For those of you who are curious, my real name is Ken, my trail name is Kenneth. Many hikers acquire a trail name for a variety of reasons, but mostly it's just tradition.

While hiking the AT I felt that having a trail name was the key to joining a special hiker clique - and that by not having one, people simply wouldn't want anything to do with me. I hate cliques. I love upsetting someone's status quo and making them see there are alternate ways to be. So, it was with pleasure that on my 3rd or 4th day on the AT that I gave my friend Adam a trail name of Adam, and he dubbed me Kenneth.

Hi, I'm Ken, my trail name is Kenneth. Nobody calls me that back home, so, yes, that's a legit trail name.

On the PCT I don't feel like there's a clique of any kind, hikers are all equal - I like that. Part of this is probably because so many people dob't have a trail name - it's simply a smaller community. So half the time I introduce myself as Ken, the other half as Kenneth.

Some folks are tryinf to give me the name of Scout, because I always seem to have the energy to run around scouting things out. Oddly, a group on the AT also wanted to call me Scout for the same reason. In both cases I reject the label and thrn outpace them so they're not given the time to make it stick. :)

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