Author Archives: Rachel

Old Mallet

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Title: Old mallet

General Information about Item:

  • Material folklore and superstition
  • Informant: Sam Lincoln
  • Date Collected: 9 November 2019

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:

  • Colorado Trail, Old Mallet

Tadpole

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Title: Tadpole

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal and Customary Folklore (Tradition)
  • Language: English
  • Informant: Jimmy Coleman
  • Date Collected: 6 November 2019

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:

  • “I was SUPER small.”

Collector: Erica Busch

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

Bombproofing

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Title: Bombproofing

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal Folklore
  • Informant: Sam Lincoln
  • Date Collected: 9 November 2019

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:

  • Thru hikers must set up camp every night and pack out every morning. Doing this correctly is vital to keep are safe and protected, so sleep is uninterrupted and hikers get enough energy to keep going.

Item:

  • “Bombproofing” is slang term for preparing your camp to withstand weather. After dropping his packs and taking off his boots, Sam did this immediately to by setting up his tent. Bombproofing entails making camp but expecting a storm so you don’t have to rush around if it starts raining. While there are no different methods of pitching a tent than normal, this term emphasizes the urgent need for shelter, the unpredictability of weather conditions, and the importance of taking care of yourself to prepare for the worst.

Associated file:

Transcript:

  • “So you bombproof everything, put everything in your tent that you don’t want wet.”

Collector’s comments:

  • Bombproofing is the same as setting up camp typically, but the importance of doing this task quickly and correctly to stay safe and dry probably led to this hyperbolic term.

Collector: Rachel Lincoln

Tags/Keywords:

  • Bombproofing, Colorado Trail, Verbal Folklore

Goat Slayer

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Title: Goat Slayer

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal and Customary Folklore (Tradition)
  • Language: English
  • Informant: Sam Lincoln
  • Date Collected: 9 November 2019

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:

  • 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.

Item:

  • Sam earned the name “Goat Slayer” on the Colorado Trail. He and his friend Justin had hiked 24 miles in an alpine area with lightning in the distance—they were the tallest things around, so they had to make camp for the night. They heard noises outside their tent and thought a bear was outside. Sam went out with a bear mace and mallet to scare it off, but it was just a herd of goats. He chased them off and became Goat Slayer.

Associated file:

Sam explains how he got his trail name.

Informant’s comments:

  • Sam likes this name. He never got one during his earlier two or three week hikes and receiving one was an important part of his experience.

Collector’s comments:

  • Trail names can be tongue-in-cheek or teasing, but all informants felt that their name was used affectionately. Sam’s name plays up the fear and adrenalin he felt to reflect his emotions in that moment, when all he really did was shout at some goats.
  • We collected trail names from all of our informants except those who hiked the Chilkoot. That trail is shorter than the other, so we hypothesize that length may be correlated with receiving a trail name.

Collector: Rachel Lincoln

Tags/Keywords:

  • Trail Name, Colorado Trail

Vortex

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Title: Vortex

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal folklore
  • Informant: Sam Lincoln
  • Date Collected: 9 November 2019

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:

  • Thru hikers typically only leave the trail for a few days at a time to resupply food or gear. Otherwise they follow the same rituals each day to cover as much ground as possible. Disturbance of their normal pace can throw hikers out of their “just keep walking” mindset.

Item:

  • “Vortex” is a slang term for the psychological experience of pausing a thru hike to return to civilization for a few days. Hikers don’t realize just how grueling their journey has been until they stop, and returning to the trail becomes a mental obstacle that looms larger with each day spent away. Sam experienced the vortex when he stopped in town for five days after 80 miles so his friend could rest an injured foot.

Associated file:

Transcript:

  • “When you’re thru hiking, if you stop thru hiking, you realize how difficult it is and how easy it is to just stop. It’s a mental obstacle you have to overcome to get back on the trail.”

Informant’s comments:

  • Sam’s friend decided to leave the trail altogether quickly after the group stopped to let him rest, which annoyed Sam because their entire rhythm and pace had been thrown off to accommodate Teddy.

Collector’s comments:

  • This term supports the theme of immersion that runs throughout our collection. Thru hiker folklore reinforces the deep thrall that the trail holds and emphasizes the separation from regular life.

Collector: Rachel Lincoln

Tags/Keywords:

  • Vortex, Colorado Trail, Verbal folklore

Colorado Trail Cairns

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Title: Cairns

General Information about Item:

  • Material and Customary Folklore (Tradition)
  • Informant: Sam Lincoln
  • Date Collected: 9 November 2019

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:

  • Historical context: Humans have built cairns for thousands of years to memorialize the dead, track the calendar, and create landmarks. Now, cairns have become a fixture of hiking trails to show the way.
  • Social context: Hikers on all lengths of trails build cairns to leave a reminder of their presence. Though cairns serve practical purpose, popular trails usually have many more than necessary because building cairns is a tradition that helps hikers feel connected to the land.

Item:

  • A cairn is a man-made stack of rocks used to mark a trail route. The rocks are stacked and balanced in a manner that would not occur naturally, so they can easily be identified by hikers looking for a trail. Building cairns is a tradition across nearly all hiking trails.

Associated file:

Transcript:

  • “Cairns are just piles of rocks stacked up to mark the trail in places where you can’t really put a sign or there are no signs so people don’t get lost…Just a basic pyramid structure, just pile rocks up in a way that would not normally occur in nature so it’s pretty obvious that someone did it for, like, a purpose—which was to mark the trail.”

Informant’s comments:

  • The tallest cairn Sam saw on the Colorado Trail was about two feet tall.

Collector’s comments:

  • Unlike carving your name on trees or rocks, cairns are a memento hikers can leave that doesn’t irreversibly disrupt nature.

Collector: Rachel Lincoln

Image result for cairn

Tags/Keywords:

  • Cairn, Colorado Trail, Tradition, Material Folklore