I recently mentioned to someone that I am leading a Field Institute group into Havasupai, and I needed to start organizing the use of a pack horse to carry most of my gear down.

She looked as though I had said I was carrying a can of spray paint to tag every rock between Hualapai Hilltop and the Village.    "You send your stuff down on a horse?"

Why not?  The last time I visited my physical therapist, the renowned Tom Martin, I got an exasperated look ("You again?  And what overuse injury have we now?") and a prescription to reduce the weight in my backpack whenever possible.  So that I can carry the usual 40 pounds when required.

Havasupai isn't a backpack anyway.  It is Disneyland without a parking lot shuttle.

In any case, why do I have to live up to others' prejudices?  They think I am a rough, tough backpacker who would not dream of reducing the weight of the pack, except by freezing my babushka off or going hungry.  Right.

For one thing, when I go to Supai I like to bring along books for the group to read.  For another, I cannot stand the amount of trash on the trail.  Looking at hiker trash and not picking it up makes my fingers twitch.  So I fill garbage bag after garbage bag and either leave it at the Village (on the way down) or take it with me in the car (when we leave).  The Supai who catch me at it always look a little surprised and mutter, "Thank you!"

People are shocked when they find out that I am not a vegetarian.  Or a vegan.  Or gluten-free.  When I was pregnant, everyone assumed I would undergo natural childbirth and were horrified to find that I wanted an epidural in the sixth month.

I was having a baby in the twentieth century, not in the Dark Ages.  I wanted every crutch modern medicine could provide.  As it was, I developed eclampsia.  That is what killed Lady Sybil in Downton Abbey.  It would have killed me and Robbie as well, had I opted for a midwife or a natural birth, and my practitioner or facilitator hadn't been taking my blood pressure regularly.  Instead I spent 36 hours (!) hooked up to a half dozen IVs, a fetal monitor, a blood pressure monitor, and several accoutrement that I was too wigged out to notice.  At one point I did mutter to the doctor that I was glad the Lamaze people couldn't see me.  He snorted.  "The Lamaze people are home asleep."

I have been hiking too long to live up to other people's' preconceptions of how I should behave or how much I should carry in my pack.  Heck, I've been living too long to do so.  I gave up behaving like all the other backpackers back when I was in college.

So if a horse is available, I send stuff down on a horse.  If not, I schlep it myself.  I eat pretty much what I feel like and depend on the amount of exercise I do to keep me healthy.  I don't rock climb, I do berate small children for carving their names in the rock, and I am always extremely tempted to tip a medium sized boulder over on top of young men cutting switchbacks.  ("Told you taking shortcuts could cause a rock slide!")

And I don't believe in bleeding, sickness caused by humors in the body, or a flat earth.