Tadpole

Title: Tadpole

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Jimmy Coleman, age 20, is a sophomore at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he is studying mathematics and computer science. He was born in Baltimore County and loves the outdoors, which he learned from his ample hiking and camping trips with his family as a child. He undertook his thru hiking adventure on the John Muir Trail at 14 years old and the Appalachian Trail at 17 years old.

Contextual Data:

Cultural context: Hikers give each other trail names based on notable attributes, defining events, or personality traits. From then on, you are known by your trail name. Some hikers met people and never learned their real names. Hikers often keep the same trail name their whole lives. This tradition helps immerse hikers in their experience and distances them from their real-life identity while on the trail.
Social context: Being named by the hiking community tightens friendships and serves as a rite of initiation into the thru hiker life.
Personal context: Jimmy hiked the John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada Mountains when he was 14 with his father. His parents’ custody arrangement was changing after his freshman year of high school, and his father wanted to connect with him through this trip.

Item:

Jimmy got the trail name “Tadpole” the night before setting out on the John Muir Trail. He was with his father in a bar in Bishop, California with other hikers, and Jimmy was by far the youngest (and smallest) person. He remembers he was about 5 foot 3 and 115 pounds. His father’s friend Kevin told him, “You’re a little fish in an even bigger pond,” and added, “You’re not even a fish, you’re a tadpole.” This situation illustrates the typical provenance of trail names: experienced hikers initiate newer ones into the community by giving them a trail identity.

Associated file:

Transcript:

“The cool thing about the trail is that everyone gets a trail name when you backpack for a long time…I actually got my trail name that I still use on that trip…Honestly that’s why I still keep it, because of the story. It just happened really naturally. ”
“In our day to day lives, we have to be certain people…but on the trail, it’s kind of nice to just be. Trail names are a way where people can almost temporarily forget extraneous stuff and just live on the trail.”

Informant’s comments:

Collector: Erica Busch

Tags/Keywords: Trail Name, John Muir Trail, Appalachian Trail

Dartmouth Folklore Archive