The end of hiking and the bushcraft revolution
Humans have always walked, but humans haven’t always thru-hiked. (Thru-hiking is when you hike a long trail for months.) Our species has been too preoccupied with the task of feeding ourselves by hunting, fishing, and farming. No one had the time to joy-hike twenty miles a day — fueled by Snickers bars — for matters of the soul. But now, every year, thousands of people set off to hike one of the big 2,000-mile trails, such as the Appalachian Trail, which was blazed in 1937. I