What’s in a name? – The walk

Welcome to my opening blog to chronicle my journey on PCT ’26. “Yes”, I know that all that was redundant, you didn’t arrive by chance but I needed a starting point and there it was.

As you can see, the subtitle of my first blog is «What’s in a name?» all this Trail name This has me spiraling down the rabbit hole of the history of my name and the various carnages of my name since my existence. As you can see, I chose my full name as my pseudonym; Chris Becraft. Go ahead and say it out loud. It is, as I tell people, phonetically perfect in both spelling and pronunciation: Chris (we all got it right) BEE-CRAFT. It’s really that simple. Over the years, I have received several emails with some of the following favorites:

• Chris B. Craft (as Harry S. Truman)
• Chris Beechcraft (what the fuck???)
• Crisp craftsmanship. (I swear, this is true. Who calls a child Crisp???)

I have had exactly 1 nickname in my life; Is. Only friends in small town Indiana call me that. I have a close friend who calls me «Vibes», which I think is cool, but strangely it never caught on with the masses.

With that in mind, I’d like to offer my top choices for trail names, although I’m fully aware of the tradition that doesn’t allow for self-nicknames or the names of the trails themselves. This tradition of life is in the same line as honoring the “calling system”, that is, SPECOLA! Or bathroom! In addition to following the rules of the correct price when guessing a number (if you go too far, you are eliminated). I digress, here’s the list:

• nut soup
• Grilled Cheese
• The Old Man and the Sea (abbreviated as OMATS)
• Dutch
• Jet Ski Jesus or “JSJ” for short
• St. Crispin’s Day (In honor of the idiot who called me Crisp)
• nigel

I think they all have at least some potential and I would gladly respond to any of the above.

I swear I will follow the rules and talk about hiking when it’s time to talk about hiking. Right now and over the next few months, I’ll be talking about my preparation for moving up to the PCT and letting you get to know me. All of the above paragraphs fall into the latter category as the first thing you should know about me is that the mind and thoughts are generally everywhere and if I am writing about it, at least seems relative to me.

Obviously I will shed some light on who I am along the journey. I don’t want to write an autobiography, much less my first publication, so here are some basics:

• You are now an expert on my behalf, so give yourself 2 points. One last thing, I wasn’t lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to get a super Italian, Irish, or other obvious heritage name, so I can’t walk the earth claiming some false pride nonsense regarding my heritage. The fact is, I have no idea where «Becraft» came from. I was told I was Dutch-Irish, but my mother was a converted Catholic, so the Irish connection might have been fake to get along better with the native Catholics. That’s just a theory, of course.
• I am 60 years old at the time of writing this article and will turn 61 at the end of the month, on the 28th.
• I will retire from my job on December 29. I call it the end of my “non-voluntary work life.”
• I am married and have 3 adult children. A grandpa of 2 and 3 will be here in mid-December.
• I am very close to my children, grandchildren, (most of) my family and have more close friends than should be allowed.
• I grew up in Indiana but have lived most of my adult life in Missouri, specifically the St. Louis area. I lived in Texas for 6 years but most of that was traumatic so I try to block it out.
• Here’s a fun fact: my wife and I are on a quest to attend a baseball game at every major league stadium. We have 22 down and 8 remaining!

I guess we’ll try to address the question “Why PCT?” There is no short answer to this question but rather a series of events that have brought me to the here and now, which is a basic description of life. I’m not a super athlete and I’ve never hiked before. I have always liked hiking, but always day trips. My wife and some friends have completed the “rim to river to rim” Grand Canyon hike twice in the last 8 years or so. I like challenges. I like to be uncomfortable. I think there is a sense of self in the abyss, you just have to explore the abyss. I once stopped eating meat for 7 years just to challenge myself. I love a good cheeseburger and I don’t have a pet. He just wanted to throw me a curveball. I often cite the book “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer as inspiration. I’ve led a fairly normal life and the idea of ​​burning it down was strangely appealing to me. I tried doing it through alcohol and chemicals, but that’s a story for another future post as it will no doubt come up.

7 years ago, one of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life died suddenly and unexpectedly and it really rocked my world. I have a great job and a great career, but that day I became aware that moving up the corporate ladder was no longer an interest and in fact, getting out as fast as possible and living life became my new mantra and here I am with you, in full training for the PCT.

I HATE excuses and being a certain age is not relevant to me, but… I understand that it is relevant to others. When the PCT became real for me about 2 years ago, I started weight training for the first time in my life. Lifting weights is very boring for me, but I was very lucky to be able to work out with my daughter and son-in-law, who know what they are doing. That being said, I want to help other «older» hikers train and any advice I can give them or, God forbid, inspiration I can give them would be amazing.

I wanted to blog for The Trek because it has been an invaluable resource for me in preparing for this hike and it’s amazing to have the opportunity to at least give back a little.

That’s all for round number 1 of this blog. I am very excited for this trip and I hope you come with me!

May you run for a long time,

Chris

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