| Readers Ask: |
| These are some questions readers have e-mailed me. I love hearing from readers--please feel free to drop me a note at kellywinNO@SPAMearthlink.net. (Take out the NO and the SPAM to get my real address--posting my address this way cuts down on junk e-mail, since the programs that collect e-mail addresses off the net for spammer aren't smart enough figure this out) Have you hiked any other trails since doing the AT? Yes. Gladys and I have hiked most of Vermont's 270-mile Long Trail, and plan to finish it in 2003. It's a gorgeous trail. The southernmost 100 miles of it are concurrent with the Appalachian Trail; then the two paths diverge, and the LT heads north to the Canadian border. Its middle and northern sections are exceptionally rugged, and except for a few well-visited spots around Camel's Hump and Mount Mansfield, not very populated. We often walked all day and saw no one, or only a couple of other hikers. The LT has many areas of rock-climbing, cliff crawls, and ladder-climbing, similar to some of the most difficult sections of the AT. If you're looking for a relatively easy, beautiful hike, I recommend the southern 100 miles--I've done it twice, and plan to hike it again. Hiking outside the AT thruhiker season (late July through August) will be a more peaceful, quiet trip; if you're very social, hike during thruhiker season, but be warned: the shelters will be full, and the AT thruhikers will talk endlessly about their high mileages. Do your knees still hurt? No. They hurt 24 hours a day for 2 years after I got off the Trail, and I thought I might even need surgery on them. Then I wised up and went to a physical therapist, who taught me exercises and stretches, and did various treatments on them. Part of my "rehab" was hiking 150 miles on the Long Trail. The pain I experienced came from an imbalance in the muscles and tendons, which was pulling my kneecap out of its groove--so it was grinding on the bone below. This is very common among long-distance athletes. It used to be called "chondromalacia" but is now known as "patellofemoral pain syndrome." If you're a runner, biker, or hiker with knee pain, don't believe people who tell you to quit exercising or who say you should never run again. This condition is treatable, and curable.. Find a good physical therapist who is expert in dealing with athletes, and you can be back in action. I have since hiked hundreds of miles and have run thousands of miles--including a marathon and several half-marathons--and have had no knee pain. What happened to Nomad? Are you still in touch with her? Nomad is now married to her boyfriend (called Ian in the book) and they are living happily in Missouri, where she is a freelance writer. She is my closest friend, other than Gladys--those thousand miles we walked together formed a deep and lasting friendship and bond. We email each other almost every day. I wish that everyone who went on a trip could have someone as fun as she is to share it with. I was looking for info about you on the Net. Where can I find some? There's not much personal info about me on the net. Readers who have gone looking for it have told me that there are several people with my same name, Kelly Winters. There's a basketball player, a bowler, a snowmobile racer, an astronaut, and even an x-rated movie queen, among others. I am not any of those people. One concerned reader emailed me just to make sure I was not the video star--believe me, I'm not. :) Who are your typical readers? I was surprised to find that I don't have a typical reader. I've gotten mail from all sorts of people--a retired Air Force colonel, a guy who was dishonorably discharged from the Army, and a woman who is still in it; several ministers (they liked it); a horse breeder; hikers who are grandfathers or fathers or grandmothers or mothers; and even a 7-year-old girl--her mother read her the hiking parts and left out the relationship issues. I'm always honored to hear from anyone about the book--since I was inspired to hike by someone else's book, I enjoy passing on that energy to other people--many readers have said that the book has prompted them to go pursue a lifelong dream. It's an honor to be involved in that, even peripherally. What are you writing now? I'm now working on a novel about a girl who grows up in a commune in Wisconsin. When she's 15, the shit hits the fan when the local school authorities discover her birth certificate is a forgery--her "adoptive" father never officially adopted her at all, he simply found her in a box at the commune gates and kept her, raising her as his own. The book tells the story of her journey to find her birth family and become part of their lives, but also to cherish the unconventional people who raised her. Have you read Bill Bryson's book A Walk in the Woods? Yes. I thought it was light and funny. He was actually on the AT in the same season that I was, but he started long before I did and then jumped around, using a car, so I never met him or heard about him. Because he jumped around and only hiked about a third of the Trail, he was not part of the thruhiker tribe that year and didn't understand the culture. I thought the book was entertaining, but if you want to get a truer picture of a thruhike, read as many different Trail memoirs as you can find--the Appalachian Trail Conference sells a wide variety of them, and you can find a lot of them at www.trailjournals.com. Everyone's hike is different--reading as many accounts as you can find will give you a well-rounded view of the Trail and of hikers. |