pg 233-240 American Camino (Spencer Mottley)

 The first part of chapter six titled Spiritual Rambleing. Adresses the misconception amoungst hikers and

pepole in general that there is a difference between spirituality and religion and between being a spiritual

person and a religous person. Dr Ridick claims that throughout his studies on religion and philosophy he

has never found any valid distenction between religion and spirituality. Thus makeing them more or less

interchangeable terms. Another common misconception amongst hikers that Dr Ridick debunks in this

chapter is that the Appalachian trail is not a spiritual place or a place that has the potental to be religiously

moveing to hikers. He explains that this is a false assumption because pepole often hike on the

appalachian trail to be more connected to nature, to do soul searching and for other reasons all which are

very religiously moveing, even hikers who don't intend to engage with their spirituality during their

journey, often find themselves engageing in spiritual activity often without even fully relizeing it. In

addition to this discussion Dr Riddick also discusses how long distance hikers get accoustmed to the

conditions of the trail while short distance or day hikers never get fully accoustmed to these conditions.

While this might sound postive, it can lead to long distance hikers takeing their surroundings for granted

more than short term hikers who often embrace their surroundings more due to the fact the surounding

enviroment often feels more "foregin" to them than it would someone who has spent a long time on the

trail. After reading these pages I was left with a question, how does the long distance hiker keep

themselves engaged with their sroundings other than being mentally present? My response to this question

is to try and notice differences in your surroundings everyday of your hike, even if the differences are

fairly miniscule, like there being more of a certain species of tree seen today verses yesterday. I belive

staying in tune with these enviromental differences could help long distance hikers stay interested and in 

tune with their surroundings, thus helping them not take their surrondings for granted. 

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