Increased activity – A social visit – Considerations for international travel – Difficulties of using Irish transit websites – Wildflowers in the Hazel River area – Leading a bus hike – Mask mandates – Indirect adverse effects of the pandemic – Evening statistics
Although the amount of activity I’ve done over the past several days would not have been unusual before the pandemic started, it seems like a great deal after the leisurely existence imposed by COVID restrictions. During the past several days my time has been filled up, not only with hiking, but with social visiting, auto maintenance, organizing hiking events, making trip arrangements for the forthcoming hiking tour in Ireland, registering for the AT Vista conference in August, and so on.
Wednesday was relatively uneventful, consisting of dropping the car off in the morning for an oil change and recharging the air conditioning system, mowing the lawn, tending the yard, and performing various errands. I’m not sure why, but I fell into a fit of lassitude during the evening and felt too drowsy to write much. Part of the reason is that so little is changing, as far as the pandemic is concerned. We seem to be perpetually on the cusp of emerging from it, but never quite managing it. Whatever else may be said of the earlier months, they certainly did not lack for drama. Now we’ve been in a state of suspended animation for weeks on end, and there appears to be no prospect of a change in this respect for the near future.
Thursday was more agreeably occupied, visiting my friends EG and HG, lunching with them in their beautiful house (they have an extensive collection of intaglios that adorn the walls), admiring the burst of color in their garden as a result of the mid-spring flowering and of their azaleas in particular, and conversing about their recent travel experiences to visit their daughters’ families and, eventually, about the gradual diminishing of travel restrictions and what to expect for trips abroad in the future.
Trips to European nations have been considerably easier. It is no longer necessary to undergo COVID testing in advance to entering them, for instance. The lifting of the mask mandate does have some positive aspect. There is no doubt that it is not especially comfortable to wear one during a flight that lasts eight hours or more. It does not appear much of a risk to forego mask-wearing on an airplane when its filtration system is actively running; but certainly it is prudent to don one before the plane reaches about 10000 feet in elevation to ensure that the filtration system is active (it takes some time to ramp up) and after landing, when the system is shut down.
Apart from that EG and HG tell me that they are experiencing something of my own sense of being swamped by activity and events after the somewhat glacial pace of existence we have been undergoing while the pandemic was at its height. Indeed, one reason for the timing of the visit is that we’re not sure when we’ll have the opportunity to repeat it. I will be leaving for Ireland in the middle of May and will be away for nearly three weeks, and then I will be in Iceland during the latter part of June; while they have several commitments of their own. Not only is social life beginning to move again, but people are afflicted by a sense of having to make up for lost time, which in some cases is making the pace of our lives all but frenetic.
Friday was devoted to making various trip arrangements. The main part of the trip to Ireland is a hiking tour, which has already been plotted out in advance. But I will then be going to England to visit friends there, which means traveling to Dublin, booking a hotel to stay overnight, booking a flight for the following day, and purchasing the necessary train tickets to make the appropriate connections. The websites for Irish transit are not user-friendly. This is not merely my personal assessment; at one point I became so frustrated in trying to obtain the tickets I needed that I logged into various travel forums to obtain advice from other, more experienced travelers. They all said the same thing: the Irish websites are to all practical purposes unusable. Part of the problem is that the train and the bus stations all have two names, one English and one Gaelic. Still, I have booked train trips in Wales, where the same condition applies, without any particular difficulty. It appears, however, that both trains and buses are rarely full and that purchasing tickets on the spot is feasible for all but the most exceptional cases.
I also was occupied plotting out the hiking schedule for the Wanderbirds during the third quarter of the year, having recently assumed the position of Director of Trails for the club, as well as exchanging Emails with my co-leader for the hike I led today. These exchanges carried over into Saturday, whose main activity, however, was joining various Wanderbirds friends in the Hazel Mountain area for the purpose of viewing various wildflowers: rue anemone, wood betony, bloodroot, showy orchis (just beginning to flower), bluets, trillium, among others. The highlight of the trip was a patch of pink lady-slippers along the White Rocks Trail, on one of its highest points before the trail descends to the Hazel River.
Finally, today I led a hike for the Capital Hiking Club on the Appalachian Trail from Raven Rocks Rd. to the U.S. 40 parking area adjacent to the bridge over I-70. It was notable for being the first bus hike I have led for over two years, with the exception of the Calvert Cliffs I led in August, 2021, during that brief period when CHC resumed the use of buses and then was forced to fall back on carpool hikes after one month, on account of the resurgence of the virus. But now CHC has reverted again to bus hikes, very much to the gratification of the club members. Many of these live in DC itself and do not have cars, relying on public transportation for the purposes of commuting, running daily errands, and pursuing such diversions as restaurant dining, concert-going, museum-visiting, and so on.
Officially CHC has a mask mandate in place for the bus hikes, but recently the Board decided to rescind it after the CDC mask mandate was overturned, and to permit eating and drinking on the bus. The vote to do away with the club’s mandate was nearly unanimous, with only one Board member voting in favor of retaining it: me.
Without delving into the political implications of Judge Mizelle’s decision, I must observe that this decision was based on legal considerations only. Judge Mizelle claims that in imposing the mandate, the CDC overstepped its authority. This may possibly be true; I do not have the legal expertise to argue one way or the other on the question. But from the medical point of view, at least, this decision does not make the wearing of masks on public transportation any the less advisable.
I will admit, however, that it would have been difficult to enforce the mandate on this particular occasion. The weather forecast called for only occasional showers, but the amount of rain was much greater than predicted, and accompanied at times by chilly winds. It would have been impossible for the hikers to hover outside the bus while consuming snacks and drinks under these circumstances, as we usually did and presumably will continue to do whenever the weather conditions are more favorable. Under the current conditions, my co-leader and I had no choice but to bring the snacks onto the bus and allow the hikers to eat them within the bus, which of course meant that they removed their masks while eating and drinking.
Despite the bad weather, the hike was a success. Many of the hikers expressed gratitude for the opportunity of being able to go so far afield without being forced to drive such distances on their own (and several, as noted above, do not have cars of their own) and thereby to have the opportunity to hike long distances again. Indeed, many who in the past relied on the bus for transport to trailheads have become slower and less agile as a result of the hiatus in hiking activities imposed by the pandemic. There were two long hikers in particular, whom I knew from past experience to be strong hikers, who had great difficulty in completing the hike. FH, who was the sweep for the hike, told me that accompanying them during the first ascent (from Raven Rocks Rd. to Buzzard Knob) was agonizingly slow. It was fortunate that an experienced hiker like her was the sweep; towards the end she prodded them by taking the lead and urging them to quicken their pace. They managed to reach the bus in slightly over 5 hours (the hike is about 13 miles long and 2300 feet of elevation gain), so the end result was not bad. But they provided an example, all the same, of how the pandemic has obtruded in the otherwise active habits of many and the toll taken by the inertia that have been thrust upon them.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 513,524,301; # of deaths worldwide: 6,261,385; # of cases U.S.: 83,081,982; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,020,851.