Materialism: Makes much less sense when you have to carry it all on your back

So, let's see, I finally have a solid chunk of time to sit down and write this thing. When we left off I had just summited my first mountain and realized that I didn't know @#$% about hiking. That's alright though, that's what field experience is for. So I woke myself up and hitched a ride out of Baxter State Park into the town of Millinocket where I was looking for the AT Lodge who I originally had planned to have pick me up at the airport and such, but didn't offer late night shuttling. I got dropped off right on the main strip and started walking; and wouldn't you know the first guy I bumped into was the owner of the lodge who went by the trailname "Ole Man". He took me in and started giving me the rundown of the place. I was directed to the back porch where I dumped out all of my belongings and he assigned an experienced hiker he had on staff to give me "the shakedown". This is going to be my favorite part of taking any of my friends hiking. While I whined and tried to justify the myriad piles of nonsense I was carrying he was going through and proving 90% of it to be unecessary. Cotton, jeans, extra clothing, uncecessary. Extra books, extra first aid, extra double redundency backups of everything, useless. "Why do you need so many books" "When are you going to wear all of these clothes". It was true, half of my posessions were in the send home pile before I had to start applying thought to the process. He was right, I really didn't need all of that stuff at all, but it was happening so fast. The best mindframe that got me through was that I knew nothing about this new life I was undertaking and these people seemed to know everything. I dumped my cup and started filling it with all of these ridiculous little tricks to save weight. Packaging especially adds so much bulk and weight; the solution is to just dump it all out into zip lock bags and sort it by use. I was also given a new hiking style backpack in exchange for my alice pack. It was light and it lacked the bandolier system of a million little pockets all holding loose items. Now I had four bags: hygiene, supply, first aid and smoking. Simple, easy to remember, and best of all I could take everything out of my ruck in short order and not have it scattered all over creation. After I had all of my useless civilian fantasy items removed from my posession it was time to get me some actual gear. The hiker who's name I forget, but translates to "bearded one" in Navaho, and which he was very proud of and seemed to speak in a reverent tone proceeded to take me down the street to the local outfitter who had a small selection. The shopkeeper was an odd enough man himself. Scrawny, Big glasses and the kind of demeanor that was odd at best. His celing was covered in Buddhist prayer flags, he kept on about how even though he was now a businessman money was not the important thing and almost every statement was joined with a yah mahn at the regularity of a grunt adressing his superiors in every phrase. If everyone is crazy in the woods then I guess this guy fit right in, I certainly had no problem with his attitude, especially after he dropped me a 10% discount and continued to be exceedingly pleasant, if not slightly elsewhere. I now had hiking poles which transform a regular human into a spider-like quadriped, a set of new gators to go over my boots, a new light weight water bottle, a stove, purifyers, yata yata. I was all set up, now in what I considered the "realistic" level of pack weight. So I wandered off as my spacey self tends to do, got a last pizza and settled into the hostel for the night. There were two other hikers sharing the facilities, some kid from UF who was going home after getting halfway through the hundred mile wilderness and an older hippy guy who would be joining in more throughout the story by the name of "Dirty" Bobby. That night I got my first introduction to trail philosophy. The former of the two was precise and saught to win by blasting a million details that he had been forced to memorize which I couldn't match on flat Repetoire alone, but his overall philosophy was simple enough, human achievement and possibility, no quantum leaps, no guessing. It seemed like a really slow and tedious approach to learning, but it left few weaknesses. And dirty had a much more intiresting approach to thinking about life. His "affixiation" was death. In his eyes when we fall asleep we die, the only sure thing was death and he had a pretty well built process summing it all up. For the most part he seemed inherently chaotic, he favored capricion and nonsense, and as I had argued before he claimed that his focus and acceptance of death made life all the sweeter. I liked it. My proposal of a thousand parts making a complete and working whole went over well with Bobby, but got lost in semantics with the first guy. It was a fun time, I was starting to settle into this new life and the next morning I would be entering the hundred mile wilderness. That's about a week, with nothing, no supplies, and the start of the "real" trail experience. Usually the final crucible for the northbounders finishing up their hike, but my proving ground. I would survive, my comfort was not as assured. I was ready.