The story of "Civilized Hiking" originates from a lonely mountain deep in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The snowpack had just melted, and a friend and I finally reached the bug-infested summit after climbing up a muddy, moose-poop-engulfed slide, and instead of having our summit beverages with a side of protein (the bugs), we decided to hike back down a bit before cracking open our drinks. On the return trip, poles in one hand, drink in another, a man who could only be described as "Santa Claus of the NEK" appears out of nowhere, shouts "NOW THAT'S CIVILIZED HIKING!," and vanishes.
I started hiking as a high schooler in New Jersey, inspired by having my first car and itching to explore as much of this newfound terriroty as possible. I loved reading Gone Hikin's blog (gonehiking.blogspot.com), which eventually inspired me to start my own (thehikingmusician.blogspot.com). Unfortunately, life got busy and I stopped blogging my hikes, and then when I officially entered adulthood after college I stopped hiking entirely.
It wasn't until the whole "world-wide pandemic" that I really got back into hiking. I had been living a rather stationary lifestyle by choice, but now that it was by force I simply NEEDED to get out and about. I took my first hike in the Blue Hills in February of 2020, but what really kick-started my old addiciton was hiking Mt. Major for the first time in May of 2020. We were given a "day off" from "virtual school" for Teacher Apprecaition Day, so I took that as a sign to drive a couple hours north in the middle of the night, and it was the best decision I've made! Later in 2020 I hiked my first 4000-footer and began earning patches, and I haven't looked back since!
As of March 2024, I have my posts broken down into the following sub-caterogies:
Home: All of my posts in chronological order.
Thoughts: These are my "diary"-esc posts, not recounting any trips, but just some writing.
Skiing: Self-explanatory - I started skiing in the Winter of 2023 and fell in love!
Backlog: I started the blog in March of 2022. The Backlog encompasses hikes from January 2022-March 2022.
Vault: I use the "Vault" tag to document hikes that took place before 2022, notably 4000-Footers and a few Northeast Kingdom hikes.
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