Trailhead before me
My first steps into the wild
Everything unknown
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Author:
BlueHeron77 (Pseudonym) (
Offline) - Published: October 19th, 2020 21:52
- Comment from author about the poem: I've never thru-hiked before, but have for years now hoped to attempt someday the Appalachian Trail. Thinking about doing this one day, I penned this haiku imagining the first steps I would make and how I might feel. So much unknown about hiking and myself.
- Category: Haiku
- Views: 24
- Users favorite of this poem: TheOzGreenMan, Goddess of the Mist
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Comments3
This could easily about any task in life. Writing poetry is just like this!
If you replaced say 'Trailhead' with 'Journey' then this becomes absolutely universal. We don't use the term Trailhead in Australia, so it becomes clearer to me in this way.
Thank you for your feedback, and you're exactly right! What do you call the beginning point of a hiking trail in Australia, just curious? Thanks again for reading.
Ok we dont tend to walk a trail, we tend to bushwalk. We call all generic forests, 'the bush'. Its origins goes way back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_bush . if you say you are 'going bush,' its sort of means you have gone into the wilderness to disappear or get away. Australians can have a very romantic notion of the bush and in the 19th and early 20th century we had bush poets who often wrote Bush Ballads eg [Henry Lawson, Harry Morant, Banjo Patterson]. In my experience we would go on a hike through the bush and just call the beginning the start of the track. But the word Trail is becoming more common in the 21st century a bush track would be seen to be more informal, but a Bush Trail would suggest its signed and organised. I think trailhead might become more popular as a term I even discovered there is a site https://www.trailhiking.com.au/ This is pretty new so I imagine we are moving in that direction. If you leave the trail then you go bush bashing and that is a term Australians know well. I found some one had written a bit about Australian poets here https://mypoeticside.com/poems/australian-poetry. My Country a poem by Dorothy Mackeller evokes this notice of the romantic notion of the bush.
'I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!'
https://mypoeticside.com/show-classic-poem-17910
A long answer to quite a poetic question!
Thank you so much for all the information. It's so great to hear how people think and do things differently than what you're accustomed to.
tranquil haiku perfectly said.
Thank you very much!
I love to hike so the title drew me in right away. I really enjoyed this piece and I also share your dream of hiking the AT.
Thank you so much, and I hope one day you get to hike the AT. I hope one day I will as well.
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