View current page
...more recent posts
Questionable
I thought I saw bare footprints in the snow up on the White Oak Canyon trail yesterday and I wondered if maybe there is a local barefoot hiking club. And the idea of clubs always makes me think of the phrase--join, be a part. And then I wonder, right, exactly, which one?
I don't guess hiking several miles in wet boots with a cold has thrown me into a cold and flu season headspin, even though I do feel pretty stupid right now, I mean pretty stupid, and have some histamine I don't really need, or don't really want.
The night before I met a local at a bar who organizes full moon hikes in the park and he told me not to enter the trail from Skyline Drive but from the 231 side so that's what I did. It allows you to hike up to the falls and then down to the parking lot instead of the opposite, which is a hard way to end a hike, going up that is.
At the top I was sweating, exhausted, and unsure why I had made the effort. Many times going up I thought of K. heading for the Castle and felt the pointlessness of it while at the same time the compelling need to continue upward. Was it worth the effort to see the large falls, I don't know?
On the way down I slid and skipped and stepped carefully down rock ledges, but did not fall on my ass. I started laughing at one point, I'm not sure why.
Back in Sperryville I got some white bean and black olive soup (black olive, in soup? yeah, it's different, it's good, try it, the server said) at the deli and then back out in the parking lot I saw the proprietor and she said when you leaving, I said a few days, and she said, walking to her car, well, hmm, you sure kept to yourself.
So you wonder, should you start keeping to someone else?