Title: Sleeping in Dartmouth Gear #2

General Information about Item:

• Ritual

• English

• United States

Informant Data:

• Parker was born in Rochester, New York on September 4, 1997. His father is a financial consultant and his mother is a homemaker. Parker is an American Caucasian, and his family origins are English and German so his background is Western. He is sophomore at Dartmouth College, studying History and Economics. He went to Groton for High School. Parker sings in an a capella group in his free time.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • The data was collected in Parker’s dorm room. He was alone when describing how he prepares for exams and why he does certain rituals before every test. The folklore is performed the night before an exam or presentation which is usually in a high pressure context where Parker is expected to outperform his peers.

• Cultural Context
  • The cultural context of this folklore reflects the competitive atmosphere of Dartmouth college, where every grade impacts as student’s GPA. Students at an Ivy League do not just try to succeed in their classes, but to outperform their peers. As a result of this high stress environment, students may turn to superstitions or ritual to lessen the pressure.

Item:

• This lore was recorded during a conversation. The night before an exam, Parker wears a specific Dartmouth t-shirt to bed. During his Freshman year of high school, Parker was really nervous and felt very unprepared for his chemistry exam. He remembered that in high school, he had a friend who would wear a school t-shirt before exams. Parker decided to try it out for this exam and the night before the exam, he wore a Dartmouth green t-shirt to bed. He then proceeded to do very well on his exam. During his next test, he did not wear that shirt and did poorly. Since then, he has worn his Dartmouth shirt to bed before every exam he has taken.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Collector’s Comments:

• Parker explained how he began performing this particular ritual. He noted that a friend from high school wore a school t-shirt to bed on the night before an exam. He then gave it a try by wearing a green Dartmouth t-shirt to bed before the night of an exam and he ended up performing very well on the exam and has proceeded to perform the same ritual ever since. This is considered folklore because the ritual spread from Parker’s friend from high school to Parker.

Collector’s Name: Elizabeth Khusid

Tags/Keywords:

• Ritual. Contagious Magic. Diffusion.

Title: Hiker Description Slang

General Information about Item:

• Customary & Verbal Folklore, Ritual, Slang
• Language: English
• Country where Item is from: United States
• Informant: Ben Ferguson
• Date of Collection: 10/28/2017

Informant Data:

• The informant was Ben Ferguson. Ben is from Massachusetts. He attended Dartmouth College, and he graduated in 2015. He is currently working at the Mount Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. He spent a lot of time in the White Mountains as a child because his parents and grandparents went to Dartmouth, so they would come to New Hampshire and Vermont to hike and ski. He always wanted to hike the Appalachian trail after learning about the meaning of the white blazes as a child. He hiked the trail in the Spring and Summer of 2014. 

Contextual Data:

• Social Context: The social context in which these words are used is when hikers first meet each other on the trail. They may be going in opposite directions. They may be traveling in the same direction, and the purpose of the slang terms is to concisely describe how you are hiking the trail and to provide information on the condition of the trail that you were just on. It’s a way of sharing your intentions and your knowledge with other hikers, and because some descriptions were used so repeatedly they were abbreviated and turned into hiker slang terms that are specific to the Appalachian trail.

• Cultural Context: When Ben came to Dartmouth, he learned that the Appalachian Trail goes right across campus, and he learned that he could change his course schedule so that he could find the time to hike the Appalachian Trail during college. He hiked the Appalachian Trail in the Spring and Summer of 2014. For much of the hike, he hiked alone, however at several points along the trail, he hiked with others. Most hikers are either on their own or in small groups, and so it is customary to greet others on the trail and to use this slang as a means of expressing their intentions on the trail. 

Item:

When hikers come across each other on the trail, they usually exchange some slang words to describe which way they are hiking the Appalachian Trail. This can be one of the following ways:

• “Nobo”: This means a north-bound hiker. They are hiking the Appalachian trail from the south to the north.
• “Sobo”: This means a south-bound hiker. They are hiking the Appalachian trail from the north to the south.
• “Flip-Flop: These are people who hike the Appalachian trail halfway and then jump to the other end of the trail and hike it the other way. For example, they make hike the southern half of the trail from South to North, and then they may go up North to the start of the trial and hike half of the trail North to South.
• “PUDs”: This stands for pointless ups and downs. It describes parts of the trail where there are a lot of rolling hills and it doesn’t seem to be moving anywhere.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

• The relevant clips start at 14:40 and 23:30

Transcript of Associated File:

• “Another big one is PUDS. Which stands for pointless ups and downs. Like in places where the trail is on top of a ridge and it will go up and down a lot and it’s really frustrating because it seems like you’re not going anywhere. So people call those pointless ups and downs.” (This is taken from the transcript of the entire interview)
• “There are whole dictionaries of hiker terminology written. Tell me if you’ve heard any of these words before, but Nobo means northbounder. Sobo is southbounder, and flip-flop is people who hike the trail halfway and then jump up and hike the trail the other way. So they’ll do the southpass hiking northbound and then the northpass hiking southbound. So like when you introduce yourself you would say like “Nobo” or “Sobo”.

Informant’s Comments:

• None

Collector’s Comments:

• The item is paraphrased from the transcript of the interview.

Collector’s Name: Andrew ogren

Tags/Keywords:

• slang, Appalachian Trail, hiker

Title: The Murder Shelter

General Information about Item:

• Verbal Lore, Legend
• English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: John T. Brady ’19
• Date of Collection: 10-31-17

Informant Data:

• John Brady is Dartmouth student in the class of 2019. John is from the suburbs of Chicago, IL. He grew up north of the city in a nice suburban town which he described as very “bubbly.” John was part of a boy scout group growing up in the Chicago area. Every summer for about one week, John and his fellow boy scouts went backpacking. They backpacked all over the United States. His scout troop went to New Mexico, California, Wyoming, Wisconsin, and other places. One of his earliest backpacking trips was actually a section of the Appalachian Trail in North Carolina and Tennessee. The trail started out of Hot Springs, NC. His early experience with the Appalachian Trail sparked an interest for John to conquer the entirety of it.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: This legend has been told over many years throughout the Appalachian Trail hiking community. Any person can understand the Legend, but it is most prominent in the hiking community.
• Social Context: This Legend is told orally from hiker to hiker on the AT. The legend is also passed down through writing in trail and shelter logs. Most people hear about the legend through talking with other people on the trail and sharing stories.
• Overall Context: John Brady’s early experience hiking a portion of the Appalachian Trail encouraged him to later attempt to complete the whole thing. With his boy scout troop, he hiked a 40-mile section of the Appalachian Trail (AT), but he knew that the trail consisted of over 2,000 miles. He said that he saw some “weird looking Hippie dudes” as he described them, and thought that he may want to hike the entire trail between high school and college. John said that people are on the trail because they are in between things in life. “You are either in between school, love, or jobs,” John said. For him, he was in between graduating from high school and starting his new life at Dartmouth in Hanover, NH. John hiked the Appalachian Trail from March 5th until July 29th. Starting on March 5th was early in the season, but not too early where it would be uncomfortably cold. He also started early to avoid the large crowds that start the AT between mid-March and mid-April. It took John 149 days, or just under five months, to complete the AT. John’s preparation consisted of “googling” and asking knowledgeable backpackers about how they prepared for the trail. John did not spend a lot of time physically training for the journey but instead made sure he had a good plan of attack for the first month of the trail, which is most important according to him. Some people try to get ahead and complete many miles quickly but end up hurting themselves. John made sure that he set a pace that would allow him the most success. John starting hiking the AT with a lifelong friend of his that was also in his boy scout group. His friend was from the same hometown in Chicago, IL. His friend hiked for about three or four days before he got sick with a stomach illness and had to stop hiking. He hiked with many different groups of hikers going Northbound. The most prominent person that John hiked with was a man with the trail name “Werewolf.” Werewolf was from Tennessee. He was a grocery store manager and recently divorced from a long time wife. John and Werewolf got along very well given that Werewolf was around 40 years old. He also hiked with a mechanic named “Macgyver” from one of the southern states. He also hiked with two brothers named “Link” and oddly enough “Folklore.” the brothers were twins and were known on the trail as the “Arkansas twins.”

Item:

The “Murder Shelter” legend among hikers is that some local disturbed individual a number of years ago came up to the shelter in the middle of the night and murdered a couple of hikers on the AT. There are many journal entries in the shelter log that tell the entire legend of the Murder shelter. Many hikers decide to bypass the shelter and not utilize it due to the legend passed down from hiker to hiker orally and written.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

• Image of The Murder Shelter on the Appalachian Trail

Informant’s Comments:

• “I was hiking alone one dreary day in Virginia. My goal for that night was to make it to a hostile, a place to stay right along the trail, and I had heard good things about it. I was soaked with rain, I was tired, I was exhausted. I got up to a shelter and I figured ‘you know I might just spend the night here.’ I grabbed a Snickers bar out of my backpack, I bit into it, grabbed the shelter log book, which keeps track of other people who have passed through the shelter. All of the comments in the book were ‘Welcome to the Murder Shelter’ and maybe if it had been a bright sunny day and I was hiking with other people I would have spent the night there, but alone on a dreary day, I was definitely not going to stay there.  Being alone while hiking, I was not interested in being murdered by the ghost of this guy, or by a copycat killer.”

Collector’s Name: Colton French 

Tags/Keywords:

• Legend, Verbal, Folklore, Story, Scary