour later we were climbing this mountain, and there was a young guy in front of me, and he yelled down to me that there was a really agitated rattlesnake off to the right of the trail. So I’m hiking along, and of
197 course, Alexander is just running all over the place. At that point he was just out of control about the trail. He kind of – you know, we were just kind of hiking along together. And he ran by, and I guess by the time I came by the snake was going back to wherever it came from, so it was no longer on the right of the trail, it was going back underneath this rock in the middle of the trail. So, again, I saw the snake, but again I stepped down right next to it, because I could not lift my legs up any higher or faster, and he felt what I was doing, you know, so and then – I stepped away and I looked back, and I saw the rattlesnake striking the back of my gaiter. But they didn’t go through my gaiters or anything. They weren’t really trying to bite me. It was kind of weird, so much like a spiritual experience, you know, three days on the trail, I felt like they were blessing me in some way. You know, as I was like walking by. But I told my story to this man, and he started calling me Rattler. That’s how I got my trail name. Data Excerpt #4: Buffalo’s Last Three Weeks I first met Buffalo, a northbound white male thru-hiker of 24, on the AT north of Delaware Water Gap, where he was slackpacking with a friend, hiking south. With his blonde curly hair, thick beard, and roguish blue eyes, Buffalo always brought a bit of fun to any occasion. Once, by a roadside in New York, Buffalo and Pony helped to make the most of the end of an exhausting day by dancing a “hoe-down” and playing music on a set of spoons to entertain me and the other thru-hikers pausing to rest. Buffalo always carried a small backpacking guitar with him and was part of a group doing a documentary film about the AT as they hiked. I interviewed Buffalo in Gorham, New Hampshire,
198 where he talked at length about how his trail experience was changing and what he expected for the last three weeks of his hike. B: Yeah, I'm going to try to, in this last month, start writing every day again. Just to make sure that I get, that I don't forget or, you know all the stuff that I'm going to be thinking about here in these last three weeks. I think it's gonna be pretty intense, maybe. Getting near to the end. Like, all the way from Massachusetts and Greylock, is where it kind of started. The first big mountain again, where you could see around, see far, and like it was kind of cold up there. And ever since then it's kind of been a little bit different. Like we knew we were getting close to the end, and the mountains were getting big again, and it's gonna get hard, but while it's getting hard, it's really getting climactic. Like the Whites were so big and so beautiful and everything. I don’t understand why somebody can go south and go through all of this first, ending up down in North Carolina and Georgia. I guess it’s beautiful down there in the fall, I know it is. Up here it's just so, so different. Cool. And it's basically like a really good ending. And now – when I write, I was typing an email, I was like we've only got three weeks left. I had to look at it, like THREE WEEKS. That's nothing. And to think about something could happen in that period of time, still, most of a month. All sorts of -- we're going to do all of Maine, you know, and Maine's big. There's gonna be a lot of stuff happening in those three weeks, it'll be gone and done soon enough. L: So you think, when you're talking about how things are changing, do you think that's primarily because of the terrain changes, or . . . ?
199 B: No, that's kind of like the, that's just the visual part of it. Like it's reminding us . . . we went so long without seeing views through Pennsylvania and Connecticut and stuff. And we're just kind of like trudging along, and there wouldn't be any big mountains to get up to and kind of feel like, yeah, I did this big mountain and now here's my reward, the huge view. And now we're doing that and so it's back to like it was in the beginning. Even better now, because it feels like, wow, here we are and we're really working for this. And now it's almost over so we're getting the good stuff. It's really more of a visual thing with the terrain. You know it's also changing just because of the very fact that we're this close to being done. Like I mean it could be any terrain and we'd still be like, wow, here we are and getting real close to ground zero. And I'm sure that would cause the same feelings of, you know, wow. You know, we've done something really amazing, and it's almost at an end. What's it gonna feel like when it's done? Am I gonna be happy that it's over? Am I gonna be sad? Am I gonna get depressed that I'm not out here no more once I'm back? Professor had a good quote about that, it's actually a Nietszche quote, and it's something about a teacher saying that "First you must reject me, then you must return to me, and then you can truly learn from me." And so, that's kind of like the, the real world. I use quotations when I say real world, cause that's what everybody else calls it. I think that this world out here is just as real, and in a lot of ways more real than the nine to five world that a lot of people are coming from out here. I wasn't exactly in the nine to five world, but I mean, I worked a lot, so. Back in that environment. It's good to take a breather from it, such as a thru-hike, and then return to it knowing all the stuff that you've learned
200 out here. I’m glad I’m out here, now, because I know how easy it is to get out of it now, I know how important it is to, at times. And so I’m gonna go back and do all the stuff that I want to do, and get some things accomplished, and then look for the next time when I can take a break. And get a breather on it, you know. Data Excerpt #5: Shrinking Violet’s “Cry Wild” I never met Shrinking Violet, but I chose her writing because of its emphasis on the environment and the body. Shrinking Violet is a female northbound thru-hiker, and I often heard others talk about her insightful shelter register entries. This entry is taken from the Calf Mountain Shelter register, and was obtained with the help of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, which graciously allowed me access to quite a few shelter registers from their archive.
201 Figure 10. Shrinking Violet’s register entry.
Data Excerpt #6: Cerveza’s Cannibalistic Thru-hiker Like Shrinking Violet, Cerveza is a thru-hiker that I never met, but one who left his mark in the shelter registers. His drawings were sometimes controversial, as they sometimes presented images of practices considered socially abhorrent, such as
202 cannibalism and bestiality. This drawing, taken from the Calf Mountain Shelter register, and again due to the generosity of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, speaks volumes about thru-hiker’s images of themselves and of day hikers. Figure 11. Cerveza’s shelter entry.
Data Excerpt #7: Tenderfoot and Sure Pace’s Memorable Day I met Tenderfoot and Sure Pace on the third day of my hike. A bi-racial married couple in their 50s, Tenderfoot and Sure Pace had started their thru-hike a couple of days before I did, and I caught up with them at Goose Creek Cabins, where many of us stayed after a snowstorm that lasted several days. I saw them many times after this and finally interviewed them together in Glencliff, New Hampshire. When I asked them to tell me
203 about a memorable experience during their hike, they told me a story about a day when Tenderfoot became very angry with Sure Pace. Tenderfoot:
Well, it had rained – well, and there was a lot of mountain laurel around. It had rained the day before. I mean, and we got poured on rain. And we ran like crazy fools into this shelter. And a bunch of these kids, they came in and they were just as dry as a bone, they were so happy, cause they had been underneath their rainfly, and they sat waiting for the rain to pass, and they came in and they were just as dry as could be and we were just soaked wet. So we spent the night in the shelter. The next day, same thing, repeat, pouring rain. I don’t know what happened, well, I know what happened. We read the map wrong. Some days, I swear, we have a map and we have a guidebook, and we still don’t know where we’re at. I don’t know if there was a trail relocation or what. Anyhow, we were off by at least a mile and a half or two probably
Sure Pace:
At least.
Tenderfoot:
At least, thinking we were supposed to be somewhere, I thought we were .7 to where we were going and it was more like 2.7 and it was getting late and it started pouring.
Sure Pace:
Or maybe the signage was off, cause they put us a lot closer to where we were going than we actually were.
Tenderfoot:
Right. It was pouring rain again. Oh, my god, I didn’t know if it was from the rain or the tears. I started crying, and then we started
204 looking at the map and I realized that we were wrong, and he had told me we were somewhere when we weren’t. I started chasing him like I was completely possessed. I think I must have had an out of body experience. I grabbed up my hiking poles and I started chasing him. I said “I hate you and I am gonna kill you.” And he looked at me – I must have had this look, murderous look, in my eyes. He started running. I am chasing him. The water is – I mean the trail has got about that much water in it, about four or five inches. The water is fricking flying and the mud is everywhere. I am flying after him and he is running as fast as he can. I am “I hate you and I’m gonna kill you!” And I went running after him. Finally I wore myself out and I stopped. And a few minutes later I took off after him again and he went running – it did get us faster to where we were going. But till I got there, I mean I was mentally and physically exhausted. That I have to say was terrible. I don’t know what was wrong with me that day, but I was possessed. It was not unusual for me to tell him that I hated him on a regular basis. And it was because I was in conflict. I didn’t want to be there, but yet I did. You know. So that’s the deal. That I have to say is probably the most memorable. That wasn’t exactly what you call a good one, but afterwards we laughed. It was terrible. I was possessed!
205 Data Excerpt #8: Mole and Jumper’s Experiences of Map-reading Several thru-hikers that I interviewed talked about reading maps. Although I did not interview them together, both Mole and Jumper described vividly the processes they went through in reading maps. I interviewed Mole at Caledonia State Park in Pennsylvania, and I interviewed Jumper in Salisbury, Connecticut. Both are northbound thru-hikers; Jumper is a 24-year old white female and Mole is a 36-year old white male. Mole:
And I’ll pull it [the map]out at a break and I’ll go ok, where am I? And I’ll go, well, since I haven’t looked at the map in four hours, what road did I just cross? And I’ll cross-reference that with the roads in the book and how long I’ve hiked. So I know, basically, ok, I’ve hiked two hours, at two miles an hour, that’s four miles, that puts me roughly here on the map. What roads did I cross, according to the map? What roads did I cross according to the book? Then I get to within a half mile of where I’m at.
Jumper:
Now I find myself really being able to visualize as I’m hiking what the elevation profile’s doing, and then what the topo looks like, and which way we’re gonna curve after we go up this mountain, and what we’re gonna pass, like if we’re gonna pass this brook, and then what happens after we cross the brook. So it’s – really you’re trying to take a picture of what’s on the map and imagine yourself walking through that picture.
Mole:
They give you a profile of where the trail is supposed to go, which is very different, and it took me a little while to figure this out, than the actual mountain that you’re looking at. You know, instead of going straight up the mountain like the profile of the mountain, that’s what the profile
206 should be? It’s not. The trail zigzags back and forth on its way up, and that’s the profile of the trail, not of the mountain. Data Excerpt #9: Jumper’s Experience of an Odd Guy in a Shelter The story of Jumper’s interpretation of an “odd guy” in a shelter, previously mentioned in chapter 5, is full of multimodal literacies. Jumper told me this story in her interview, in response to a question concerning how she reads other people. So one day, this is almost a day after Butterly and I broke up. I was hiking on my own, and I had met one other thru-hiker, he was an older man named Ghost. He was ex-CIA, he took pictures for the CIA. And we laughed about it, cause I was like “Ah, you shoot people.” And he laughed. And I kind of – I was like, oops, he probably did! So I cruised up to the shelter where he was gonna stay the night, he had beaten me there because I went into town. And I decided – the water source was just before the shelter, so I stopped there and put down my pack and got my water. And he came from the shelter and he told me there was a guy in there that didn’t look quite right. And coming from Ghost, I was on edge. I was prepped for it. So I walked to the shelter, and there was a guy laying on the – he was laying along the back wall of the shelter. So you have the three-sided part, normally people sleep vertically in there, like sardines. But he was horizontally to the entrance, just asleep with all his stuff just spread out everywhere. And it wasn’t typical camping gear, it wasn’t thru-hiker gear, and it certainly wasn’t like nice day-hiker stuff or anything like that. So – he did look a little bit odd. And then by the time he woke up, he decided he was going to brush his teeth, so he walked over kind of beside the shelter and he started brushing his teeth. And I was looking at the register and I hadn’t pulled anything out because I
207 wanted to be able to leave quickly without raising any suspicion or anything like that. Like I was just going to keep hiking. I had already hiked 20 miles that day, so it wasn’t going to be very far. That was along the Dragon’s Tooth and stuff like that so it was pretty hard stuff. But he came back from brushing his teeth and he had toothpaste on half of his face. It was dripped out all over his mouth, and he just looked like a rabid dog. It was like – that’s – that’s not good. This person is not normal. Then he started asking me questions about my camping gear, like what are gaiters – what are they for – and you know. I asked him how far he had – where he had come from. And he told me the road that was three miles back, that I’d just hitched from. And I asked him when he started, and he said “three days ago.” So I was like – you’ve come three miles in three days? Ok, he’s hiding out from something, or he has been doing some kind of drugs that have made him sleep for a couple days or something. I didn’t know what was up with him, but I knew I didn’t want to be around him. So – and about that time, when I decided I was not gonna stay in the shelter, I heard some voices coming up from the hill. So Ghost had come back, and I was like, I kind of signed it with my hands – I was like, I’m gonna go up and look at the campsites up the way, see what’s happening up there. I’ll be back – and you keep an eye on my bag. And he was like, yeah. So I go up to the campsites and there’s four rather large, very clean-cut you know 26-year old guys. And the first thing I said to them was “there’s a gentleman in the shelter that I don’t feel very comfortable around, he’s a little bit off his rocker, and I don’t want to be camped near him and I don’t want to have anything to do with him. He hasn’t done anything to me yet, or threatened or anything, but I want to keep myself out of that situation. Do you
208 mind if I camp right next to you?” And they were like, no, that’s absolutely fine, camp right here, if you let out so much as a peep that sounds like you need help, we’ll be there in 5 seconds. And so that made me feel a lot better. I went down and got my stuff, camped with them that night. Wound up waking up at 4:30 in the morning with one of them and going up to McAfee Knob to watch the sunrise. He was a photographer. Data Excerpt #10: Critter’s Journaling System Critter was the first thru-hiker that I interviewed, and his interview took place early in the hike – in May during the Trail Days festival in Damascus, Virginia. A retired wildlife biologist, Critter is a white male in his 50s. I had seen him writing extensively in his journal when we stayed at a hostel in Erwin, Tennessee, and I asked him to tell me about what types of things he wrote, after he brought up his journal in his description of a typical day. In response, he described his journaling system. C: Well, my journal – I really have almost 4 journals or notebooks if you would count it that way. My experience in reading other people’s journals, such as those posted on the websites, is they are somewhat a litany of the people they met on the trail, how far they walked that day, and how hard the walk was. And that is somewhat repeated. There are occasional anecdotal comments about how much they liked the view from a particular place, but most of the journals are very much focused on redundancies, to me. It’s not very insightful after you’ve read one of them. And yet I find that’s the first thing that I tend to write. It’s the easiest thing to write. I also know that my memory for detail fades very quickly after an event. So what I am doing, I hike during the day with a little 3 by 5 spiral-bound in my
209 pocket. And when I see anything that interests me, wildlife related, visual aspects of the trail, my reaction to something that occurs on the trail, I will stop within some short time of it, and jot a reminder to myself in the 3 by 5. When I was at, for example, the Trail Fest in Hot Springs, I just made a list of about 15 bullets of things that happened that day that stuck in my mind during the course of the day: gospel group singing, displays, reactions of people to the man driving his tractor down Main Street. Whatever it might have been. I keep those through the day. I also will sketch if I see a plant that I don’t recognize, which is most of them, that I want to go back and look up later. So I have that series of notes. When I go to a town, I go to the library, and I browse to see what they have. I will browse for the history of the town I’m in – the famous hung elephant of Erwin, and also look for guides to things that I might have seen, such as a butterfly. I’m not carrying a field guide to butterflies, and I know a sum total of about 5 of them. So I might look up one that I’ve sketched in that notebook, its wing color, to see if I can find out. And I look for books such as Michael Felms’ book Strangers in High Places: The History of the Great Smokies Park. I blundered into that, and read that as I came out of the Smokies, which was a great way to kind of put together things I had heard and felt as I came out of the Smokies. I will, in the book, make notes of those research items, if you want to call them that, from other sources. Quotes that I might find that interest me, and historical facts, if you will, that I feel in some fashion relate to my experience on the trail. The intent is, when this is done, I will sit down and take the daily log, and the notes from other sources, and I will combine them into my version of what this hike has been. And that will be a little
210 more philosophical than the daily log, hopefully a little more factual than my limited knowledge on the trail as I walk. Insightful? Probably not. But hopefully a little broader than just that daily log that most people keep. I would like something that I can look back at someday, and help to recall the sum total experience, and still have in it information that I find as knowledge. Things I’ve forgotten, things that maybe at the time I didn’t think were important, but next time I read it, they might be valuable. L: So do you see this as just for yourself, or are you planning to publish it? C: It’s just for myself. I will probably circulate it to a few friends of mine. I fished around the world for quite a few years, and I have a friend whom I’ve fished with for many years and many places, and many styles of fishing – everything from big game to fly fishing. He keeps a journal of every single fishing trip. And it’s not what he caught. It’s what the experience was, and where he was, who he was with. They’re quite eloquently written. He privately publishes once a year a summation of all his fishing trips. And he circulates that to those who might have been on any one of the trips and some friends of his who might someday fish with him. So I have experience with that type of journal, and enjoy it. The last piece that I would like to put in mine, and I haven’t decided how to do this. What I would prefer to do is either will I incorporate photographs into it. Or will I endeavor to put sketches into it. Recognizing that my artistic talent is somewhere well below my musical skills. But nevertheless, it would be one of those things, why not try? So I haven’t decided whether, for my pleasure, in completing the journal, whether I will put some watercolors in it, or some pen and ink sketches,
211 or I will use photographs and convert it into a little broader text version and visual effect, for both myself and others. I have no, as I said, no family, no immediate circle there, so it would be purely for the fun of whatever I choose to do with it. But I have no interest in attempting to publish it, or circulate it for general consumption. I chose not to do a website for somewhat the same reason. There are a great number of people doing their views, day to day, of the Appalachian Trail. And I would like to do something that synthesizes it into a little bit broader assessment of what I really found on the trail, more than just each day. And I have decided in my case, I think to do that best would be to take all my notes, and then at the end of the hike, sit down and put it all together. And integrate it into something. In the following section, I will discuss my analysis of these data, using the methods I have previously described. I present my discussion in terms of the Design process, looking at the Available Designs, Designing, and the Redesigned in these data. Within these phases of the process of Design, I will illustrate elements of the data that point up the role of the culture of the thru-hiking community, of ecological literacy, and of multimodality within the Design process. The Design Process The New London Group’s (2000) Design process encompasses a multimodal view of literacy and takes into consideration cultural ways of being as part of the use of multimodal literacies. By capitalizing the word Design, the New London Group distinguishes their model from the more widely used notion of design, while invoking creativity as part of the process. The use of Design to describe the process of
212 interpretation emphasizes creativity and complexity in meaning-making inherent in current uses of the term design. For example, the New London Group argues that teachers should be designers of learning processes and environments, not bosses dictating what to do and how to do it. Similarly, they argue that educational research should become a design science, studying how best to motivate and achieve different sorts of learning. The notion of design connects powerfully to the sort of creative intelligence the best practitioners need in order to be able continually to redesign their activities in the very act of practice. It connects as well to the idea that learning and productivity are the results of the designs (the structures) of complex systems of people, environments, technology, beliefs, and texts (New London Group, 2000, p. 19-20), Thus, their choice of the term Design is meant to articulate meaning-making as an active and dynamic process, not something governed by static rules. In this section, I will first articulate Design, using data on map-reading as an example, and will then discuss my analysis of the data selections as examples of Design. The process of Design has been broken down into three cyclical parts: Available Designs, Designing, and the Redesigned. Available Designs Available Designs are the resources that are available for interpretation, what we use to create interpretations. Available Designs include the structure or grammar of semiotic systems, orders of discourse, and intertextuality. Structures or grammars are the accepted aspects of any particular type of text. For example, in interpreting a topographical map, I will pay attention to the formal structures associated with maps,
213 such as directionality, scale, color, contour lines, and other symbols. But these are not the only resources available to me as I interpret a map. In addition to these structures, orders of discourse, particular sets of conventions associated with given social groups, are Available Resources as well. When I interpret a map of the AT as a thru-hiker, for example, the dynamic and interactive set of goals, values, and traditions that are part of the AT thru-hiking community shape the resources available to me, so that the particular symbols on the maps reflect these goals, values, and traditions. For example, northbound thru-hikers place a strong value on reaching Mt. Katahdin, in Maine’s Baxter State Park. The map reflects those values, as the elevation profiles (at least that of the maps created by the Maine Appalachian Trail Club) begin and end with mileage indicators showing the distance to Katahdin. The centrality of the Appalachian Trail is also seen on these maps, so that other trails are marked but are designated as of lesser importance through their placement on the elevation profiles and through the symbols used to identify them. Thruhikers also depend heavily on the shelter system, and all of the AT maps mark shelters prominently. Roads are also clearly marked on the AT maps, and these road crossings can be cross-referenced in handbooks in order for thru-hikers to gain information about towns, hostels, post offices, and other vital resupply and refreshment links. Other information that would be vital to members of the hiking community, including water sources and mileage between shelters, is also provided. In these ways, the Available Resources, as determined by the culture of the trail, are those in the map. Another aspect of Available Designs is its intertextual context. By intertextual context, I mean that any Available Designs belong to a series of past texts that themselves have been previously Designed, and so “one moment of Designing is continuous with and
214 a continuation of particular histories” (New London Group, 2000, p. 21). For example, my individual experience with interpreting maps and my continual practice using maps as a member of the thru-hiking community influence my current interpretation, and that current interpretation will influence any future interpretations. Available Designs, as described previously, are the formal structures, social ways of perceiving those structures, and the placement of those structures within a pattern of similar interpretations. When I examined the Available Designs within the 10 data selections that I chose for analysis, I organized my examination by these three aspects of Available Designs, namely formal structures, orders of discourse, and intertextuality. In the next section, I present my findings concerning these aspects of Available Designs. Formal Structures Although there was variety in the structures used in these data, I found that these structures came, in general, from the community of thru-hikers, from the context of a research interaction, or from the structure of story-telling. Structures from the thru-hiker community. Examining the formal structures that were available for thru-hikers in their literacies, I found that many of the structures came from the practices of the thru-hiking community. For example, Cerveza’s drawing of a cannibalistic thru-hiker and Shrinking Violet’s writing upon entering the Shenandoahs both were found in shelter registers. As such they shared some of the formal structures associated with shelter register entries, to varying degrees. Shrinking Violet’s entry followed this more closely, in that she included the date, her signature, and a note to other thru-hikers. Cerveza provided a signature to his entry, and by drawing a thru-hiker fit into
215 the community as well, although he also drew from the structure of cartoons and caricatures. Two of the data selections, taken from my journal and from Critter’s interview, drew on the structures of personal journals kept by thru-hikers. My use of the journal structure was evident in the form of my writing: I provided a date, the mileage hiked, the places I had been, people I had met, emotions and events I had experienced. All of these are in keeping with most journal entries that I have seen, either from my own data or from thru-hiker journals posted on the internet. In Critter’s interview, he spoke of his desire to move beyond the typical journal, which consisted of a rather repetitive daily listing of people met on the trail, mileage hiked in a day, how hard the hike was, and views seen from particular spots. In my journal, I accepted this typical journal format as the structure for my journal creation; Critter attempted to move beyond these structures to something that would be “a little bit broader assessment of what I found on the trail.” Rattler and Binx’s data selections draw from structures that are connected with thru-hikers’ experiences of nature, and that I associate with ecological literacy. Binx made a spectator event out of watching a sunset, an activity that many thru-hikers enjoy. He used the visual structures of the clouds, light, the outline of the mountains, and the color, along with his experience of the wind, to build his interpretation of his experience of watching the sunset. Rattler, in her interactions with two rattlesnakes along the trail, also practices ecological literacy, as she uses her insight into her dog’s behavior, warnings received from other thru-hikers, and the sound and feel of rattlesnakes biting the back of her gaiter to create her interpretation of these interactions.
216 Structures from the research or general contexts. In addition to structuring their design based on their understanding of thru-hikers’ formats and experiences, some thruhikers used a question and answer format related to the interview context, or a more general format of storytelling. Several thru-hikers structured their responses in answer to my interview questions, including Binx, Critter, Jumper, Buffalo, Rattler, and Tenderfoot and Sure Pace. This means that they saw their design in terms of a question I had asked, and that they were attempting to answer to the best of their ability. Binx, perhaps, shows this the most, in that he uses a phrase from my question in finalizing his answer. I had asked him to tell me about an experience that he would remember for years, long after his thru-hike was over. In response, he told me about his experience of sunset on McAfee Knob, ending his description with “That was amazing. I’ll remember that forever. Definitely.” Tenderfoot and Sure Pace, while also participating in the format of a question and answer, incorporated a storytelling element in their Design, including the provision of background material for their story (the bad weather, others managing to stay dry while they were sopping wet), a conflict (misreading the map, screaming and chasing her partner down the trail), and a resolution (“afterwards we laughed. It was terrible. I was possessed!”). Orders of Discourse Orders of discourse, or particular sets of conventions associated with given social groups, are also part of the Available Designs used in these data. In my analysis of the orders of discourse through which these data are designed, I found that they show that the thru-hikers are members of a bounded community in a natural setting with community
217 ways and values. All of these aspects contribute to the Available Designs used in interpretation by thru-hikers in these data. A bounded community. The Available Designs utilized by thru-hikers in their designing of interpretations illustrate that the community they were operating in had boundaries or limits. Shrinking Violet, for example, used “we” several times in her journal entry, signifying her membership in a community, a community that she characterized as “pilgrims,” a reference to the traveling thru-hiker community. Her signature, with its attendant symbol “GA-ME ‘01” shows that she afforded herself membership in the thru-hiker community, in particular that part of the community that is hiking from Georgia (GA) to Maine (ME) in 2001. Cerveza’s drawing of a male thruhiker and the caption that he used shows day hikers and thru-hikers inhabiting separate categories, and even reflects the antipathy to or superiority to day hikers that was sometimes expressed by thru-hikers. In my journal entry, I mention by name only the other thru-hikers that I encountered, including Baggins, Oceanside and Player, Jumper, Smoker, and Abel. What I didn’t mention in that journal entry are the groups of dayhikers and weekenders that I came across that day. Those individuals were not as important to me, and I did not mention them in my journal, because they were not members of the bounded community that exercised the greatest influence over my interpretation of my day. A natural setting. Another aspect of the orders of discourse that I found in these data were the influences of the natural setting that many of them involved. For example, Tenderfoot and Sure Pace’s story of a memorable moment occurs entirely within a trail setting. The rainy weather, the misreading of the map, and the mud flying as they raced
218 down the trail are all aspects that rely on a natural setting for their impact. Binx’s story also involves a natural setting, as he watches a sunset for recreation and fulfillment. Buffalo makes a distinction between the “real world” as the world of “9 to 5,” the world that he has left to thru-hike, and the natural world of the thru-hiking community. As he nears the completion of his goal, he ponders how his return to that real world will be: “What’s it gonna feel like when it’s done? Am I gonna be happy that it’s over? Am I gonna be sad? Am I gonna get depressed that I’m not out here no more once I’m back?” Thus, for Buffalo, the natural setting, the setting in which thru-hikers have chosen to live for six months, is an important part of the way he interprets the world around him. Community ways and values. Some of the data selections illustrate the strong impact of thru-hiker ways and values on the interpretations made by thru-hikers. Jumper’s interpretation of the man in the shelter shows that her interpretation is based on thru-hiker norms and values. This man was violating the typical way of sleeping in the shelter, the typical possessions and handling of those possessions, and typical mileage expectations of thru-hikers. According to thru-hiker norms, he should have been sleeping in alignment with the walls of the shelter, should have had different gear and handled his gear differently, and should have been hiking more miles in a day and not staying at the same place for several days in a row, unless he was sick. Coming back from brushing his teeth with toothpaste all over his face violated not only thru-hiker expectations, but also those of most individuals that I have met. Thru-hiker norms and values are also evident in Rattler’s experience. Although Rattler was hiking alone, she received help in the form of another hiker warning her about the snake near the trail, and a reaction from another thruhiker to her scream. In her mention of these parts of her experience, we see something of
219 the nature of the community of hikers, participating in not just their own hike, but becoming involved in the experiences of others. In addition, Rattler chooses this story as a “trail name” story, a story that illustrates how she received her trail name. Intertextuality It is in the area of intertextuality that the individual agentive design of these thruhikers comes to bear in their interpretation, each in a slightly different fashion. Intertextuality has to do with recognizing the connections between this particular interpretation and other, similar interpretations that have taken place in the past. These intertextual aspects may be solely individual, or they may relate to the community in which they take place. Critter, for example, in his explanation of his journaling strategy, relies on his readings of others’ journals, which he found rather redundant, and his reading of his friend’s fishing journals. Patterning his desire for his journals on those of his friend and on his own interest in wildlife biology, Critter developed and described this strategy in his interview. It is also evident from Cerveza’s drawing that he had had prior experience drawing cartoons and caricatures; in addition, he draws on his repeated experiences as a thru-hiker, dealing with both day hikers and with his bodily hunger to create the image of a cannibalistic thru-hiker. Similarly, Rattler has probably told her trail name story many times before – it’s a common question among thru-hikers on first meeting – and she has highlighted in her story those elements that lead most directly to this interpretation of events. Jumper, too, is accustomed to categorizing people she met on the trail; in her categorization of the odd guy in the shelter, she uses her knowledge about speech, possessions, and behavior to make a decision about her own behavior in this regard.
220 Available Designs, thus, through formal structures, orders of discourse, and intertextuality, combine individual, cultural, and ecological resources that are part of interpretation. In these data, thru-hiker goals, values, and traditions, the natural setting, and the structures established for communication form a pool from which individual interpretations are uniquely created. The creation process for these interpretations occurs in the second phase of the Design process, Designing. Designing Designing, which involves making meaning from Available Designs, is done through re-presentation and recontextualization (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000c). Designing never simply repeats Available Designs; rather, the process of Design is a process of transformation, in which we take all available resources of meaning and transform them into a new meaning. Designing involves not only interpretation of given structures, but also production of new ones, structures that are always unique, creative, and different from old ones, different from Available Designs, different from any meaning created in the past. Going back to the example of map-reading again, thru-hikers look at the map with specific questions in mind, such as “Where can I get water?” “Where will I take a break?” “Where will I sleep?” and “Where am I now?” They use the map to get a visual image of the day’s hike. Thru-hikers also use time in conjunction with reading the map, as they time their pace and use that estimation to place themselves in the map. Thruhikers employ visualization and cross-referencing to interpret not just the map, but the landscape and their bodies’ positions in it as well. Thus, the process of Designing, or of making meaning from the map, is influenced by cultural goals and beliefs, and involves the use of multiple modes of design.
221 In this section, I focus on the role multimodality plays in these reconceptualizations. Drawing on my analysis of these data through the multimodal connection maps, I found that, although linguistic design was the primary mode used, multimodal design was present in all of the data selections, and that interconnections among modes of design point toward ecological literacy. Linguistic Design as Primary Most of the data selections exhibit linguistic literacy as primary, through their use of language to describe, tell stories, and explain. Binx, for example, uses words to describe the sunset at McAfee Knob. Words seem to fail him in this effort, however, as he says he is sure he can’t describe it, “that’s how amazing it was.” My journal entry about the heat in Connecticut is first and foremost a story, this time written in my journal to describe my “horrible, hot day.” It is through language that I attempt to convey, to myself, perhaps, as the audience, the kind of hellish experience I had on this day, as well as several conversations, also forms of linguistic literacy. Rattler tells her story, using linguistic literacy, as a representation of her experiences with two snakes and how they were essential in receiving her trail name. She also mentions conversations with two thruhikers, one ahead and one behind her. Buffalo uses words to describe his perceptions of how things have changed and what he expects for the last three weeks of his thru-hike, in response to a question about his journal writing. He plans to start writing every day so that he can remember what happens during the end of his journey, his thoughts about those last three weeks, and the intensity of his experience. Shrinking Violet’s shelter register entry uses linguistic literacy to communicate with other hikers and to express her ideas. Unlike the other data pieces, Cerveza’s drawing does not center around linguistic
222 literacy, although certainly it utilizes language in the caption: “Warning to Day-Hikers: If you don’t feed us, we will not hesitate to eat you!” and in the signature. Although I note the primacy of literacy within these data, I would also like to make clear my recognition that the form these data take – interview responses, journal entries, and shelter register entries – dictate the importance of language within them. In spite of the prevalence of linguistic forms of literacy in these data, what is most fascinating about them is the interplay and interaction of other forms of literacy, the multimodality of these data excerpts. Multimodality: The Presence of Visual, Gestural, Spatial, and Audio Design The presence of these modes of design is evident throughout the data selections. Perhaps the strongest element in Binx’s story is visual design. The colors of the sunset are the “reddest red” and the forest is “absolutely ruby red.” He describes how the sun lit up the valleys individually coming toward him, how the sky was covered in clouds, and the sun came out of the clouds and into the gap. In this part of his description of what he saw, we can also find spatial literacy, as he portrays the position of clouds, the sun, the gap, and the mountains: “That whole section of sky was covered in clouds at the time, and the sun was behind it and coming down, and then there was a gap, and then mountains.” He continues this arrangement, describing how the setting sun lit up successive valleys: “So the sun came out of the clouds and into the gap of open air, and as it did that, it lit up the valleys individually coming toward me. And I could see the light turn on in that valley and then the light turn on in that valley, and then the light turn on in that valley, and it came closer and closer.” Binx goes on to describe his experience of the wind in both gestural and audio terminology: “the wind was just howling, that was
223 the strongest wind that I had felt up to that point, really.” He both feels and hears the strength of the wind, although when he compares its strength to that he has experienced in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, he says it was “like a cool breeze.” Thus, visual, spatial, gestural, and audio modes of literacy are present in Binx’s description. Multimodality is also present in my journal entry, with gestural literacy playing a leading role. Most of the gestural literacy in this selection concerns affective and bodily responses – both aspects of gestural design – to the extreme heat I was experiencing. I describe several bouts of crying: “that’s when the crying began,” “I was also crying pretty steadily,” and “I had another big cryfest.” I also describe my body’s physical reaction to the heat and the fears that this engendered: “I could feel the heat rising in my body and was afraid that if I didn’t stop, I would get heat stroke or something.” Spatial literacy plays a minor role in my journal entry, as I read the map and determined that I could get water at the campsite at Schagticoke Mountain. These data show the presence of gestural, linguistic, and spatial literacies. Not only was I attempting to read my body, but my body was also interpreting the environment, resulting in these emotional outbreaks. A correlation to my emotional response to the weather conditions and my body in those conditions can be seen in Tenderfoot and Sure Pace’s experience of their most memorable day. As Tenderfoot tells the story, on a horribly rainy day, they misread a map and misgauged the number of miles remaining until they reached the shelter. When they realized their mistake, Tenderfoot became so angry that she says she “must have had an out of body experience.” She chased her husband down the trail, brandishing her hiking poles and screaming, “I hate you and I am gonna kill you.” She stated that she
224 didn’t know what was wrong with her, but that she “must have been possessed.” Thus, Tenderfoot’s emotional and bodily response feels so out of control that she no longer seems to be inhabiting or in full possession of her body. In Rattler’s interaction with two snakes, she uses spatial, gestural, and visual literacies. She uses visual literacy in that she first notices that her dog is sniffing under a big rock and then sees the dog run away. Although she didn’t see the first snake, she did see the second snake hit her gaiter, which precipitated an emotional and physical response: a scream. Thus, a gestural experience is involved. Spatial literacy comes into play here as well. Rattler expected the second snake to be to the right of the trail, and instead it was under a rock in the middle of the trail. Rattler also describes some elements of gestural literacy. She says that she had not yet developed “trail legs,” that she was carrying a 50-pound pack, that she was hiking a “horrendous pace” and “could only lift my feet up a little bit at a time.” All of these bits of information lead to the most important gestural literacy in both snake encounters – Rattler was unable to control where she stepped, and so she came into contact with snakes. This combination of visual, spatial, and gestural design also plays an important role in the data on map-reading, in which thru-hikers describe visualizing the terrain as it is illustrated on the map and then walking through that terrain. The same combination comes to the fore in Jumper’s description of her interpretation of a man in a shelter as an “odd guy.” Spatial design comes into play in this interpretation when Jumper recognizes that the individual is lying the “wrong” way in the shelter, and visual design when she sees that he has toothpaste all over his face “like a rabid dog,” atypical gear, and his gear spread out all over the shelter. Gestural design is also important in Jumper’s
225 interpretation, as she has already hiked 20 miles over tough terrain and is apparently loathe to move too far away from the shelter; at the same time, she waits to unpack her belongings until she is sure that she will be safe at the shelter. She uses her hands to “sign” to Ghost that he should watch her belongings while she looks for a campsite, another sign of her distrust of the individual in the campsite. Eventually, Jumper moves her things to a nearby campsite and sets up camp there. Although Buffalo primarily uses linguistic literacy to represent his experiences and thoughts, he describes those experiences and thoughts in largely visual and gestural forms. The visual plays an important role, as he says “it’s really more of a visual thing with the terrain.” Here, he’s referring to changes in terrain as hikers move from the midAtlantic states (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York) into the New England states (Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire). He traces the beginning of his awareness of these changes to Mt. Greylock in Massachusetts, when he says he could see far, could get a good view as a reward for climbing a mountain, thus bring gestural literacy into his explanation. These terrain changes remind him of the beginning (in Georgia and North Carolina) when climbing a mountain was also rewarded by a good view. In Shrinking Violet’s register entry, spatial design is also significant: she signifies a border in her trail experience, by noting that she is traveling “into” the Shenandoahs. She also notes that she is traveling “north.” In addition, there is a strong gestural design in her entry. She describes how it “feels good” to be continuing north and to fall back into the rhythm of her environment and her body. That she mentions being attuned to her own rhythm and cycles and those of her environment and that she feels “out of balance” in
226 town speaks to both gestural and ecological literacy. Attuned to natural rhythms, she says, when she is in town, her “mind, body, and spirit cry wild.” Visual design is also strongly represented in Shrinking Violet’s entry. She draws a frame, which accentuates her words, translating them into art. Her signature, drawn rather than written, also elaborates on the artistic nature of her message. She uses an arrow and word art to draw attention to a personal message for Jenny and Fisherman. In Cerveza’s drawing of a cannibalistic thru-hiker, the strongest element is the visual mode of literacy. Much of the drawing centers around the depiction of a stereotypical thru-hiker, which is perhaps meant to be a self-representation of sorts. The wild and overgrown hair and beard, the insects buzzing around the head, and the spiral emerging from the head are all meant to depict the thru-hiker “look” and the thru-hiker smell. The simplicity of the clothing, with no shirt and a simple pair of hiking shorts, is also typical of many male thru-hikers. Similarly, the backpack depicted is small with something, perhaps a sleeping mat, rolled up and attached to the top of the pack. The expression on the thru-hiker’s face, the slavering, dazed look of a starving animal is perhaps ironic in the sense that this thru-hiker has already consumed much of the dayhiker, leaving only a bit of his leg and his shoe, and yet the thru-hiker’s hunger seems unappeased. This, too, signifies another widely accepted aspect of thru-hiker culture: As Jumper and Sassafras both mentioned in interviews, if a thru-hiker is not hiking, he’s eating. It is perhaps the thru-hiker body’s hunger that is most strongly represented in this visual, a neat concentration of gestural and visual literacy.
227 Interconnections Among Modes of Design When I looked back at the multimodal connection maps I had created for the data selections, I examined carefully particular points where thru-hikers seemed to make connections between two or more modes of design. I put aside for the moment inherent connections between linguistic design and the other forms that were evidently the result of the use of the linguistic mode to describe or tell a story, as these were evident throughout the data selections. Instead, I focused on connections I made among gestural, visual, spatial, and audio design in my creation of the multimodal connection maps. I found data that illustrated gestural/visual connections, gestural/spatial connections, gestural/audio connections, and visual/spatial connections. The most frequent connections were gestural/visual, which I found in the data selections from Buffalo, Cerveza, map-reading, and Rattler. Buffalo, for example, describes a big view as a reward for working hard, and compares northbound and southbound experiences both in terms of visual rewards and weather conditions. I found one gestural/spatial connection, in Shrinking Violet’s shelter register entry, in which she describes her positive emotions about continuing north and falling back into her rhythm. Visual/spatial connections were evident in Binx’s sunset description, as he describes the light and colors of the sunset in their arrangement in a spatial pattern, as the sun lit up the valleys individually coming toward him. Finally, I found a gestural/audio connection, also in Binx’s description, as he emphasized the strength and the sound of the wind. I found that these moments of connection among modes of design centered on thru-hikers’ interpretations of their environment, what I have called ecological literacy. Thus, except for connections among linguistic literacy and other forms, when thru-hikers
228 utilized more than one mode of design in these data, it was most commonly an interpretation of their natural surround. Binx’s sunset, Buffalo’s sense of the changing nature of the hike, and Rattler’s “blessing” by two rattlesnakes are perhaps such complex forms of interpretation that the intertwining of more than one mode of design is required. We cannot discount the interplay of multimodalities within the interpretive process. The involvement of bodies, vision, space, and intellect combine to create unique interpretations and meaning for the thru-hikers involved in them. I found, thus, that multimodality was an important part of the reconceptualization that takes place in Designing. Thru-hikers used linguistic, gestural, spatial, visual, and audio design in their interpretations. In particular, they employed an intense multimodality when reconceptualizing aspects of their natural setting. The end product of this reconceptualization is the Redesigned. The Redesigned The outcome of the process of Design is a new meaning, called the Redesigned. The Redesigned is never solely an imitation: As the play of cultural resources and uniquely positioned subjectivity, the Redesigned is founded on historically and culturally received patterns of meaning. At the same time it is the unique product of human agency: a transformed meaning. And, in its turn, the Redesigned becomes a new Available Design, a new meaning-making resource. (New London Group, 2000, p. 23) Thus, the Redesigned is culturally and individually significant, shaped as it is by both the individual’s cultural and historical ways of being as well as the individual’s own unique
229 patterns and history of interpretation. Plus, the Redesigned is dynamic, becoming an Available Design, used in turn for creative meaning-making. The Redesigned in map-reading, a new meaning made from Designing of Available Designs, may be, as a result of visualization, a visual image of the terrain and the thru-hiker in it. It may also be a visual of the map and the individual on it, as when using cross-referencing to locate where the hiker is on the map. These seem to be two sides of the same coin – visualizing involves placing body and map in the terrain; crossreferencing seems to involve placing the terrain and body on the map. Other ways in which the meaning may become the Redesigned is through comments about maps and the terrain in shelter registers or through reports to other hikers about the terrain and the map. Analysis of the data shows that several different types of products were created, and that those products became, further, Available Designs for future moments of interpretation. Types of Products The Redesigned produced by these thru-hikers can be seen in several different ways. For some of the thru-hikers, the interview setting and my questions prompted them to produce an answer to my questions. Those falling into this category include Buffalo, Tenderfoot and Sure Pace, Critter, Jumper, Rattler, Binx, and Mole. Within these interview answers, however, are other products, products that relate more clearly to the meaning making process for the designers. In his interview answer, for example, Critter provided an explanation of his journaling system. Buffalo produced a future plan, in which he stated his intent to take short breaks from the “real world” through trips such as his thru-hike. Binx and Tenderfoot and Sure Pace described moments they would never
230 forget. Rattler told a “trail name” story; Jumper outlined the process through which she decided not to sleep in the shelter. In these examples of the Redesigned, the creators were making meaning for both themselves and for me. Other examples of the Redesigned in these data are more tangible. Cerveza created a drawing with a caption in a shelter register; Shrinking Violet’s words and art are also captured in a shelter register. My journal entry, though written in a more private form, also endures, in its written form. In addition, these examples of the Redesigned are found in sites that are communally honored: shelter registers and a personal journal. The Cyclical Nature of Design Another aspect of Design that is evident in these data is its cyclical nature. This is the notion that the Redesigned becomes an Available Design for use by others and by the creator of it. Although this cycle is evident in all of the data selections, I will use three examples to make this point: Jumper, Rattler, and Cerveza. For Jumper, the Redesigned was her decision not to stay in the shelter. This decision was the product of her interpretation or Designing of the Available Designs. She decided that an individual who was not a thru-hiker, who was possibly abusing drugs and on the run from the law was not someone that she felt safe spending the night with. Thus, she made the decision of going to find another campsite, motioning to Ghost to watch her pack as she did so. But the process of Design was not stopped there. She went to another campsite and reinterpreted her Design to the four men she met there, creating an Available Design for their consumption. The cyclical nature of the Design process can readily be seen in this example. Jumper’s Design happened at some time in the past, without her having written it down. She Designs it again, in producing a story to tell the
231 four young men, Designs it yet again in producing a story to tell me, and then I Design it yet again in my reading of her story and writing of it in this work. The reader, upon reading the story, creates yet another Redesign of Jumper’s story, one that is influenced not only by the material I have added to it, but by their own historical, cultural, and individual experiences and ways of being. The cyclical nature of Design can also be seen in Rattler’s trail name story. By telling her story to a man on the trail, Rattler creates a Redesigned, which he interprets, adding the cultural element of trail names to her story and giving her the name Rattler. Like Jumper’s experience, Rattler’s is cyclical; she interprets her experience, it is redesigned to tell another individual, redesigned again when he gives her a trail name, redesigned again to answer the question in our interview, and I have redesigned it yet again for this dissertation. In Cerveza’s case, the Redesigned is the drawing, which then goes on to become Available Designs for others who read the shelter register. In producing his drawing, Cerveza draws on his interpretation of day hikers and thru-hikers; in another cycle of the process of Design, others interpret his drawing and create their own interpretation of it; I have taken Cerveza’s drawing and created yet another cycle of Design in my writing about it. In the Redesigned, then, the dynamic nature of the Design process comes to the forefront. Thru-hikers created differing and multiple products based on their own intents and on the context in which the interpretation took place. Whether captured in written form or as part of a conversation, the Redesigned in these data demonstrate that interpretation is a cyclical, continual process, a process in which this dissertation and the
232 representation of thru-hikers and their worlds and words is yet another cycle of meaning making. Conclusion This analysis shows that that within varying forms of interpretation, whether a story told, a journal entry written, or a drawing made, multimodal literacies are at work. Linguistic, visual, gestural, spatial, and audio forms of design seem to operate together in interpretation, forming a complex web of interactions that involve not solely the mind or the body, but an interweaving of mind and body that allows for no separation of the two. Placing these multimodal literacies within the framework of Design, as part of the Designing process, shows the importance of multimodality and also its dependence on the context and the culture in interpretation. The process of Design also highlights the cultural work going on in a literacy event so that inferences about the relationship between literacy and culture can be drawn. Culture plays an important role in not only the type of literacy chosen for production, but also choices made in the resources used, the ways that Design takes place, and the end products of any form of interpretation. Along with culture, individual agentive design plays a part, so that no two interpretations are ever alike. The process of Design, when used to describe interpretation and meaning-making in any context, is one of creativity, dynamism, and continual tension. By creativity, I mean that individuals take a wide variety of resources and from these create a new meaning. These resources may be people, environments, language, visuals, sounds, temperature, touch, or anything that the designer uses to build an interpretation. Because so many and varied resources are available to be interpreted, there is no one correct way
233 of interpretation, no one correct answer to get as a final interpretation. Added to this sense of individual creativity is the cultural, or often multi-cultural impact on means of interpretation and what is available to be interpreted. Thus, new interpretations are always being made, because of both individual choice and cultural predilection. The process of Design is also dynamic, ever-changing. Because it is such a cyclical activity, with the Redesigned always available to be Available Designs and Designed all over again, no interpretation remains solid and stable. Tension comes to play, too, in the cyclical nature of Design, so that there is no clear-cut interpretation that we can point to to say “That is an Available Design and will always be an Available Design.” Instead, Available Designs are Designed and become the Redesigned, at which point they are Available again for Designing. Kress (2000) expresses it well: “An adequate theory of semiosis will be founded on a recognition of the ‘interested action’ of socially located, culturally and historically formed individuals, as the remakers, the transformers, and the re-shapers of the representational resources available to them.” (p. 155). In the final chapter of this dissertation, I will re-address the two research questions of this dissertation, discuss the ways in which this study answers these questions, and discuss the implications that this study bears for future research.
234
CHAPTER 7 DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS The purpose for this dissertation study was to use an ethnographic approach to investigate the multiliteracies of the Appalachian Trail thru-hiking community and to understand how those multiliteracies and the culture of the community interacted. The study was guided by the following questions: •
What are the multiliteracies of the Appalachian Trail thru-hiking community?
•
How do these literacy practices help to constitute the social processes and structures of the community, and in turn, how do these social processes and structures help to form the literacy practices of the community?
Data collection occurred during my six and a half months of participation and observation in the community of Appalachian Trail thru-hikers, during which time I was also attempting to complete a thru-hike of the AT. Data sources for the study include my field notes and journals, as well as transcripts from 17 interviews conducted with thruhikers and hostel workers. In addition, I collected shelter register entries, flyers, thruhikers’ journals, maps, books, planning materials and other archival documents. I began to analyze data as it was collected, through fieldnote-based descriptive and analytical writing, and this analysis helped me to focus later data collection on the multiliteracies and cultural practices of thru-hikers. Analysis continued after data collection, initially
235 through categorizing and describing data related to multiliteracies and the culture of the thru-hiking community. In addition, I created unique tools for analysis – Multimodal Connection Maps and Design charts – to assist me in close analysis of data selections. The purpose of this chapter is to present the findings of this dissertation study and to discuss the implications of these findings for theory, research, and practice. The first section describes findings for the use of multiliteracies in the AT thru-hiking community as well as ways in which the culture of the community and multimodality interacted. In the second section, I offer implications for these findings, particularly in the areas of defining literacy through the notion of multiliteracies, involving the body in our understanding of literacy, reconceptualizing multiliteracies, and the Design process. Discussion of Findings In the following sections, I summarize and discuss my findings in light of relevant research. The first section concerns the multiliteracies and ecological literacy of the thruhiking community. In the second section, I re-articulate the process of Design, through which the community’s values and norms were incorporated into multimodal forms of literacy. Multiliteracies of the AT Thru-hiking Community Thru-hikers enacted multiliteracies in ways that were unique to the thru-hiking community. Using the multiliteracies framework set out by the New London Group (1996, 2000), I categorized literacy practices from my data as linguistic, gestural, spatial, visual, or audio. In addition, I created a new category based on my data that I called “ecological literacy” based on my understanding of work in ecology (Orr, 1988) and in literacy (Barton, 1994). Linguistic literacies, those that utilize language, whether written
236 or spoken, are the most numerous in my data on AT thru-hikers. For thru-hikers, these included linguistic forms of design that served largely individual purposes, such as reading and writing letters and postcards, reading novels, handbooks, and informational books about the trail, reading and writing poetry, reading and writing signs and notes, and journaling. Other forms of linguistic design had more obvious communal connections, such as storytelling and reading and writing in shelter registers, both of which worked to provide a space for the maintenance of community values and for the working out of issues important to the community. It is in the area of these language-based, or linguistic literacies, that this study continues the tradition established by other researchers who have investigated and documented multiple forms of literacies within a community setting (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Taylor & Dorsey-Gaines, 1988). Like the work of Barton and Hamilton (1998), which illustrates how literacy practices served as communal resources, this study shows thru-hikers using linguistic literacies in ways that provided for communication among group members, thus strengthening community ties. In addition, individual members of the community used linguistic literacies to gain information and for their own pleasure, echoing the findings of Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines (1988) in their study of African American families in an inner-city community. Although there are some obvious differences between the literacies of thru-hikers and of the families Taylor and DorseyGaines studied, that there are similarities is especially interesting, given the dramatic differences in the makeup of the two communities in terms of both the categories of race and class.
237 In addition to documenting these more traditionally accepted language-based or linguistic literacies, I also presented data on gestural, spatial, and visual literacies. Gestural literacies, which have to do with bodies, how they are interpreted and how they are used, were also prevalent in the data. I presented data on thru-hikers reading their bodies in terms of calorie intake versus physical exertion, dehydration, and pain and injury. I also presented data on reading others, including stories about women interpreting men and thru-hikers reading the bodies, clothing, and gear of other individuals to place them into categories. Spatial literacies were represented in my data in the form of mapreading, as thru-hikers used visualization to orient themselves to the landscape around them through the map’s representation of that terrain. Visual literacies for thru-hikers came in the form of reading blaze systems, and auditory literacies in the form of interpretation of distance to a town based on the types of sounds heard. Although much theoretical discussion of these forms of literacies exist (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000a; New London Group, 1996, 2000), little research has been enacted, particularly in education, that emphasizes non-language based literacies. Previously, research in multiliteracies has been enacted in the humanities (Cummins & Rappaport, 1998; Holmes, 1999; Kuppers, 2000; Marvin, 1994; Muller, 1997) and in education (Kist, 2002; Labbo, 1996; O’Brien, 1998; Smith, 2001; Stevens, 2001). Studies in the humanities have tended towards investigations into literary, archival, or historical fields, such as Cummins’ and Rappaports’s (1998) examination of literacy, art, and architecture as controlling agents in the Spanish colonization of the northern Andes. Research in education has typically examined multiliteracies through pop culture and/or technology, as can be seen in Smith’s (2001) analysis of multiple
238 forms of storybook reading and classroom based work with media and art (Stevens, 2001; Kist, 2002). Because this dissertation study is based on the ethnographic work of participantobservation, interviewing, and artifact collection, it documents multiliteracies in practice in the day-to-day life of the thru-hiking community, a community deeply embedded in a natural setting. Instead of working only with artifacts, as researchers from the humanities have done, I was able to combine artifactual study with observation of day-to-day practices, and with the ruminations of thru-hikers about these practices taken from interview transcripts. Through this combination of observation, narrative, and artifact, I believe a fuller description of literacies has emerged than in other studies of multiliteracies, as described above. In addition, the natural setting of the research allowed me to push beyond the work of previous research that has limited multiliteracies to pop culture or multimedia texts (Labbo, 1996; Smith, 2001; Stevens, 2001). This is evident in the category of multiliteracies that I have called ecological literacy. Ecological literacies, an addition to the multiliteracies framework based on data from this study, were seen as thru-hikers interacted with and interpreted their natural surroundings. Thru-hikers interpreted types of forests, plants, animals, birds, insects, trail conditions, and weather. Another aspect of multiliteracies in the thru-hiking community is multimodality, through which linguistic, visual, gestural, spatial, audio, and ecological literacies operate together in interpretation. I examined multimodal literacies by analyzing data selections consisting of stories, explanations, descriptions, and drawings, to illustrate the presence of and intersections among linguistic, gestural, visual, auditory, and spatial literacies in these data. Other researchers have analyzed literacy artifacts including photographs
239 (Hamilton, 2000), children’s project work (Ormerod & Ivanic, 2000), and church parish newsletters (Tusting, 2000). In spite of the similarity in method – analyzing literacy practices through examination of literacy artifacts – differences exist. All of these researchers limited their studies to artifacts involving written texts, whereas the texts I analyzed were spoken, written, and drawn. Their research projects pushed the bounds of literacies by acknowledging the importance of time (Tusting, 2000), unseen and unheard participants (Hamilton, 2000), and materials (Ormerod & Ivanic, 2000); I push the bounds of literacies by acknowledging the role of multimodality in the production of literacy artifacts. Through this analysis, I showed that although linguistic literacy was the primary mode used in these interpretations, multimodality was operative in them. I found, for example, linguistic, visual, and spatial literacies in Binx’s description of sunset at McAfee Knob. Gestural and linguistic literacies were present in my journal entry and in Tenderfoot and Slow Pace’s description of a memorable day. Visual and gestural literacies were portrayed in Cerveza’s drawing of a cannibalistic thru-hiker. Linguistic, visual, and gestural literacies were shown in Buffalo’s description of the growing intensity of his experience. Visual, spatial, gestural, and linguistic literacies were present in Rattler’s trail name story, the quotes on map-reading, in Shrinking Violet’s shelter entry and in Jumper’s story about an odd guy in a shelter. In addition to noting the multimodality of interpretation in these data selections, I found that certain literacies were used together, in ways that assisted thru-hikers in ecological literacy, or interpretation of their natural surround. For example, thru-hikers used gestural and visual design, gestural and spatial design, and gestural and audio design as they watched a
240 sunset, interpreted how their thru-hike was changing, and interacted with animal life on the trail. Although multimodality is described by the New London Group as the most important of the six modes of meaning in their multiliteracies framework, little evidence is available through previous research that examines how multimodality operates. Because I conceptualize multiliteracies, and multimodality in particular as an integral part of the Design process, I placed this multimodal aspect as part of the second phase of Design – Designing. Actively incorporating linguistic, gestural, spatial, visual, audio, and ecological modes of literacy within their work of interpreting the world around them, thru-hikers were involved in Designing. In the next section of this chapter, I discuss my findings in terms of the Design process, where multiliteracies and the culture of the trail are combined. Design and the Culture of the Trail The second of my two research questions concerns ways in which literacy practices structure the community, and in which the community, in turn, structures its literacy practices. I examined data on multiliteracies for connections among the literacies and culture of the AT thru-hiking community. To examine these connections, I first looked within the data collected on each of the modes of multiliteracies (Chapter 5) for ways in which culture and literacy could be said to influence each other. This analysis shows that literacy and culture work together to provide a place and a process through which the work of the community gets done. What I mean by “work” here involves several functions. First, the AT thru-hiking community is not a very cohesive community geographically. Spread out over thousands of miles of trail, moving slowly north, thru-hikers experience face-to-face contact with a
241 relatively small proportion of other members of the community on a regular basis. Literacies provide one means – though not the only one – of maintaining the cohesiveness of a community that is geographically distant. Shelter registers, for instance, are means of communication, though certainly limited, that help thru-hikers meet and stay in contact with other members of the community. Thru-hikers also maintain the cohesiveness of the community by writing notes to each other and leaving them on the trail and by telling stories. Like the communal sermons described by Moss (1994), the shelter registers, notes, and other forms of literacy in which many thru-hikers participate create communal texts that help to maintain a cohesive community. At the same time that literacies are providing a sense of cohesiveness through increased communication, they provide a means through which group members can identify those who are not members of the group. This can be seen in the data on reading others, in which thru-hikers discuss how they categorize hikers into groups: thru-hikers, day hikers, weekenders, and section hikers. This function can be seen as also providing a sense of cohesiveness in group membership by providing knowledge of which group an individual belongs to and who else belongs to that group. This process is perhaps the other side of the coin to that process of identification through literacy described by Moje (2000) in her study of the unsanctioned literacy practices of gangsta youth in Salt Lake City. In that study, Moje found that the group members used body language and gestures, style of dress and makeup, and graffiti writing, as well as other practices to make clear their identification with a group. Within the affinity group (Gee, 2001) of thru-hikers, I found that thru-hikers read the body language, dress, writing, and general appearance of others to interpret their group membership.
242 Literacies also provided sites in which communally “hot” issues could be debated. Register battles over the true definition of thru-hiking, the maintenance of community norms, and other issues, are ways in which the work of the community – in this instance, debating important issues – gets done. Some of these same issues can be seen in comments in handbooks and notes on the trail. Dissonance within the thru-hiking community over issues of purity and status – dissonance exemplified in the example of shelter register battles – makes clear that the thru-hiking community’s values and norms were not one-size-fits-all. Most of the research that connects a social group’s values and norms with its literacy practices portrays social groups as entities free of power struggles and the types of dissonance I have been discussing, except in relation to outside forces. For example, Heath (1983) compares all three of the communities she studied, but she does not work within the individual communities to examine the power struggles inside the community. Similarly, Taylor and Dorsey-Gaines (1988), Fishman (1988), Kulick and Stroud (1993) and Bloch (1993) present their communities as relatively free of internal struggles. In addition to providing places for discussion of issues, literacies provided a means to accomplish the work of thru-hiking: hiking itself. Reading maps, reading the trail, reading nature, and reading bodies allowed thru-hikers to accomplish their goals: hiking as far as they could toward Katahdin. Although literacies were not the only requirement for meeting this goal, lacking the abilities to read in these ways would surely have hindered thru-hikers in their work. Similar to the families in Taylor and DorseyGaines’ study (1988), thru-hikers used literacies for a variety of purposes, many of them pragmatic in nature. At the same time, many thru-hikers were involved in literacy
243 practices for personal fulfillment, such as journal writing, that they believed would help them remember their experiences. The second step in analyzing the relations between culture and literacy in the context of the AT thru-hiking community was to examine the role of culture in the Design process (Chapter 6). Here, I used the notion of Design, with its inherent emphasis on the impact of culture on literacy, to get at how being part of the thru-hiking community affected thru-hikers’ literacy practices and vice-versa. I found that the Design process was a useful tool to examine the relationship between literacy and culture. In addition, I believe that the Design process provides a model that represents the work of the individual and culture, as well as the work of multimodality in the process of interpretation. Available Designs that thru-hikers used had formal structures related to the thru-hiker context and to broader societal contexts of storytelling and question/answer. Examining the orders of discourse that thru-hikers used showed that they were part of a bounded community in a natural setting, with values, goals, and traditions unique to that community. The multimodality of Designing, especially in its use in interpretation of a natural setting, shows the influence of that natural setting on thru-hikers. In the Redesigned, as well, the cultural ways of being a thru-hiker are displayed, as thru-hikers chose products that met both their individual needs and culturally approved practices, such as journals and shelter registers. Implications In this section, I will address some of the implications of this study for theory, research, and practice. I structure my discussion of these implications into four sections: taking a broader view of literacy, including the body in our understanding of literacy,
244 reconceptualizing the multiliteracies framework, and the Design process as both an analytical tool and a model for understanding interpretation. Taking a Broader View of Literacy This study helps to strengthen work toward broadening the definition of literacy, work that has already been in progress by many who do research in the areas of multiliteracies (e.g., Cope & Kalantzis, 2000a) and the New Literacies (Gee, 1990; Hagood, 1999; Street, 1984). Within the field of reading education, “reading” has been extended from a matter of reading the printed page to include reading diagrams and using computers. The editors of the third volume of the Handbook of Reading Research (Kamil, Mosenthal, Pearson, & Barr, 2000) describe the movement of the definition of reading in the past decade as moving from “reading a single instance of print to reading as the exploration of all forms of representation in multi-media and hypermedia formats” (p. xii). Certainly, the idea of multiple forms of literacy has been the subject of criticism, with some arguing that pluralization of literacies may reify each form of literacy into a fixed and essential thing (Moje, 2001; Wagner, as cited in Street, 1999). While remaining inclusive of print and oral text, this study on the literacies of the thru-hiking community demonstrates that literacies are present in many areas that have not traditionally been considered “reading.” The thru-hikers described here interpreted their surroundings and experiences through linguistic, spatial, gestural, visual, audio, and ecological means. In accord with Kress (2000), I see these thru-hikers practicing “synaesthesia, the transduction of meaning from one semiotic mode to another semiotic mode” (p. 159). I see Kress’s notion of synaesthesia as comparable to multimodality. The notion of synaesthesia or multimodality, with its accompanying emphasis on multiple
245 forms of literacy, negates the critique that literacy could ever be a static, concrete entity, as it emphasizes the fluid nature of literacies. Combining these notions of multiliteracies and multimodality (New London Group, 1996, 2000), synaesthesia (Kress, 2000) and the multiple literacies of pop culture and technology (Labbo, 1996; Smith, 2001; Stevens, 2001) raises questions for future research projects. What multimodal and synaesthetic processes are involved, for example, when interpreting popular culture and multimedia texts? One area of concern for me in considering this broadening of the definition of literacy is in the context of classroom practice. As a former teacher, and as a future teacher educator, educational practice is a natural concern. If literacy is inclusive of not only print and oral text, but also of images, landscapes, bodies, and sounds, how can teachers help students to interpret these types of texts? If literacy is broadly defined, what changes could ensue in educational practice? The following paragraphs will provide some answers that I propose to these questions. O’Brien (1998) described students who were not successful when working with print text, but were more capable of reading, interpreting, and creating multimodal forms of texts, such as the multimedia texts of web pages. One way to put into practice the findings from my research on the multiliteracies of thru-hikers and the theoretical knowledge garnered from it would be to encourage students to read texts such as multimedia or pop culture texts, in addition to the print texts required by curricula. Students who struggle with reading print text but who have greater skills in reading visuals or audio texts may thus be assured that academic pursuits are not impossible for them. In this way, these students may gain a sense of control and authority over their
246 school environment. This sense of empowerment may improve their motivation to learn and their attitude toward learning, important aspects of success in a school setting. As teachers bring multimedia and visual texts into the classroom, they should help students make concrete the processes they are using to interpret these texts. This can be accomplished by working with students to generate the formal structures inherent in particular types of texts. For example, in a high school classroom studied by Kist (2002), teachers helped their students to interpret abstract art by encouraging them to generalize information about the “rules” that artists were either following or breaking in their art. As these teachers recognized, it is important for teachers to not only use texts that are multimodal in nature, but also to make the “grammars” of these multiple forms of meaning accessible to students. In addition, teachers may choose to ask their students to read their environments in a variety of ways that will emphasize this broader notion of literacy. For example, students may be asked to view their neighborhoods as texts and to write, speak, and create visual representations of the process through which they interpret the people, buildings, landscapes, and natural aspects of their own living areas. The same process could be applied to a classroom setting, so that students examine for themselves and their peers what is required to function successfully in a particular school, classroom, or hallway. Once students develop an understanding that they are interpreting the world around them as they live in it, teachers and students can work together to structure these once abstract processes by noting the formal structures that they use in their interpretation. For example, teachers and students could explore interpretations of people based on the exteriors of their homes, as learners make judgments about the home’s appearance,
247 location, and surroundings. As students learn about their own interpretive processes, they learn not only to read, write, and speak well about academic content, but also to interpret the world around them in a way that will be beneficial to them in out-of-school settings as well. In the future, as a teacher educator of preservice high school English teachers, I plan to incorporate the findings from this study in a variety of ways. First, I plan to teach these future teachers that literacy, in both in-school and out-of-school settings, can consist of more than merely language-based texts. Although I see this as a difficult understanding to develop, I believe that it is an important one for teachers in a world that requires increasing abilities to interpret multimodal forms of texts. In order to work toward a broader understanding of literacy, I plan to incorporate readings on multiliteracies and social aspects of literacies into my course syllabus and to rethink my own teaching practice to include multiple forms of literacies as possibilities for assessment of preservice teacher learning. It is my hope that these efforts will instill in teachers who come through my English education courses the will, knowledge, and interest in creating classroom environments that prize a variety of forms of literacy and acknowledge students’ strengths in both linguistic and non-linguistic forms of interpretation. Involving the Body in our Understanding of Literacy A second aspect of a broader definition of literacy is inclusion of the body in our understanding of literacy. Although the linguistic mode of literacy plays a primarily role in the majority of these data, it is evident that the thru-hikers involved were utilizing a complex web of multimodalities beyond the linguistic mode. The body’s role in the meaning-making occurring for all of these thru-hikers can perhaps be seen as what Lewis
248 (2000) call kinaesthesis. As Lewis defines it, kinaesthesis is “the sense that informs you of what your body is doing in space through the perception or sensation of movement in the joints, tendons, and muscles” (p. 69). He enlarges the notion of kinaesthesis, to include an embodied state of awareness, an awareness of the orientation of the body as it moves through a landscape, and the state of being in touch with our surroundings, illustrating this knowing by describing rock climbers in Britain as possessors of corporeal knowledge: “an embodied knowledge of the climb through which the climber reorientates herself with the world. This re-orientation is via embodied experience, a corporeal knowing rather than a cognitive knowing” (p. 71). It is in this combination of corporeal knowing, kinaesthesis, with language, visual, auditory, spatial and other modes of knowing, synaesthesis, that the potential of the multiliteracies framework comes to fruition in describing how thru-hikers interpret themselves and their surroundings. The notion of multiliteracies also continues to work against the notion of the split between mind and body, a split that has been long denied but it still a powerful influence on our perceptions of literacy and of teaching and learning. We can no longer envision reading as a solely cognitive activity. In order to more fully utilize this new awareness of the body in literacy, more research is necessary. Researchers could examine in detail the interaction among modes of design in specific types of literacy events and ways in which our interpretation of our own and others’ bodies, the pain we experience, and the emotions we have, influence other forms of literacy. In both classroom and nonclassroom settings, how are our emotions involved as we read print text, visual texts, and interpret other aspects of the world around us?
249 Teachers who acknowledge the importance of the body in literacy may also choose to add this understanding to a reader-response framework in literature-based teaching in their classrooms. Encouraging students to make connections with literature, in reading and writing poetry, in learning to interpret and appreciate film and multimedia, can incorporate not only the affect but also students’ awareness of their own bodies as they read and interpret a variety of texts. Reconceptualizing Multiliteracies The New London Group’s (1996, 2000) framework of multiliteracies provided a theoretical grounding for this study. Their framework consists of six elements of multiliteracies: linguistic, gestural, spatial, visual, audio, and multimodal. Concerned with sweeping changes in our society, the New London Group’s multiliteracies framework is a response to researchers and theorists who have argued that students must be prepared to handle the increasing pressure of interpreting multimedia texts that incorporate print, visual, and verbal modes (Bean, Bean, & Bean, 1999; Elkins & Luke, 1999; Hagood, 2000). The multiliteracies framework does provide a basis for incorporating many different forms of texts into our understanding of literacy. However, the understanding of texts in the multiliteracies framework – perhaps due to the social and political impetus for its creation – includes only those created by humans or the human body itself. In my analysis of the literacies of the thru-hiking community, I found that much interpretation of the natural world took place; this form of text is not part of the multiliteracies framework as it currently exists. A reconceptualization of the multiliteracies framework would appear somewhat differently, as seen in Figure 12.
250 Figure 12. Reconceptualization of multiliteracies:
In this reconceptualization of multiliteracies, ecological literacy is both one of the elements of multimodal literacy and is a larger context in which design takes place. Thus, two meanings of ecological literacy are retained: first, reading of the natural surround; and second, that interpretation takes place in both a physical and social context. Elements of the existing multiliteracies framework consist of texts that are created by humans, whether these texts are visual, as in art and multimedia texts; spatial, as in the
251 architecture or use of space in buildings and landscaping; linguistic, as in written and spoken texts; or audio, as in sound effects and music. Data from this study illustrate the need for an additional element within the multiliteracies framework, an element that broadens multiliteracies to include texts that are part of the natural world around us. Making these natural elements part of the multiliteracies framework provides a place for reading the world around us in both natural and social ways. Similarly, although the multiliteracies framework comes from the tradition of viewing literacies as part of a social or contextual sphere, the multiliteracies framework itself does not reflect that literacy is always situated in a social context. By including ecological literacy as an additional ring on the outside of the framework, I am merely emphasizing the embeddedness of all forms of literacy in a social setting, a notion affirmed by many researchers in the field of literacy (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Fishman, 1988; Heath, 1983). Following Barton (1994), I have called this aspect of literacy ecological: “An ecological approach aims to understand how literacy is embedded in other human activity, its embeddedness in social life and in thought, and its position in history, language, and learning” (Barton, 1994, p. 32). Thus, by proposing this addition to the multiliteracies framework, I am making more salient what I believe to be an accepted notion: the sense that literacies of all kinds reside in a social, cultural context. My analysis of the multiliteracies of thru-hikers illustrates that it is possible to examine multiple forms of literacy in terms of the texts, processes, and social settings in and through which these literacies take place. Future research in multiliteracies could perhaps bring out further patterns in multimodal use in different cultural settings. For example, in what ways are multiliteracies in school settings different from those of the
252 home or community? What cultural implications of nonlinguistic modes of design can be found in social groups? These areas are unclear and deserve further attention. The Design Process Through my analysis of the literacies of the AT thru-hiking community, I have shown that the framework of literacy as Design is a model in which multimodality, the norms and values of the social group, and the individual are represented in the process of making meaning, of interpretation, of literacy. Multimodality – part of the multiliteracies framework – was shown as part of the process of Designing. The impact of the social group on literacies was seen in both choices of Available Designs and in choices for the Redesigned. The work of the individual was prevalent in these two areas as well, especially in choosing forms of production in the Redesigned. Previous research has used the literacy practices/literacy events model (Hamilton, 2000; Ormerod & Ivanic, 2000; Tusting, 2000) to articulate ways in which social processes operate within print literacy. Literacy events are described as observable actions around print text, and literacy practices – the social or cultural beliefs about literacy that influence how it is carried out – are inferred from literacy events (Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Heath, 1982). I believe that the Design model provides a more complete and flexible way to look at literacies in a social setting than the literacy events/literacy practices model, because it takes into account the roles of both the individual and culture. The Design model is dynamic, presenting interpretation as cyclical, whereas the literacy events/literacy practices model does not represent the possibility of change and flux within the process of interpretation. In addition, the Design model provides for formal
253 structures, orders of discourse, and intertextuality, aspects of interpretation that are left unspecified in the literacy events/literacy practices model. Design as a representation reflects the dynamic nature of culture and the inseparable relationship between individual and culture. Using the Design framework as both a tool for analysis and as a descriptor of the process of interpretation articulates more clearly the processes of literacy and its interaction with the ways of being of a social group. It is my belief, then that future research into Design can use the tools of analysis articulated here to continue looking at ways in which, for example, cultural values and norms of a secondary Discourse and individual norms brought from a primary Discourse interact. As my analysis of the Design process in the AT thru-hiking community is the first to use Design as a tool for analysis, future research can work to improve on Design as both a tool and a representation. Educators who are aware of the Design process with its articulation of literacy as a social practice have a perception of the process of interpretation and production of such forms as literature, writing, web design, art, and dance that can strongly influence the way in which teaching is accomplished. Design is cyclical; importing Design into a classroom setting would mean that instruction would be cyclical as well. This is a common practice in writing through the use of the writing process, but it is not so common in other forms of instruction. As Langer (2001) described in her report of a study of successful high school English programs, the typical teaching sequence makes few connections among lessons, units, and curricula. On the other hand, teachers who use an understanding of literacy as a Design process to plan instruction and assessment would
254 choose not to merely ask students to read a novel and then take a test, or to read and then write an essay. Instead of attempting to assess students’ reading based on their production of knowledge in one final assessment, the Design of the novel by students would involve a process of continual reconceptualization of their interpretation. In addition, assessment would involve many different forms of Designing, including language, visuals, sound, and other forms of representation. Continual and dynamic assessments of this nature would take into consideration both the cyclical nature of Design and the possibility for a variety of forms of reconceptualization occurring throughout the Design process. This final chapter has summarized my findings in light of relevant research and presented implications for theory, research, and practice. What it can never express is the sense of pure joy that I have felt at being part of such a challenging endeavor: attempting to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail and to conduct research in company with, as Jumper called us, “a family of strangers.” This has been an experience I will never forget and the thru-hikers I met are a constant inspiration to me.
255
EPILOGUE Now that I have completed the data collection, analysis, and writing of this dissertation, I look back at it and ponder some of the things that happened in the analysis and writing, some of the spaces, gaps, absences, and smoothnesses that appear in the finished product, and I want to take this opportunity to trouble those a bit. Like a confessional tale (Van Mannen, 1988), this epilogue will explore aspects of my subjectivity. Unlike many confessional tales, however, this one applies to analysis and writing, not data collection, not participant-observation, which I addressed in chapter 3 under the heading Reflexivity in Data Collection and Transformation. As I analyzed data and wrote this dissertation, I strove to maintain my focus on my research questions. As a result, certain issues of status and power were not addressed, although certainly these issues were present in the community. In particular, I believe that thru-hikers receive status in the community based on their ability to hike fast and to complete high mileage days. Having this status does not, however, afford much to thruhikers in the way of material gain, except for perhaps a spot in a shelter as I alluded to in chapter 3. I chose not to directly address these issues of power and status in my dissertation because I felt that they did not directly relate to my research questions. However, in my attempt to focus on the research questions, I may have portrayed the community as artificially seamless, without stress or conflict. In addition, my presentation of the thru-hiking community may also have been affected by my identification as heterosexual. That is, as I collected data, analyzed that data, and wrote my dissertation, my heterosexuality may have prevented me from seeing
255 aspects of the community that a homosexual person might have seen. For example, the data on Jumper’s, Twig’s, Stretchin’s, and my own reading of individual men and our attempt to interpret our safety may have been enlarged to include the experiences of women who felt endangered by other women, or men who felt endangered by other men, if I had seen these experiences as more likely. That I did not see them as likely, and did not pursue them as data, can be attributed to my own heterosexuality and my sense that I, as a woman, was most likely to be in jeopardy from the unwanted sexual advances of men. Similarly, as a former English teacher, and an avid reader and writer, I collected data on multiliteracies that may have been skewed toward the linguistic. It is all too possible that I missed opportunities to collect data on bodily literacies such as gestures, audio literacies such as bird sounds, and other forms of literacies that might have been germane to my study because of my own bias toward words. In these ways, and perhaps in others that I have yet to address or think of, my dissertation is truly my own perception of thru-hikers and their literacies. It is thus limited by my own understanding, by my own lifestyle and choices, and by my reasoning about what is and is not literacy.
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264 New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66, 60-93. New London Group (2000). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures (pp. 9-37). New York: Routledge. O’Brien, D. (1998). Multiple literacies in a high-school program for “at-risk” adolescents. In D. Alvermann, K. Hinchman, D. Moore, S. Phelps, & D. Waff (Eds.), Reconceptualizing the literacies in adolescents’ lives (pp. 27-50). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ogbu, J. (1999). Beyond language: Ebonics, proper English, and identity in a Black -American speech community. American Educational Research Journal, 36, 147-184. Ormerod, F. & Ivanic, R. (2000). Texts in practices: Interpreting the physical characteristics of children’s project work. In D. Barton, M. Hamilton, & R. Ivanic (Eds.). Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context (pp. 91-107). New York: Routledge. Orr, D. (1992). Ecological literacy: Education and the transition to a postmodern world. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Realizing Environmental Literacy through Advanced Technology and Experimentation. (2000). What is environmental literacy? Available: http://lpsl.coe.uga.edu/RELATE/define.html Reissman, K. (1993). Narrative analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
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267 Worthman, C. (2002). “The way I look at the world”: Imaginal interaction and literacy use at Teen Street. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 45, 458-468. Young, J. (1998). Critical literacy: Young adolescent boys talk about masculinities within a homeschooling context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Georgia. Athens.
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APPENDICES
269
APPENDIX A HAND-WRITTEN FIELDNOTES
270 HAND-WRITTEN FIELDNOTES
271
APPENDIX B EXPANDED FIELDNOTES
272 EXPANDED FIELDNOTES June 19, 01 Blackrock Hut to Loft Mountain on the trail just north of blackrock hut, i saw what i immediately knew to be bear scat. how did i know it was bear? it was very black, with tons of berry seeds in it. After a long 13-mle day yesterday, I decided on a shorter mileage day. ended up only doing 7 miles and getting to loft mountain campground at about 1:00. by that time, i was very hot and tired, had a huge blister on the 4th toe of my left foot, and my butt and leg were seriously hurting. I found a campsite and set up my tent. it's a huge campground, designed for car camping. after that, i walked down to the camp store (.3 mile), bought a soda, then walked a mile down to the wayside, where i had a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a coke, then a hot dog and a pretzel. as i was eating, i noticed a guy standing on the road trying to thumb a ride, a thru-hiker. from that distance, he looked like triple slim, same height, same beard. i knew the likelihood of it being him was slim, but i walked out to the road to see. it wasn't triple slim, it was a thru-hiker named spike who had been slackpacking out of waynesboro for the last few days and was trying to get back there. i walked back to the store and took a shower and put in a load of laundry. while i sat and did laundry, i talked to a few people: a woman in her 60s who was staying at the campground in an rv. she said they had sold their home and now live in the rv! a man in his 40s who had come out to backpack with his son, but his son developed back problems, so they were staying at the campground. then some theu-hikers came in and i watched their packs for them while they went to the wayside. then more thru-hikers showed up: phone home, leaf, timberghost, julian, esbit, bam bam. i invited them to join
273 me at my campsite, and they did. most of them gave me $2 to share in the expense. i heard a lot of griping about the cost of the wayside restaurant, the food in the campstore, and the tensites. getting to Loft Mtn--lonely. Trail gives you what you need-- people arriving. In the evening, we were all sitting around the table at the campsite, and Julian made an alcohol stove. He has made over 30 stoves: apparently, whenever he gets the materials, he makes one and either gives it to someone or leavesit in a shelter. note from Triple Slim to Chris on a mile marker. It said CHRIS on the outside in all caps.On the inside, it said "I will be at pinefield shelter. Got on the trail and went north when I should have gone south." Then when I got to Pinefield there was an entry in the register that said "Triple Slim is dead (RIP). Sankofa erewhon nam returns home to bring chaos tothe world." Guessthat means that Triple Slim has gotten off the trail.
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APPENDIX C PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM
275 PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM I invite you to join me in a study that is designed to explore the culture and literacy practices of thru-hikers. You will have the opportunity to tell me about your experiences and literacies as a thru-hiker in an interview that may be tape recorded. The audiotapes and notes from the interview will be destroyed after I have finished using them (no later than the end of May, 2002). You may choose a pseudonym, and no one will be able to connect your real name with either the audiotapes or with any published work that may come from the results of the study. Any information I obtain about you as a participant in this study, including your identity, will be held confidential. All data will be kept in a secured, limited access location. No discomforts, stresses, or risks are foreseen as a result of your involvement in the study. Remember you do not have to be in this study, and you have the right to leave it at any time without giving any reason and without penalty. If you have any questions, please call me at 542-2718 or email me at
[email protected]. If you agree to participate in the study, and understand that the results of the study may be published in a professional journal, please sign both copies of this form. Keep one copy and return the other to me. ____________________________ Participant Date
______________________________ Researcher Date
Research at the University of Georgia that involves human participants is overseen by the Institutional Review Board. Questions or problems regarding your rights as a participant should be addressed to Julia D. Alexander, M.A., Institutional Review Board, Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Georgia, 606A Boyd Graduate Studies Research Center, Athens, GA 30602-7411; telephone (706) 542-6514; email
[email protected]
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APPENDIX D APPALACHIAN TRAIL MAP
277 APPALACHIAN TRAIL MAP
278
APPENDIX E “THE RAINY DAY (AT) POEM”
279 “THE RAINY DAY (AT) POEM”
So when I get home and someone asks me . . . “So what’s the A.T. like? Do you think that I would like it?” (My answer) Well if you like being hungry all the time and you don’t mind being soaked when its raining or being soaked with sweat when its not raining, and you enjoy having crotch rot and jock itch and battered feet black and blue until you walk like you have broken feet and you’re hip with the idea of being completely filthy and you like the smell ofyour own stench and body odor, and you like the smell of other people’s shit and urine. Do you enjoy beating your ankles and knees daily? Are you thrilled by being eaten alive by mosquitoes, black flies, and ticks, or do you find bee stings and rattlesnakes just simply enthralling? Then you might be ready to face the fourteen days of nothing but rain and the shelters with mice that eat the earplugs right out of your ears so you can hear the dumb-ass weekender snore even louder. Do you enjoy carrying a ton of weight on your back until your hips are deformed and raw and your backbone feels like a chainsaw blade burnt into the muscles between your shoulders? Then you might consider the temporary life of nothing but oatmeal and noodles day after day, after day, after day, after day, while being surrounded by eccentric weirdoes who can talk about nothing but miles, miles, miles, miles, miles, miles, miles. Do you enjoy the simplicity of counting each step as it feels like jolt after jolt of electricity into the soles of your feet? And if you really like being looked at like you are some escaped convict, maniac, transient by all the “clean people” then you might not mind wearing clothes that are so filthy and caked with dirt
280 and mud that your socks and shorts can not only stand by themselves but actually move. Do you like to watch the skin of your feet peel off like a daily shedding snake? Are you thrilled by the sight of your own blood and musuc? And do you like to freeze one day then burn up the next or enjoy falling face first into briars? If you don’t like sleep or rest of any kind then you might not mind the seventy percent markup of your twelvethousandth can of tune at some rip-off convenient store that is a six-mile walk down a busy street from the trail. Are you just tickled pink by finding out that you just walked two miles down the wrong trail or in the wrong direction? Would you enjoy climbing up to overlook after overlook to have a wonderful view of nothing but the cloud that you’re standing in? If you are addicted to poison ivy and any other unknown rashes, you might like to enjoy excruciating pain in body parts that you never knew you had. Maybe you like to be lied to by maps and bullshit signs and markers, or enjoy being attacked by “problem” bears, or maybe you like falling on sharp rocks while struggling across loose ankle busters. Would you find that chaffing is a wonderful way of reminding yourself that you still have balls even though they fell like they are only attached by a single string of torn skin, or you find that sucking gnats into your lungs is simply a good “gag” or find that a million spider webs across your face is simply a neat invisible mask to you? If you love and enjoy worrying whether the water you are drinking is going to make you shit goose diarrhea all over yourself or if you really, really, really worship the idea of having time to do nothing but walk over the worst terrain in America then “YES!” I do say that you will really enjoy the Appalachian Trail.
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APPENDIX F “THE MARAUDERS’ MAP: BEING A GUIDE TO STEALTH SITES IN THE TERRITORY OF THE AMC”
282 “THE MARAUDERS’ MAP: BEING A GUIDE TO STEALTH SITES IN THE TERRITORY OF THE AMC”
283
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APPENDIX G INTEGRATIVE MEMOS
285 INTEGRATIVE MEMOS In this section, I will be taking points of contact between particular literacies and putting those together. I.
GESTURAL/VISUAL CONNECTIONS
Gunslinger: felt the cold on top of Greylock – also could see around, see far on top of Greylock. About this, he says, “ever since then it’s kind of been a little bit different” What he could see combined with what he felt (coolness) combined with his knowledge that there were only 3 weeks left in his hike. Gunslinger: big view as a reward for working hard. Gunslinger: compares the northbound and southbound experiences visually (beautiful vs. different) and gesturally – temperatures are cool. Diablo: his visual production of the cannibalistic thru-hiker connects visual and gestural in the sense of intense, visceral hunger as seen through the actions and appearance of a thru-hiker. Map-reading: “trying to take a picture of what’s on the map and imagine yourself walking through that picture. Rocky visualizing the elevation profile as she’s hiking. Snake Charmer: she saw the snake, but because of her 50 pound pack, weak legs, and “horrendous pace” she couldn’t control where she stepped. When the snake popped the back of her gaiter, she screamed. II. GESTURAL/SPATIAL CONNECTIONS Wildrose: says that it feels good to continue north, and that it feels good to fall back into her rhythm. Slow and Steady: Slow’s emotional outbreak (screaming and running after Steady on the trail, described in very gestural terms) related to their misreading of the map and to the continuing bad weather. Turtle: my emotions and bodily feelings related to my map reading – I expected water to be at the campsite, but it was dry. [NOTE: both this and Slow and Steady’s story are so strongly gestural!] III. LINGUISTIC/VISUAL CONNECTIONS Wildrose: her art is designed to frame her words. Zigzagger: sketches plants, birds, butterflies, etc and wants to incorporate drawings or photos in his written journal. He writes in his 3x5 notebook when he sees something that interests him (wildlife related, visual aspects of the trail, reaction to something that occurs on the trail). IV. VISUAL/SPATIAL CONNECTIONS Rocky: she sees the man’s atypical gear how it was spread out, and that the man was sleeping in the shelter the wrong way – this contributes to her interpretation. Phaedrus: he describes the view in a spatial way – clouds had a pattern, the sun lit up the valleys individually coming toward him.
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V. LINGUISTIC/GESTURAL CONNECTIONS Rocky: her conversations with Spooky, with the man in the shelter, and with the 4 guys contributed to her emotions: she “was prepped for it,” thought the guy was “hiding out or on drugs” and after speaking to the 4 guys “that made me feel a lot better.” VI. GESTURAL/AUDIO CONNECTIONS Phaedrus: the wind was howling – the strongest wind up to that point. He compares the wind there to the wind in the Whites. OK – now that I’ve looked at the particular connections, I see that what I wrote about in the analysis section of chapter 6 was actually the presence of different modes of literacy. In several of the pieces, many different modes were present, and I have written about that. However, what I have here shows that connections between modes within these data are not that common – in the sense that several modes work together, or connections among modes can be commonly seen. So I guess that within the Designing section of chapter 6, I can write about multiliteracies in two senses: 1. that multiple modes of literacy are at work in these interpretations and 2. that the particular connections of literacies are strongest in terms of gestural and visual, and all the rest. 3. that the type of data collected influences the role of linguistic mode in that data – for example, in the interview transcripts, all of the participants are using language in an effort to convey the interpretation they made at some earlier point. But now, if I’m going to re-organize chapter 6 by the Design process, I’m going to have to go back to my data and continue to create these charts on the design process on all of the rest of my data. That is worthwhile doing, I think. Though it will take some time!
