Title: The Trail Provides
General Information about Item:
- Verbal Lore, proverb
- Language: English
- Country of Origin: United States
- Informant: Scott R. Bohn
- Date Collected: 10-29-17
Informant Data:
- Scott Bohn is a male Dartmouth student in the class of 2018, from Minnetonka, Minnesota. Scott was born in Mexico, but raised in Minnesota. At Dartmouth, he studies Computer Science and History, and plays club hockey. When he is older, his dream is to live in a cabin in the woods in Minnesota, next to a lake, with a dog. In his freshman summer, he participated in trail crew, a group of trail maintenance people based out of a cabin next to the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. As a result, he went on many week-long backpacking trips in the outdoors to help repair trails for the Dartmouth Outing Club.
Contextual Data:
- Cultural Context: On long-distance hiking trails, hikers often spend days without having access to civilization or stores. As a result, when they are in need or want of something, they often need to wait days before they can somehow obtain goods from off-trail. However, trails often have hiker boxes, where people can leave goods for other people, in addition to natural resources to provide for hikers.
- Social Context: This saying would be used in situations where a backpacker has their needs fulfilled by the trail. When a hiker finds something they want or need on the trail, they would use this saying as appreciation for when good things happen on the trail.
Item:
- “The Trail Provides” is a proverb, or saying, used by backpackers to represent the way that the hiking trail often provides for the hikers in odd ways and fulfills their needs and wants. However, it’s not always in the way that they would expect, or necessarily want.
Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):
Relevant portion: [8:20 – 8:50]
Transcript of Associated file:
- “So you know, it’s just this kind of idea that if you’re kind of desperately looking for something or desperately in need of something, somehow, someway, that will come to you in some form. Maybe not in exactly the form that you were thinking, maybe it’s like your feet really hurt and so you want new shoes but instead you find a real nice stick that’s great for leaning on.”
Collector’s Comments:
- This proverb is a great representation of how nature can often provide for hikers in seemingly surprising ways.
Collector’s Name: Kyu Kim
Tags/Keywords: verbal, proverb, trail