Misery's happy side

Retired Marine makes a healthy habit of 2,100-mile hikes

The American Legion Magazine   June 2003                   LIVING WELL

BY LAYNE CAMERON

  To say J.R.Tate knows the Appalachian Trail is like saying Chuck Yeager knows airplanes.  Tate, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, has hiked the 2,100-mile footpath from Georgia to Maine not once, but three times.

  Rather than sit back and admire athletes on television, Tate "thru-hiked" the strenuous Appalachian Trail during the 1990, 1994, & 1998 Olympic Games.  "Instead of hiking in 2002, I wrote a book about it."  The slim 66-year-old says, "Writing that book felt like three thru-hikes combined."

  His book, "Walkin' on the Happy Side of Misery" seemingly details every step, every half-cooked box of instant noodles and every storm battered night spent in rickety shleters of his inaugral six month journey.  Tate takes great pride in serving as a living example of a once sedentary La-Z-Boy lounger transformed into an accomplished thru-hiker nicknamed "Model-T."

Mentally Awake.  A lifetime of  "adapt, improvise, and overcome" prepared Tate for the mental challenges of the trail.  Living off the land during a winter escape-and-evasion exercise early in his military career gave him some tools that later helped him complete the trail.  Avoiding capture helped him focus on the goal.  Eating reptiles taught him to not let adversity deter him from his purpose.

  "Anybody that would eat a garter snake would eat anything."

Tate says.  "The military environment instills in you a desire to achieve whatever goal you take on."

  Tate's physical training for his first Appalachian Trail trek consisted of climbing steep hills with a complete set of encyclopedias.  Looking back, this approach was a bit gung ho, he admits.  His second triop, he regained his fitness by hiking eight miles the first three days, 10 miles the next three and 12 miles the next three.  In just 10 days, Tate was soon covering 15 and 19 miles a day.  "Anyone in decent shape can do it; if they ease into it."

Excellent health does not stop injuries.  Carrying a 50-pound-backpack for long miles can produce sore feet, twisted ankles and sprained knees.  A painful strain nearly ended Tate's dream of completing his first hike.  But rather than allow it to stop him, he rested in a shelter for a day and walked it off, so to speak.

  Tate also discovered that the Appalachian Trail is the ultimate weight loss program.  Where else can a person eat eight candy bars a day and drink squeezable margarine from the bottle and still lose weight?  "You  burn so many calories that your body is going to eat regardless of wther or not you feed it,"  says Tate,  who admits gorging on fatty foods to offset his atomic caloric burn.  "If you don't  eat food you body will eat your fat, and if youre not careful, it will begin eating your muscles."

  Constant hunger is accompanied by insatiable thirst.  Tate chugs quarts of water at a time, sometimes stream water that is "tea-colored and infested with caterpillars."  The alternative is not drinking, though, is dehydration.

And, of course, Tate's inner Marine does not allow that option.

Morally Straight.  Overcoming adversity, communing with nature and having to drink brown water by the gallon, changed Tate both physically and mentally.

The Marine Corps may have created an ultra-competitive, time oriented fighting machine, but the trail altered him.  He is tranquil, less competitive and more accepting to others.

  Would he do it again?  "every spring I get the itch."  "Springer Fever" calls me out to the trail.  YOu forget about the constant hunger, the blistered feet and the heat exhasution and remember only the sunrises and the starry nights.

  Role models like ALvis Kinney, an Army veteran and hiker nicknamed "Paw Paw," inspire Tate.   Kinney

holds the record for being the oldest thru-hiker at age 82.   Tate says he has one more thru-hike in him.  He would like to do it when he is 83 or 84 so he can break the record.

  The Appalachian Trail, it seems, has not taken all of this Marine's competitive age.

Layne Cameron is a media realtions manager at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.,and a freelance writer.

The American Legion Magazine

June 2003

LIFESTYLES

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL June 9 2003

Move Over, Stephen King

Growing numbers of older adults are taking

advantage of print-on-demand publishers

By Ellen Byron

For J.R.Tate of Woodlawn, TN, later life has meant one adventure after another. When he retired in 1979 from a 20-year-career in the Marines, he tried his hand at farming.  Though his farm didn't bring the success he had hoped for, it did help him discover the Appalachian Trail and a new passion: hiking.  In eight years, he hiked the 2,173-mile trail three times, collecting stories & friendships-plus the makings of a writing career-along the way.

  After his third hike, his wife insisted he put together a scrapbook.  In between the photos and the souvenirs, he wrote about his adventures.  When friends and relatives saw the project, they urged him to write a book about his experience.

  It took Mr.Tate three years to finish his tale: "Walkin' on the Happy Side of Misery."  After hearing about horror stories about book proposals and rejection letters, and turned off by the idea of signing away rights to his work,  Mr.Tate didn't seek out literary agents or publishing houses.  Instead he looked into self-publishing services he had heard about during a meeting of the Tennessee Writers Alliance, a nonprofit organization.  "I felt like I could control my own destiny if I published the book myself," he says.