As
numerous studies of marquis de Oliveras show, true mountaineers and
half-hikers are often mixed up on the same mountains and are hard to
tell apart because they usually look the same and go to the same
places.
The Chihuahua, always very keen on unvailing the truth, decided to
restart from scratch the studies of the marquis, and instead of
studying individuals, he analysed locations.
The first difficulty the Chihuahua encountered was that unlike the
notion of true mountaineer that was clear, the one of half-hiker was
only a vague concept applied to all kinds of people. To observe
half-hikers, the Chihuahua first had the idea of counting the number of
shoes worn by the people climbing the Grouse Grind.
"I chose the Grouse Grind," the Chihuahua said, "because it is well
known that true mountaineers never go there, which made my study
easier." He was hoping that people would wear only one shoe, which
would have explained the concept. However, everybody was wearing 2
shoes and the Chihuahua changed his observation protocol the next day.
The Chihuahua examined the type of shoes worn in pairs by
half-hikers and noticed that they were usually wearing runners, let us
say slippers in terms of mountain technology. "I was about to rename
half-hikers mountainteers-in-slippers when I realized that the number
of people climbing was a lot greater than the number of people going
down." The Chihuahua immediately understood that half-hikers were only
hiking half of the path, usually the way up, and were coming down by
other means of transportation that he was not interested in.
| After
numerous observations, the concept was extended because the same type
of hikers were also found in the back mountains, Grouse, Dam, Goat, and
even Crown, usually in the afternoon. The Chihuahua merged the two
concepts of mountaineer-in-slippers and half-hikers in a famous article
called Afternoon-Hikers or The Plague Of The Fly Swarm.
This article extensively explains that afternoon-hikers, so-called
although they can be observed early in the morning, are people who do
not want to spend time in the mountain. Most of them stay one hour or
less, exceptionally up to 4 hours for those who reach Crown Mountain
and that are found in the afternoon.
The article became famous for merging the ideas of half-day and half-way into the concept of half-hiker.
True mountaineers, however, do not do things half-way. They go up and
down on foot, they walk in the morning and in the afternoon, spend more
than 4 hours in the mountain, commonly 8 to 10 hours, sometimes more.
Half-hikers and true-mountaineers often use the same equipment, hiking
boots, trek poles, backpacks. It is not easy to tell them apart by
looking at their equipment, unless they fall into the category of
hiker-in-slippers or are spotted on the Grouse Grind. Otherwise it is
necessary to analyse how much time they spend hiking and if they walk
all the way or take a motorized vehicle.
To present the results of his study, the Chihuahua published another article, Half-Hikers Being Doubled or the Self-Conciousness of a Disaster, about half-hikers that were doubling the time they
| were
spending in the mountain. They were believing they had become true
mountaineers, but the article shows that doubling a half-hiker only
makes a plain hiker. The difference between a plain hiker and a true
mountaineer is that the plain hiker only hikes like two half-hikers
whereas for the true mountaineer, hiking is secondary, the main
issue being to explore the mountain, to observe it, to record the
faintest smell of every rock, to learn from each step and to improve this
knowledge like true gardeners watch their plants
growing when other people just mow their lawn. Half and full-hikers are
trying to spend energy whereas true mountaineers strive to save it.
Practically, half-hikers, single or double, only see their feet and the bum of the person in front of them. True
mountaineers do not see the person in front of them because it is too
far and hidden by the trees, but they can spot grouses, ravens,
invisible remote summits or unsual marine mammals like seals and
otters, smell bears eating berries and hear the breath of mosquitoes
walking on their clothes. And more important than anything, they can
feel their feet walking alone without moving their legs, they can hear
clouds roaring in silence and eat their homemade pizza without having
to support the fat smell of the neighbour at the next table and without
feeling the bad taste of the cheap cheese drowning the tasteless crust
as pictured on the pizza-coupon.
Foxes get rid of their fleas by slowly diving into the water,
holding in their mouth a tuft of grass where the fleas can go before
foxes let it go. In the same way, the mountain gets rid of its parasites
by letting them concentrate onto the Grouse Grind. Although the process
is not perfect, half-hikers tend to clutter more and more on this
famous one-way path as the Chihuahua shows in a book yet to be
published: The Fly Paper Of The North Shore. 
|
Le Journal 
Les
arbutus sont exceptionnels dans les jardins, peut-être à
cause de leur manque de majesté, plus sûrement parce que
les jardiniers plantent rarement des arbres aborigènes. On
trouve souvent des arbres aborigènes dans les jardins, mais les
arbutus sont naturellement rares.
