The accoutrements for hiking have changed over the years, but remnants of the old ways remain.
The Appalachian Trail shelter in this 1955 photo is strongly suggestive of old ways remaining alive today; the chair and the packs not so much. Kurt Rheinheimer (green hat), here with his late father, also seems to have changed a bit over those years.
Over the last few years of his life, when he visited us for a few weeks at a time, my father would, on Saturday mornings, present a pretty reliable and predictable reaction as The Greatest Day Hiker Of Them All and I prepared to head out for our weekly hike.
He seemed to admire the hiking shoes—sturdy-looking Keen Targhee IIs for both of us. And he didn’t seem too disturbed with the shorts with all those pockets.
But ice? In a big blue bag called an Ice Mule?
And that bladder thing with a hose to your mouth on it?
What are these things and don’t you just have a canteen? was his reaction.
My father began hiking in the 1930s and hiked into the early ‘90s, and he may have had the same canteen the whole time. Military surplus, I guess, as so much hiking gear was back in the day when he began—in the early days of the Appalachian Trail’s existence.
And though Gail and I were not inclined to go retro—back to wool socks, say, and a canteen of summer-warmed water—there was at least a tinge of guilt or maybe nostalgia-for-him as we picked up our multi-pocketed, several-zippered, many-strapped Osprey packs to head out the door.
And I’m not sure he ever knew that those packs were equipped with their own rain covers, deftly hidden at their bottoms by yet another zipper. Certainly he did not know of all the compartments and zippers, the stretch cords and the adjustable straps that these days render a well-adjusted good pack almost part of your body.
The packs of his day were an army-gray canvas material, with a big flap over the top and maybe one or two pockets. One of which held that canteen full of warm water. When it rained, the stuff inside got wet.
The Day Hiker and I do give ourselves credit for keeping at least a few old ways alive. We are out in the woods, after all, carrying our sustenance and the layers—technical versus all cotton back in the day—that we’ll need for the day. And planning, at least on inclement days, to pause for lunch at one of the Appalachian Trail shelters that are pretty much exactly as they were in, say, 1955, when the accompanying photo was taken.
There are lots more old ways to keep alive. We have a few of them in our issue photo essay. And a lot more of those old ways at least alluded to, in our Annual Almanac (currently available only in print or our online digital edition), back to our pages after a hiatus of more than a decade.
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The story above appears in our Jan./Feb. 2019 issue. For more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription.