Hiking in Caledonia – The Quarry Gap shelter – A glimmering of hope – Evening statistics
This entry will, I trust, be somewhat more cheerful than the previous one. To begin with, it was a beautiful day – one of the many beautiful days we’ve been having this autumn – and I took advantage of it by going to Caledonia and hiking the various trails in the park and surrounding it. Normally the Wanderbirds visit this area in the early summer, when the rhododendrons are in full bloom. This year, of course, the Wanderbirds were not hiking as a group during the summer and I did not go there on my own. The past summer was extremely warm and humid, and Caledonia, being at a fairly low altitude, tends to be steamy under such conditions. But late autumn and early winter are good times to visit it as well. It is a good deal less crowded then and the trails have a great variety of flora, including several groves of rhododendron, mountain laurel, and pine. I used several of the trails that were included in previous group hikes and wound up doing 17 miles in all. This hike has pushed my total mileage for the year to over 2,000. I had made two resolutions the past New Year: to complete the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania and to hike at least 2,000 miles for the year, and now both goals have been reached.
What made the hike especially pleasant, however, was that I was able to do something I had wanted to do for a long time: that is, to have lunch at the Quarry Gap shelter. We passed the shelter numerous times on various Wanderbirds hikes, but always within the last two or three miles of our endpoint, when everyone was eager to get back to the bus. One of the loops I did today covered 3-4 miles of the Appalachian Trail and the shelter was within that segment, so that is where I took my main break and ate at leisure. There are a few shelters on the Appalachian Trail more elaborate than the Quarry Gap shelter (the Blood Mountain shelter in Georgia and the Jim and Molly Denton shelter in Virginia come to mind) but none are as elegant. The approach itself is beautiful, particularly from the south, via a series of stone steps surrounded by rhododendron. The wood looks freshly varnished at all times, there is an abundance of seats and tables for people who wish to stop there, and it is always decorated with fresh flowers – the only shelter I’ve ever seen where this occurs. I got there at 1:00 and I happened to meet one of the shelter’s maintainers. She was performing several tasks associated with upkeep, such as restocking it with cut wood and sweeping out the floors. She said that someone comes up at least once every week for maintenance purposes. She was pleased when I expressed my enjoyment of eating lunch in such a beautiful setting and admitted that she and the others take a bit of pride in making it as comfortable and supplying as many amenities as possible. They are planning to equip it with special decorations for the upcoming Christmas festivities.
On the radio during my drive home (which, incidentally, takes about as long as getting to the Thornton Gap entrance of Shenandoah National Park from my area, i.e., less than two hours), I heard Dr. Fauci being quoted to the effect that, if the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine receives FDA approval and if it is distributed with sufficient efficiency, matters will be nearly back to normal by the beginning of the third quarter in 2021. And in fact the FDA did approve the use of the vaccine later in the day. It was not an especially resounding endorsement – there are still unknown factors about the vaccine. But the need is pressing. The death toll was more than 3,100 yesterday, the largest daily amount to date. Canada as well as the U.K. has begun to use it, and the consensus is that its benefits outweigh its potential risks. It will still be a difficult struggle during the winter as the number of infections increase after the Christmas and New Year celebrations, but with luck the vaccine will start to dent the impact of the COVID virus in February or March.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 70,681,549; # of deaths worldwide: 1,587,463; # of cases U.S.: 16,022,964; # of deaths; U.S.: 299,596.