The Appalachian Trail is about 2200 miles long, and was completed in 1937.
It is named after the Appalachian Mountain Range that stretches from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.
A complete walk thru hike can take from five to seven months to complete at an average cost of
$ 1,000.00 per month, per person.
The average initial cost for the necessary gear can range from $ 1,000.00 to $ 2,000.00 to acquire.
Every year, hundreds of people, or more start the trail and plan to spend the five to seven months walking and camping to complete the trail’s end in Maine.
Obviously, these are people who can afford to leave gainful employment for more than half of the year, and have sufficient funds to support themselves as they indulge their hobby.
The current median household income is $ 55,775.00 for a single person and $ 68,260.00 for a family.
The average cost of living for a single person, adjusting for regional variances, is $ 28,458.00.
For a married couple with one child, it is $ 56,176.00 and for a married couple with four children, it is $ 82,871.00.
This doesn’t include any emergency expenses at all.
Most working people cannot take this kind of time off nor justify this kind of expense.
Who are the ones that are in a position to take so much time off and have disposable income available for enjoyment?
One group that comes readily to mind is the young, liberal snowflakes that are either in college at the parent’s expense, or are out of college, but living with mom and dad. Possibly the parents are very wealthy or extremely lenient on the “take responsibility for yourself” feature that is part of good parenting.
These are the same ones who lean toward voting Democrat, if they chose to participate in the electoral process at all.
Most of the Democratic voters like to assuage their conscience by voting for and endorsing social programs for those sections of society that cannot or do not achieve. They feel vindicated in their altruism without actual effort, leaving the working or middle class to foot the bill for said charities.
They heartily disdain the “Capitalistic” values that measures self-worth by accomplishment.
How can anyone really believe that how much one earns or has established for themselves in a career determine self-worth? What an outdated, ridiculous weight of measure!
As they sit in a local watering hole eating and drinking, hot off the trail, they discuss how they “got this one job and saved all the money” toward the season they hiked all the way to Maine.
The average person would like to save “some” of their money for the future, not just work for a space of time to hoard all of their earnings for a specific goal.
These 30ish people seem to believe that they are just as worthy as anyone who works year ‘round to earn a living, as they don’t subscribe to such archaic nonsense as conservative values.
Perhaps, they are waiting for their parents to die, so they can inherit. The downside of such is that even a fortune will only dwindle if it isn’t fed a constant stream of income.
There is a day of rude awakening when a snowflake arrives to the age of 40, with little to no personal accomplishments of career and their support system is gone and that support system’s wealth dries up. Reality will certainly bite hard that day.
It is unfortunate that society of the last eight to ten years has evolved a “generation of entitled loafers”, who will be a burden to society at an advanced age without ever understanding why or feeling the least bit guilty about it. Indeed, they feel superior to those who labor to achieve, and feel entitled to a premium living.
Image modified from: By Chewonki Semester School from USA – https://www.flickr.com/photos/chewonki_mcs/4032062370/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37551099
