Mainly hiking-related, although COVID does not fail to obtrude – Evening statistics
I have not written in the journal for several days, partly because I’ve been busy and partly, for reasons that will become evident, because I’ve been discouraged.
I was not inactive during this period. On the 19th I went on a there-and-back on the Tuscarora Trail in the Capon Springs region. It went primarily along the ridgeline, with extensive views in places, and the amount of elevation gain was about 2500’ in all, which is not a great deal for the distance we covered. The actual distance we covered became a matter of some debate. EC, who organized the hike, said that it was between 17 and 18 miles total, and that indeed was the amount recorded on his GPS. But the signs on the trail indicated that our total distance was over 10 miles each way. It took us over nine hours to complete the hike, and I couldn’t believe that we were going less than 2 miles per hour. Afterwards I looked at the PATC book that describes the trail in detail, and the book agrees with the signs. It is not clear what could have caused such a discrepancy.
EC has a somewhat pawkish sense of humor that on this occasion led to an amusing interchange during the second half of the hike. I had gone ahead for a little distance, but at one point I paused to wait for the others. EC came up, at which point the following dialogue ensued.
EC: Why are you waiting here?
Me: There’s a rattlesnake close to the left side of the path, so we need to tell everyone to veer slightly to the right.
EC: Did you hear him?
Me: I can see him.
EC: But are you sure? Did you actually hear him? Rattlesnakes generally start rattling and making a lot of noise when people get too close to them. [At this point the snake started coiling and uncoiling rapidly, with a great deal of hissing for emphasis.]
EC [brightly]: Yeah. Something like that.
I was not on the trails Wednesday and Thursday, but I spent some of the time working on maps for the August hikes for both CHC and Wanderbirds, as well as some preliminary planning for the hikes in the fourth quarter for each group.
On Friday (the 22nd) I went with GS and RR to scout the Neabsco Creek/Leesylvania hike that we were to lead on the following day. We were delighted with the hike, not only because the scenery provides a vivid contrast to the mountainside views that are more typical of our hikes – the vegetation along the Neabsco Creek in particular would not be out of place in Florida and the views of the Potomac from the main part of Leesylvania are stunning – but also because, in spite of the heat, the abundance of shade and the relatively low humidity made the hike quite comfortable. It was slightly more humid on Saturday, when we actually led the hike, but it still was much less oppressive than a hike in the open sun would have been. The hikers all expressed enthusiasm for the route after the hike was completed.
Nonetheless this hike was a major source of the discouragement I mentioned earlier. We had only 18 hikers on the bus. It could have been more, but we had nine cancelations that week. I realize that the weather forecast was not encouraging, but the club has hiked under similar conditions in the past.
It now has been three weeks since the Wanderbirds resumed bus hikes. The first one, on July 10th, had slightly over 30 hikers – not enough for the club not to lose money on the transaction, but at any rate a respectable amount. The second hike had to be canceled because we had only seven signups by the end of the week. The hike on Saturday also had a very low number of signups, but we had already contracted for the bus and were obliged to use it no matter how low the turnout might be.
The inroads of COVID have led to a two-and-a-half year hiatus in the usual pattern of the club activities. I was prepared for something of an uphill process in order to restore our former setup, but the results to date are far worse than I expected. In the past the club had over 200 members, of whom 30-40 were known as “regulars,” i.e., who generally appeared on the bus nearly every Sunday. Many of these former regulars have not responded at all to the invitations to the bus hikes. Then, too, as I’ve indicated in several entries, the club has done its best to keep going in some form or other by organizing trailhead hikes, in which people arrange their own transportation to meet at the trailhead. And again, many of the hikers who attended these have shown no interest to date in any of the bus hikes.
There are various reasons for this lack of response, of course. Many people are on travel during the summer – and this summer in particular, since it is the first one after two previous summers in which travel was actively discouraged. Then, too, the weather has been quite hot for the past ten days or so. It was in the high 90s for the better part of this week and today the temperature reached 100 in some areas.
I have to qualify this assessment to some extent. The newspapers lately have been full of dire warnings about the heat sweeping the nation. It may be so in other parts of the country, but in this area we certainly have had nothing like the dismal season of 2020, with nineteen days in succession of temperatures over ninety degrees. Mid-July is normally the hottest time of the year in DC and its environs, and the weather of the year to date is conforming to the usual pattern. It actually has been better than usual this year, because it has been somewhat less humid. And in the past the Wanderbirds club members have hiked in such weather without any difficulty, or at any rate have not found the difficulties of hiking in such weather insurmountable. One cannot get away from the fact that for two-and-a-half years the club has had no new members and that many of the current members have been less active during that time, thereby finding it difficult to resume their former level of activity. And yesterday morning, when I contemplated the large number of empty seats on the bus, I found myself wondering whether the club has aged beyond repair.
I am in a somewhat more cheerful frame of mind today, as a result of having scouted the hike for July 31st with VH. We hiked in the Skyland and Hawksbill areas of Shenandoah National Park, which are the park’s highest areas. The elevation certainly makes a difference. The temperature never rose above the low 80s where we hiked and the humidity was (by East Coast standards) also on the low side, which made for quite a comfortable hike, as well as a very scenic one. The hike goes up to the summit of Hawksbill, the highest peak in the park, with its extensive vista of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Massanuttens, and even the Alleghenies; and it also skirts along the Little Stony Man viewpoint, looking over the Shenandoah Valley and the town of Luray, its houses and shops studding the forest floor. The weather forecast for the following week calls for slightly more moderate temperatures; and I think that that circumstance, along with our stressing the much more comfortable conditions of the higher elevations at this time of year, will result in more signups for next Sunday.
My concerns about the Wanderbirds have, as I believe, a wider implication. The COVID pandemic has cut across the activities of several clubs – not hiking clubs alone by any means, but clubs devoted to activities such as choir-singing, film viewing, restaurant dining, conversing together in foreign languages, museum touring: to anything, in fact, that involves a large number of people getting together in close quarters. Many such organizations are undergoing similar struggles to restore themselves. Some of them will fail, and the national level of social life will be all the more impoverished as a result. Numerous articles have been written about how COVID has led to an increase in domestic violence, closures of schools and universities, exacerbation of social inequities, strain on the health care systems of various nations, and so on. Less emphasis has been laid on the inroads that the pandemic has made on leisure activities and the subsequent increase of isolation of people from their associates; and yet that may come to prove its most detrimental effect in the long run.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 575,022,722; # of deaths worldwide: 6,402,965; # of cases U.S.: 92,194,722; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,051,996.