December 31, 2021: the year in retrospect

12/31/2021

End-of-year retrospective – Ted Cruz places Olympia about 9000 miles west of its actual location – The passing of an icon – Evening statistics

We are now seeing the end of the second year of the pandemic and it is natural to look back upon 2021 to review the events it has brought about.  The changes that have occurred over 2021 are much less striking than those of 2020 – naturally enough, for the pandemic has been the status quo for the entire year this time. But changes, though less noticeable, have nonetheless occurred:  the situation now is different from what it had been at the end of 2020.

On a personal level, at least, my health has not changed.  As before, I have been staying active.  I have not hiked quite the same amount as I did last year, but the total is still over 2,000 miles for the year and the elevation gain of my hikes has been greater, exceeding 300,000 feet this year.  Body weight has remained more or less constant. 

During the initial months of the pandemic, masks were recommended for contact of any kind, either indoors or out.  But eventually the consensus emerged that the virus is much less transmissible out of doors.  Now, although I continue to don a mask whenever I enter a store or any other public building, I no longer wear one when going upon errands until I am obliged to enter an interior.  The exception occurs when I am in very crowded areas, but for the most part I have avoided these.

The advent of the vaccines has infused a greater degree of confidence in activities that involve contact with others.  Social life has certainly become more varied than it was last year.  This year it was possible to take airplane flights without too much risk, whereas all of my travel during 2020 was by car.  And there have been parties at people’s residences, including my own, as well as the gatherings among my hiking friends out of doors.  I was able to visit relatives more frequently, to enter museums, and, at one point, even to attend a concert.  Of course such activities are all predicated on the fact that the participants are vaccinated.  My relatives have all received the vaccines, while at the museums and restaurants and concert halls I have entered, no one was admitted until he or she gave proof of vaccination.  Travel plans for 2022 are more ambitious still, since they include several trips abroad.  Up to this point all travel I have taken during the pandemic has been domestic.    

This relatively relaxed state of affairs has enabled me to make some progress towards covering portions of the Appalachian Trail that have so far eluded my grasp.  During the beginning of the year it seemed inadvisable to stay at a hotel anywhere – the vaccines had not been distributed yet – and afterwards other travel interfered with the project.  But I was able to use a shuttle service for the first time when I hiked in New Jersey, and that facilitated matters considerably.  It is much easier to cover several miles on the trail when one does not have to go back the same distance all over again on foot from the end of a segment to the beginning.  I hope to complete the portions that remain for me in New Jersey and Virginia (20½ and 43 miles respectively) and to cover a fair amount of the trail in New York as well.  There are about 90 miles of the AT that go through New York.  There is actually one part that is possible for me to reach while staying with my aunt in Manhattan.  The Appalachian Trail has a train station in the vicinity of Poughkeepsie – the only train station on the entire trail – and it can be reached from Manhattan on weekends.  In addition, the long-deferred Appalachian Trail Vista, a gathering of trail hikers from across the country, is scheduled for beginning of August in New Paltz.  If I manage to complete the entirety of the trail in New York as well as the segments I’ve not yet done in New Jersey and Virginia, I will have covered, with the exception of about 55 miles in North Carolina, all of the AT from Georgia to the border between Connecticut and Massachusetts.  There remains the portion of the trail going through Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, which is still several hundred miles, even taking into account that I’ve completed over 70 miles in Maine. 

It seems incredible that at the beginning of the pandemic the most pessimistic of the analysts predicted no more than one half-million deaths at the most.  There was even speculation that pandemic would begin to wane by the end of February of this year.  No one predicted the emergence of the delta variant, nor its severity.  Experts are now cautiously holding out hopes that the virus will no longer be a pandemic after this coming winter ends, but of course there is no telling whether yet another variant will emerge with a severity comparable to delta.  In this respect the omicron variant holds out hope, for its effects on the whole are much less severe than previous variants and if it becomes the dominant variant the mortality rate will diminish considerably.  To counter-balance this optimism, it must be borne in mind that the death toll to date is rapidly approaching 850,000 and days in which over 1,000 Americans succumb to the virus are not uncommon.  I hope I am wrong, but I think that the death toll will exceed one million over the next few months. 

We need a bit of comic relief amid such gloomy prognostics, and what better source can there be than our own home-grown politicians?  Ted Cruz has sallied forth to protest against the restrictions in “WA” against dancing during musical events, with the exception of weddings.  In his concern for protecting the rights of party-goers from those treacherous killjoy Democrats, Cruz overlooked the fact that “WA” does not in this instance signify the state of Washington but instead means “Western Australia.”  Onlookers may have already suspected that geography is not what bridge-players would call his “long suit” when earlier this year he rushed to aid his fellow-Texans during a state-wide power outage by means of a flight from Washington that mysteriously wound up in Cancun instead.

We have lost one of the great comedic stars of the age.  Betty White died at her home this evening, just 17 days short of her 100th birthday.  The list of her seemingly endless number of roles in radio and television (she worked longer in television than anyone else in that medium, earning her an entry in the Guinness Book of Records in 2018) is currently being compiled in various obituaries and it is needless to repeat them here.  But there is one aspect of her career that cannot go unremarked in a journal that contains so many references to hiking.  During her childhood Betty White had aspirations of being a ranger in the U.S. Forest Service.  The Service at that time was not accepting women as rangers; had it done so, White’s life might have taken an entirely different turn.  It is pleasant to record that she did realize her wish eventually:  in November, 2010, she was named an honorary Forest Ranger for activities in various animal charities, including several for veterinary research help treat companion and service pets and wild animals. 

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 288,366,314; # of deaths worldwide: 5,452,655; # of cases U.S.: 55,609,910; # of deaths; U.S.: 846,902.