To The Woods: May 22, 2018

Stemersion Day 4

Daily Activities

We began today by watching three videos about the book Wild by Cheryl Strayed. The book is about her journey of walking 1,100 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail with a 70 pound backpack when she was 26 years old. After that, we came up with a list of things we would need for a 10-15 day backpacking trip. My partner and I chose to go to Southwest Tasmania and hike for 52 miles over 11 days. We planned to bring items like a compass, map, warm clothing, a water filter, etc. We then used a reference paper to see how much each item would weigh. Last year for stemersion, I went to Michigan on a canoe trip for 120 miles, so I already had a pretty good idea of what we would need. In the end, it ended up being about 38 pounds. We put weights equaling 38 pounds into a hiking backpack to see what it would feel like to have to carry that much weight everywhere. It was very difficult to walk and I felt like I was going to fall over. Above is a picture of the backpack.

After lunch, we began watching a movie called Never Cry Wolf, about a man who goes to Alaska to observe wolves there. I thought it was really interesting to see how he interacts with the wolves and the wilderness, even though the end was kind of sad. Here is a scene from the movie.

We didn't go outside very much today, so I'm really excited for our trip to The Narrows tomorrow to be able to get back out and maybe even swim.