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ABSTRACT
For cultures around the world, a journey, particularly one undertaken by foot through landscapes that are simultaneously natural and cultural, is both a metaphor for the discovery of the self and the divine and an embodied practice in the physical realm. Here we analyze twenty-six publicly available blogs of thru-hikers of the John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, U.S.A. Cognizant of the critiques of the intrusion of technology into wilderness areas, we examine how the communication medium of travel blogs becomes a vehicle for both self-reflection and for sharing spiritual experiences, and how the act of blogging merges virtual and corporeal communities formed among hikers. It is in the intersection of these social networks and mobile communication technologies that we find suggestions of changing relationships between a subculture of tech-savvy and highly connected hikers sometimes called “flashpackers” and the physical landscapes through which they travel.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. We have numbered the blogs 1–26 and used the prefix HB, which stands for “Hiking Blog.” For example, the second blog we analyzed would be coded as “HB2.”