Day: October 18, 2020

Returning to the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania – The oncoming debate – Evening statistics

I have not visited the section of the Appalachian Trail that runs through Pennsylvania for some time, primarily because I’ve been away on account of the recent trips to Maine and southwestern Virginia.  I decided to get to that area today, starting at Port Clinton.  Originally I intended to go to the Pinnacle and back, about 10 miles each way.  However, the AT from the Pinnacle goes roughly west both northbound and southbound, and I did not realize upon returning that I was on the northbound route until about a mile further.  However, on making inquiries I found that there was a side trail (the Furnace Creek Trail) that runs from one junction with the AT to another, rather like the Ribble Trail that I had done earlier this month.  I thus was able to make a loop that returned me to a point in the trail about 5½ miles from Port Clinton.  An additional advantage is that this route cut off some of the rockier section that I otherwise would have had to backtrack, including a descent from Pulpit Rock.  The route I ended up taking actually was slightly shorter than what I had planned (19 miles total instead of 20).  It had a fair amount of ups and downs, totaling to about 4000 feet of elevation gain, but none of the ascents were very long and there were only a few steep sections.  There were several people on the trail today, but I expected as much – not only on account of the weather (in the mid-sixties most of the day, sunny and clear and dry) and the state of the autumn foliage, but also because there are several campgrounds in the area.  In addition, the Pinnacle is a popular destination and so is Pulpit Rock, another overlook about 2¼ miles west of the Pinnacle itself.

I can thoroughly recommend this section of the trail.  There are some rocky areas and even a couple of boulder fields,, but I never encountered any of the difficulties I experienced on the area further south close to Swatara Gap.  At times the AT gives way to a fire road, so that it has alternating degrees of difficulty throughout and does not become a perpetual struggle to maintain balance.  Pulpit Rock is an enjoyable rock scramble, with lovely views at the top, including one of the Pinnacle to the side.  The rock pile appears to be formed by a glacier; in fact this is not the case, for the southernmost spot the ice flow reached was 45 miles further north on the Pocono Plateau. But the repetitive freeze-thaw cycles occurring a short distance from the glacier itself during the 10,000-year winter caused the ridge-crest rocks to fracture. These rock fragments broke away from the outcrops and slid down the slopes where they accumulated as large masses of talus (rock debris).  I quite enjoyed the ascent but I’m just as well satisfied to have gone back a different way, in the same manner that I did for the ascent from Lehigh Gap.  Rock scrambles of this nature are much more enjoyable going up than going down. 

But the Pinnacle itself is a wonderful sight, easily the most spectacular I’ve seen along the Pennsylvanian AT.  It has something of the scope and range of the views of McAfee Knob in Virginia, so eagerly sought out by professional photographers.  The views at McAfee Knob, of course, are more extensive, surveying numerous distinct mountain ranges, whereas the views from Pinnacle go down directly into Lehigh Valley defined by the surrounding ridges.  Tthe various rural communities at the base provide a vista of fields and farm buildings interspersed with the remains of the forest and with undulating hills that create miniature valleys of their own. 

There now remain 28 miles of the AT in Pennsylvania for me to cover.  Going along this distance there-and-back means, of course, 56 miles total.  I should be able to complete this amount in three long hikes or four hikes somewhat more moderate.  Another trip to a town convenient to the trailheads seems indicated.  I had no problems driving this morning to the trailhead but the drive back was troublesome – lots of traffic along I-270, expanding and contracting like an accordion for miles on end, and in any case the drive was more than three hours each way. 

Yesterday’s entry was very doleful in tone, and I can’t see from the news headlines that matters have changed very much in the course of a day, but it felt reassuring to know that the pleasures of fresh air, forest trails, autumn leaves, and mountain vistas are still within reach.

The third and last presidential debate is scheduled for Thursday.  It seems to me that Trump could borrow a line from Bette Davis’s Margo Channng in All About Eve:   “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 40,264,218; # of deaths worldwide: 1,118,167; # of cases U.S.: 8,387,798; # of deaths U.S.: 224,730. 

Autumnal splendor – Women leaving the workplace – Donald Trump’s methods of wooing voters – Trump admitting to the possibility of losing – Savannah Guthrie victrix – Evening statistics

Another lovely day, autumn scenery at its finest.   Everything looked serene today, the mellow October sunlight highlighting the rich assortment of colors from the leaves of maples, sycamores, elms, cherry trees, pear trees, hickories, oaks, birches, beeches – to name some of the bewildering variety of trees in the eastern American forest region, one of the most bio-diverse areas on the planet.  I am reminded of the passage in The Handmaid’s Tale when Offred, languishing in a state of semi-slavery, glances outside at night and notices the new moon:  “a wishing moon, a sliver of ancient rock, a goddess, a wink.  The moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware, but oh God, how beautiful anyway. “  And so I felt today.  Our country is undergoing continual trial and trouble from the pandemic, the levels of racial tension seem to have reached unprecedented heights, the election threatens to be one of the most violent in our history – but how beautiful it was outside anyway.

Margaret Atwood’s book seems unhappily appropriate at the moment, because one of the effects of the COVID virus has been the reduction of women in the workforce in unprecedented numbers.  With hundreds of thousands of students being forced to obtain their schooling at home and numerous daycare centers going out of business, someone has to supervise the children during the day and that someone is usually the mother of the family.  Sometimes it is possible for a parent to conduct work online, but only about a third of our occupations can be pursued that way.  The others (healthcare, education, factory work, truck driving, cleaning services, utility services, among others) require the worker’s physical presence.  About 865,000 women have dropped out of the workforce, in contrast to 216,000 men.  It’s not only women who will be worse off for this development.  There is a strong correlation between companies hiring women executives and their profitability, resulting in 18% – 69% boosts for the Fortune 500 firms with the best records of promoting women.  It is going to take a long time for our economy to rebound, even after the virus is brought under control. 

Donald Trump certainly has an unusual approach towards attempts at winning people over to him.  When asked whether suburban women no longer liked him, he responded that they should like him because he’s in favor of law and order, and he reinforced this remark as follows:  “So can I ask you to do me a favor? Suburban women, will you please like me?  I saved your damn neighborhood.”  For some inscrutable reason, the suburban women here seem for the most part unmoved by such an appeal.  Perhaps they are more amenable to these tender persuasions in some other neighborhood.

It does appear that he is at last realizing that losing the election is a possibility.  “Could you imagine if I lose?” Trump said Friday evening at a campaign rally in Macon, GA. “My whole life, what am I going to do? I’m going to say, ‘I lost to the worst candidate in the history of politics.’ I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country. I don’t know.”  If it is any consolation to him, many believe that the distinction of being the worst candidate in the history of politics belongs to him rather than to his opponent.  As far as his leaving the country is concerned, there are two stumbling blocks to this dire threat:  first, he would be hard-pressed to find another country that would accept him (perhaps his buddy Vladimir Putin would take him in?) and second, that he may be somewhat restricted in his movements if he receives a jail sentence after the election for his financial defalcations. 

The NBC network is expressing profound gratitude towards Savannah Guthrie, the moderator of Trump’s town hall yesterday.  Previously NBC was accused, when it agreed to televise his town hall, of rewarding Trump for rejecting the debate commission’s plan to conduct the second debate virtually.  Whatever else might be said about the town hall, presenting Trump with the opportunity to confront Guthrie cannot possibly be described as a “reward.”  The Vox website, among others, said her quick line of questioning, pushbacks, and fact checks “probably made the White House wish they had just done the debate.”

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 39,937,065; # of deaths worldwide: 1,114,183; # of cases U.S.: 8,341,836; # of deaths U.S.: 224,278.  Towards the end of March Dr. Fauci predicted that our country would have between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths as a result of the COVID virus.  In retrospect this forecast seems touchingly modest.  We almost certainly will reach over 300,000 by the end of the year, and to a large extent this is due to the willfully oblivious policies of the administration.