Day 5 - Planning hiking trip (imaginary)

Today in the "To the woods" intersession, we started by learning about Cheryl Strayed and how she took a 94 day trip on the Pacific crest trail. We watched some videos about her and why she wanted to start on the trip, and how long it took to prepare. We recorded some of what she packed and watched a video of her reading and how she felt while doing it, and she described what she was going through and how she went through an "Internal transformation." She informed us about some of the things that happened during the trip, including how she started with a 70 lb backpack, which she didn't know was too large. She then reduced it to 50 lb and continued and finished the trip.

For our assignment we had to plan a trip to a trail and plan out all the items we needed, and then wore a bag with the weight of all of our items combined and walked around the school to see a small version of what it would be like to wear that much weight. For me and my partner, we decided to take a through trip of the buckeye trail, which is 1444 miles length. We decided that we would walk 14 miles a day to make the whole trip 103 days. For the items we decided to bring, we brought 20 pounds of dried stake+fish+pork, and 20 pounds of dried fruits+vegetables. We also decided to bring duck tape, water bottles, a tent, a sleeping bag, a Swiss army knife, a first-aid kit, a tooth care kit, a compass, a hand sanitizer, sunscreen, insect repellent, sunscreen, clothes, a solar powered stove, a poncho, and bags to carry everything.

In order to decide what we would bring, we had to go through the thought process of actually walking through the woods and what we would need or what we would want while doing it. For example, we knew it was going to be in the spring so we added insect repellent to prevent mosquito bites, and we added 40 pounds of different dried foods because we knew we wouldn't be able to conserve the food through coolers, so dried food was the way to go, and we brought a solar powered stove and Swiss army knife among other knives and forks for eating. For the other things we brought, it was for safe sleeping and bodily hygiene so we don't smell bad or grow weaker as we hiked, or it was for convenience to make the trip easier.