The Life of a Mathematician

This post about the backpacking trip has been sitting as a draft waiting to be completed for several days:

Where to begin? I obtained a backpack on Thursday afternoon and spent most of the rest of that day organizing my gear and packing it up. I believe it was lighter this year than last year, even with the added weight of a tent. Before I strapped the tent on, Mike estimated that my pack weighed about 33 pounds. The tent wasn't very heavy; it was the little two-man one that Kevin and Torey used last year.

The drive to the trailhead was long. We took off around 11:00 and didn't get started on the hike until about 17:30. We picked up my roommate Jeremy on the way. The hike itself took about 2.5 hours. It was five miles, but only the last mile and a half were very steep. There were twenty-four of us (up from sixteen last year), so we got pretty spread out. At one point Kevin, who was in the very back, shouted instructions which got passed from group to group, and apparantly distorted on the way. What I heard and passed on was, "Bear right at the top of the falls!". I assumed that this meant to turn right upon reaching the top of the waterfall, although it could also be interpreted as meaning that there was a dangerous animal sitting right at the top, or possibly that we were supposed to go skinny dipping there. As it turned out, the instructions should have been, "Cross the river at the bottom of the falls!". As a result, some of us ended up taking a more difficult route than was necessary.

The Barry, Mike, Steve & Company, as usual, got to the trailhead a long time before anyone else. In fact, they first got to the lake around the time we were starting out. After the first arrivals showed up, they hiked back down to help stragglers. I think Mike carried about five backpacks up the steepest part of the hill.

After arriving, the first order of business was to decide whether to eat dinner or set up the tent first. Jeremy was predictably campaigning in favor of dinner, but I wanted to find a good campsite before it got dark. He agreed to this and we found a place to set up. Andrew and Phillip pitched their tent in the same area. As I said, it was Kevin's little two-man tent. It doesn't look big enough for two from the outside, but inside there is room enough as long as you don't try to do anything except lay down. Rolling over in the night, sitting up, putting on your shoes, etc. are not recommended activities.

In order to pack more lightly, I took a couple of freeze-dried meals. They aren't bad, and they are easier to prepare than Ramen noodles. Jeremy brought vegetables and raw hamburger, which he wrapped in foil and cooked on the coals. He also brought a piece of raw dough which he cooked on a stick the second night. He said it wasn't bad. On Sunday morning there wasn't time to cook anything, so he ate a raw potato with salt, and leftover Smores ingredients. My roommate has interesting ideas about food. I have yet to see him turn down food when it is offered, under any circumstances. He says this comes from living in a large family. You learn to eat food as soon as you see it, before it disappears. The younger children only survive long enough to learn this because they are cute and the older siblings take pity on them.

On Saturday, we hiked up to the second lake, where some of the guys jumped off the cliffs into the water, then swam out to a rock, about 50 yards away. John, who is almost 13, swam out there, but it took about half an hour to convince him to swim back. He finally went along with a couple of older guys, and grabbed onto them for part of the way. Everyone said the water was freezing in that lake, but comparatively warm in the lower one.

We ate lunch up there, and afterwards some of the guys were going to hike up to the third lake, and then to the top of the highest local peak. I was inclined to just go back to the lower lake, and I decided to do this for sure because Kevin wanted to go on the day hike, but needed an adult to stay with Torey and John. So, I followed the boys back down to the lower lake, where they went swimming. After a while Mike, Tommy and Aaron joined us. John displayed his amazing powers of irritation, prompting us to threaten to throw him in the lake -- which didn't mean much since he'd been jumping in. A few other threats were made, and he at least stopped throwing big rocks in and splashing everyone.

That evening we gathered at one of the campfires and discussed an article everyone had been given copies of; it was a chapter of the book Holiness by J.C. Ryle, which is actually a collection of sermons. The chapter we read was about love for God as a foundational aspect of Christianity.

As everyone was showing up, there was a full-grown doe that wandered down near the campsite and stayed there grazing. She would perk up and listen every time there was a loud noise, but didn't seem concerned with all the people. Martin, who is from West Africa, had three questions about the deer: 1) What is it? 2) Is it dangerous? 3) Who does it belong to? He's been in the U.S. for five years, but there's still a big culture gap.

The hike down was in some ways more difficult than the hike up. Not as tiring, but more tricky in the steep places. For a while I was by myself, then I ended up with Andre, who was guiding Torey and John. There were places where we would just pick a tree below us, then basically do a controlled slide and stop ourselves by running into / grabbing onto said tree. The nice thing was that on the way down the hard part was all in the beginning; then it was pretty much just a level hike until we got back to the trailhead. Not everyone ended up in the same place at the bottom of the hill, and it took most of an hour to locate everyone and make sure we were all accounted for.

I'm sure there's other things I could have typed, but I just want to get this posted finally.