davidtierney

My father was an avid car camper.  He took me to every uncrowded (aka, unpopular) campground from Los Angeles to Belle Fourche.  My father and I didn't get along, so I hated camping.  I joined the Marine Corps in 1986 and spent five years sleeping outdoors (usually in a moldy, canvas tent with thirty other Marines) or humping the 50 pounds (plus) of pack and gear for fifteen (plus) miles.  Now I hated camping and backpacking.

Time passes, however, and the sins of the father are forgotten by the son.  Nostalgia has made me the bad-ass Marine I want others to think I was (My 4063 MOS might make me bad-ass at ComicCon, but not with other Marines).  Tents are no longer moldy canvas, packs are not named A.L.I.C.E., and now I can bring both people I choose and my favorite booze (Yay, Booze) into the backcountry.  It is a fundamentally different experience (one for which I have become the worst kind of proselytizer -- I have secret dreams of someday leading my son to be the youngest thru-hiker on the PCT). 

I'm fit (I run an 8-minute mile), but not very (can't run more than five at that pace).  I do not enjoy shredding down a steep single-track  -- to be honest, I really don't know what a "single-track" is.  Kayaks and canoes are cool, but expensive.  I am not a mountaineer or a rock climber, nor do I expect to be.  I am certainly not averse to risks, but I don't like inventing them for my bourgeois entertainment...though I will try anything just to say that I had.  Or, if you dare me.

My favorite trips are the ones that, by virtue of some arduous or unpleasant interim, lead to a beautiful spot whose views can only be taken in by those whose whining has not prevented them from enduring a thing or two.  If you have a sense of humor, if your whining has not been so recalcitrant that I have been forced to smear you with the edible contents of your pack and strand you in some mosquito-infested, Grizzly-patrolled stink-swamp wearing nothing but gorse, cholla, and fiberglass skivvies so that you may contemplate actual discomfort, if you can -- in this setting -- appreciate the universality of the basic wants of people from every walk of life and corner of the globe and contemplate our relative insignificance, then I'd probably like to share a dram with you.