The Hike - goals and afterthoughs.

So, the time has come to write down the best parts of my last adventure. My final trombone exam was on May 22nd. A few days later, Jack and I left for Bratislava, and I for Austria and Italy afterward. I was excited and nervous, ready to move and desiring the simple safety and ease of Zoltán utca. I feel I made myself learn a lot, much more than at Easter break. It was also my first CouchSurfing experience, which turned out better than I could have imagined.

So why a hike, anyway? Anyone who knows me knows I love the outdoors. It's hard for me to be completely at ease in the city. Hiking around the backwoods of my house, or Mt. Katahdin or Acadia National Park were always my favorites. But even so, I've never done a multiday trek like this. I think I felt like I had to do this as a rite of passage. Do something difficult to make me believe I have the strength to make my life happen right, or do it to feel like I deserve the easy stuff. The whole time, I felt like I had to challenge myself. For whatever reason, I had to go up against something. The thing that jumped first to my mind were the mountains.

Now that my hike is over, I'm not sure if I actually completed this challenge. During the time walking, I thought about what my purpose for all this was, and tried to firmly identify my goals. One was to get from Bolzano to Cortina d'Ampezzo on my own power. Another was to see the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, also on my own. But looking back, I'm seeing incongruences in the goals and how I set about accomplishing them. First, I hitchhiked to Kastelruth, east of Bolzano and on the tip of my first map - 20 kilometers, roughly. I did it because my maps didn't cover this area, and I knew there weren't many trails here anyway. Those reasons are good, and the hitchhiking was also a new experience for me, but does it count as "under my own power?" I had to have help in the very beginning.

The ideal of getting away from civilization was also really important for me in this. I think the most important part. I wanted a week by myself with no outside human contact. But in practice, I only got a few days of that. There were always rifugios and chairlifts and towns and roads along the way, to remind me i hadn't escaped completely. After a while I felt no qualms about using a road as a trail, or getting a hot coffee at a rifugio after a strenuous hike. A good part of my final day was spent walking alongside a scenic highway.

And all in all, I made really good time. I reached Cortina by the end of day 4, and camped on the outskirts. I officially call that the final day.

Even with the great exercise, long days and amazing views, I think my experience did not fulfill my goals. Every day I met humanity which drew me away from nature - but I let myself be drawn away. I spent what would have been day 5 in a cheap hotel in Cortina resting an aching knee, and abandoned my hike to the Tre Cime the next day altogether, due to snowy trails and bad weaher. I went to Venice instead, which rapidly started draining my wallet, and also my spirits. Thinking about my original hopes for this and comparing them to what happened... I feel disappointed to see how easily I was pushed over. Only four nights on the trail, folowed by a day of gluttony in a hotel watching Lassie, followed by going to Venice and letting the power of my bank account do all the work. I never even shat in the woods, which was kind of a little goal, silly as it sounds.

So I guess I still need to do this challenge. Maybe in August after camp. Sometime soon. I feel pressured by time to do this.

The idea to come to the Dolomites came to my head one day while I was surfing around Google Earth. I wasn't actively looking for a place to go or travel through, but was just "wandering". A few photos from the region caught my eye, and I was instantly set on going. It was just a gut desire.

Planning for this involved a lot of time just sitting at my computer, browsing. Wikipedia gave me historical information about the region, and also geological history of the mountains themselves. I looked up couchsurfers and tried setting up surfs, which turned out to be both more difficult and rewarding than I had thought. I posted messages on a few forums, asking for general travel advice for the places I was going, and more specific information about the mountains, trail conditions and the like for my hike. Responses were always very friendly and came pretty quickly. Google Earth was very helpful for an initial introduction to the landscape, because it gave a 3D image I could explore.

The Alto-Adige region, where Bolzano is, was interesting to me because it used to belong to Austria. Italy took it over in the first world war, and Mussolini began a campaign of Italianization, removing the native Austrians, bringing in more southern Italians and forbidding the German language. But that ultimately failed, and after WWII, deported Austrians were allowed to return. German and Italian were both named official languages. About two thirds of the province are Austrians, and so German is actually the most commonly used language. The area I hiked through also has five regions in which people speak dialects of Ladin, a funny language which is a mix of Swiss Romansh, "Surselvan" (?), and Friulian (from eastern Italy). I didn't spend much time striking up conversations there, but the very nice receptionist at my hostel in Bolzano speaks one of them and gave me a sheet of translations, which I tried learning along the way.

But besides that, I just wanted to walk along the mountains and watch them change over the days.

Stories and events tomorrow.