Old Mallet

Title: Old mallet

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Sam Lincoln is a 21 year old college student studying mechanical engineering at Arizona State University. He was born in Wisconsin and raised in Arizona. He began overnight backpacking when he was 15 and hiked the Colorado Trail after he graduated from high school in 2016. He enjoys archery and playing video games. Sam is the twin brother of Rachel Lincoln, who collected this item.

Contextual Data:

Mallets are hammers specialized for driving tent pegs into the ground to secure tents against wind. This task is highly important, but mallets are far from the only tool that can accomplish the job. Most hikers use rocks instead of carrying the extra weight.

Item:

After finishing a 2014 hiking summer program in Alaska, Sam took a mallet that no one else claimed home with him. The mallet had been used to drive their tent spikes into the ground, but rocks can easily do that too, so a mallet is an extraneous item that most hikers wouldn’t want to pack (Sam guesses this is why someone abandoned the mallet in Alaska in the first place). This mallet’s association with the Alaska trip gave it sentimental value to Sam and he felt that bringing it would make his Colorado trip just as incredible. He didn’t expect to use it at all, but actually use it during the event that earned him his trail name Goat Slayer. He eventually lost it on the Colorado Trail: one day he took a break and realized it was gone, fallen somewhere along the way.

Informant’s comments:

“It had history to it, good memories. It was super worn out…it would’ve been more practical not to bring it at all because we didn’t even need it.”

Collector’s comments:

We expected that most hikers would have good luck charms or talismans, but very few did. Thru hikers must carry all their belongings so their items were chosen for practicality.

Collector: Rachel Lincoln

Image result for worn out mallet

Tags/Keywords:

Dartmouth Folklore Archive