I love to hike! In fact I love hiking so much a few years ago I went on a 2,180 mile (3,508 km) 5-month long hike on something called the Appalachian Trail.  The Appalachian Trail is just one of many long-distance hiking trails around the world that attracts hikers like myself who like to be out in nature a lot. I wanted to introduce you to some of these trails today as well as four different ways to say “walking for a long distance”.

Hiking, backpacking, trekking, and tramping are four different ways to talk about going for a long walk. Hiking, backpacking, tramping, and trekking all usually involve carrying food, clothing and shelter on your back in a backpack and walking for an extended period of time. Hiking is sometimes used to describe more casual walks, but can be used to talk about months long journeys in the wilderness. Backpacking usually describes a walk taken with a backpack (in which you store your personal items), where the person intends to spend the night (or multiple nights) sleeping away from home. Trekking is sometimes used to describe more difficult journeys. Tramping is a long distance walk as well. The word tramping is very commonly used in New Zealand and Australia instead of the word hiking.

So, now lets talk about some trails…

The Appalachian Trail, or simply the AT, is a hiking trail in the eastern United States extending between the states of Georgia and Maine. The exact length of the trail changes over time as the trail is modified, but the total length now is approximately 2,200 miles (3,500 km). The trail was first proposed in 1921 and completed in 1971. If you hike this trail from beginning to end you will walk through 13 American states.

The Pacific Crest Trail, commonly abbreviated as the PCT, is a long-distance hiking and horse trail that starts in the desert at the Mexican-California border and travels through the high mountains of the west coast of the United States, to the Washington state-Canadian border. The trail only goes through three US states, but it is 2,663 miles (4,286 km) long. Before the PCT became an official long-distance hiking trial in 1968 it was a route used to transport material on horseback.

Te Araroa is New Zealand’s newly completed (finished in 2011) long-distance trail that extends from the southern town of Bluff to the northernmost point in the country at Cape Reinga. The trail is divided into approximately 300 sections ranging from hikes of 1–2 hours to up to 9-day routes. It takes multiple months to hike the whole trail. Although the straight line distance from Cape Reinga to Bluff is 1475 km, the Te Araroa Trail covers a distance of 1860 miles (3000 km).

The Israel National Trail is a hiking path that crosses the entire country of Israel from the trail’s northern end in Dan near the Lebanese border to the southern end in Eilat on the Red Sea. The total length of this twisty-turny trail is between 580-620 miles (over 1,000 km).  The Israel National Trail officially opened in 1994.

El Camino de Santiago or The Way of St. James is a famous trek that originated as an important Christian pilgrimage during medieval times. The trek starts in points throughout southern Europe with people walking to northern Spain (where St. James is believed to have been buried) in Santiago de Compostela.  There is no specific length for this trek, because people can start anywhere in France, Italy, Spain, etc., but all those walking on the trek are walking in the direction of Santiago de Compostela.

Do you know of any other long-distance hiking trails? There are many more out there. Later this week I will have a post about hiking or tramping gear, in case you have been inspired by reading this post and want to get out do some backpacking yourself.

English is not known for having gender specific nouns like some other languages (for example Spanish or French), but gender specific nouns do exist in English.  Because English does not have many gender specific nouns, one nice thing about English is that you don’t have to worry about gender agreement between nouns and adjectives.  So, when you start thinking about how hard it is to learn English, just remember that you don’t have to worry about noun gender and gender agreement in English. (Learning how to do this in other languages is something that most English speakers find very difficult.)

There are a small number of words in English that do have different forms to indicate male and female gender though, but really these are very few.  Other than gender specific words for some animals (like: buck and deer, gander and geese) and words like man, woman, girl, boy, mother and father, English has only a few dozen gender specific nouns. Below I have listed some of the most common gender specific nouns found in English.  If a neutral, non-gender specific, form of the word exists I also listed that word too. If a neutral form of the word doesn’t exist, the male form of the word usually becomes the de facto neutral version. For some words, often words that are related to professions, if no female version of the word exists a neutral word has been created. Take a look at these and see if there are any new words you can add to your vocabulary.

Check out this video entitled ‘How animals eat their food’, that I sure hope makes you laugh or at least puts a smile on your face.

Okay, now I want to present some vocabulary related to how we eat and eating in general.

First let’s look at how we eat, and to do that we need to look at the mouth.

In the mouth we have teeth, which are held in place by gums. We also have a tongue. We use our teeth to bite and chew and we use our tongue and palate to swallow. As we swallow food travels down our throat and esophagus to get to the stomach. In the stomach the food is broken down during the process of digestion. Then the food moves on the small intestines where food is broken down even more before it moves on to the large intestine. Food moves through the large intestine to the end where you find the anus. It is from here that the food material that was not be broken down or digested is removed from the body.

Now, let’s look at some words you can use to talk about eating:

to dine – to eat, specifically to eat dinner

Example: What time are we going to dine tonight?

to devour – to eat quickly due to hunger

Example: After his 10 mile run, Ben devoured his lunch.

to munch – to eat something continuously or over a period of time

Example: Sally munched on chips all afternoon.

to nibble – to take small bites of something

Example: Ezra took a nibble of his dinner and said he didn’t like it.

to nosh – to eat enthusiastically

Example: Everyone is here, it is time to nosh!

to scarf (to scarf down) – to eat something hungrily

Example: I scarfed down the last piece of cake before anyone else could get it.