melannen | (no subject)

Everything is awful, I really want to not have to have a job (medicaid for all, where are you, if I didn't have to pay for health insurance I could go part-time and actually breathe), and somebody needs to talk me out of using up a bunch of my leave and going on a solo backpacking trip this spring.

(Current nebulous plan: Get someone to drop me around the 100-mile marker on the C&O Canal Towpath Trail; hike downhill. 40 miles in there's a train station where I can take the train home; 60 miles in there's another train station where I can take the train home; 100 miles in is the last train home.

Which means I don't have to commit to walking a hundred miles or call home in shame, I can just make a decision at each train station. And the terrain's good, so it's hard for me to imagine not being able to do at least forty miles in a week, even if all the worst happens.

It's not a wilderness trail, so I wouldn't be out of civilization for any very long stretches, which means I could go very light on things like food, and do a few hotel/restaurant stops if I wanted. And there's supposed to be potable water every five miles or so, so I shouldn't need to worry too much about carrying/filtering water.

The only tricky bit is that there's nowhere to sleep in the last 20 miles, and the very last stretch is through the city, so when I got to that last train station I'd have to be very sure I could do 20 miles in a day, and still not miss the last train. But I could stop before then if I didn't think that was doable.

I'd need to make sure my camping hammock was functional enough, and decide if I want to try to stick with a vintage Sterno stove or finally get the backpacking stove I've been lusting over, and figure out my cell phone charging strategy, but other than that I could probably just mark up some maps, pack a bag, and then go.

I've wanted to do this specific trip since high school, so, why not now?

And then once I've done a 100-mile solo trip it'll be a lot easier to convince myself I can do more ambitious ones.)

(Also convince me that if I do it, I shouldn't try to do it in period-appropriate cosplay.)

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What period? Be specific, so we know how bad/awesome an idea it is.

I was gonna say, please describe the cosplay!

Probably linen shirt (or one and a spare, if I'm feeling fancy,) linen drawers, at least one petticoat, a wide cotton calico skirt, an apron, a bonnet and period straw hat, and then what I brought for outerwear would depend on the weather predictions.... (And good leather hiking boots, obvs.)

That sounds amazing and I fully support.

It's the towpath of a canal that was operational from 1831 to 1924, and there's lots of historical sites along it from those periods, obviously! I would probably just be doing a generic 19th/early 20th century countrywoman outfit, tbh, and not go for anything too specific or punctiliously accurate, no hoop skirts or bustles - but long skirts and bloomers and linen and wool are great for hiking in, as long as you don't have to scramble.

Both the stoves I might take are more-or-less in period for the later part, and I have some canteens that are really mid-century Boy Scout but would look close enough! And the food I'd bring would probably be, like, oatmeal and dried fruit sorts of things anyway, that's always been just as easy as prepackaged camping food. My sleeping gear wouldn't be, though, because nope too heavy. And I'd have to think hard about how hard I cared about a matching pack!

(Someday I wanna walk from here to Pennsic War in full SCA-period medieval garb, though, but that's after I no longer have to have a job...)

Edited 2019-03-07 04:04 (UTC)

I have a 1910s camping manual that includes a section on appropriate dress for women, if that would help!

Oooh. It might! I should see what I have in the way of old camping manuals.

I have looked up the first description of the tramping clothing in the Outdoor Girls, and I had forgotten that it mainly consisted of them going "IT HAS POCKETS! :D" to each other.

“Properly dressed for the woods, and not overburdened, the average woman can keep up anywhere with the average man; but in a tight or draggy skirt she is simply hopeless. For real wilderness travel riding breeches, cut full at the knee, are far better than a skirt. A buttoned skirt that can be slipped on readily may be worn over them on occasion, as when approaching some village or camp where people are not yet civilized enough to approve common sense in a woman’s costume. Alice MacGowan was fairly driven out of a mountain county in Kentucky because she wore riding breeches, and yet many’s the time I have seen a mountain woman riding astride a man’s saddle in an undivided long skirt. O Modesty, what crimes have been committed in thy name!”

That sounds like someone with a clothing reform agenda! :D

Honestly a tight or draggy skirt is hopeless anywhere, but an ankle-to-mid-calf one with some volume is fine in my experience (plus peeing is easier), right up to real bushwhacking or bouldering! (at that point, I want pants.)

I would probably be aiming toward Kentucky mountain woman anyway...

You should do it and post pictures! And a review of the experience.