Hiking in Lost River – Echoes from the past in the nooks of Shenandoah National Park – Putin’s onslaught continues – Difficulties confronting occupation of Ukraine – Signs of the waning pandemic – Evening statistics
I spent this past weekend with various friends at cabins in Lost River State Park, a park located in the valley beside the Big Ridge Mountain. Initially we had planned to have dinner during one of the evenings at a local restaurant, but the snowstorm that came over the weekend forced us to alter our plans and dine together every night at the largest cabin. That did not matter, for the group (14 of us in all) brought so much food that we easily accommodated the need for eating on our own for an extra evening. The meal on Friday set the pattern for the rest of the evenings, with us all converging to the largest cabin at about 5:00, snacking on various appetizers until the main courses were produced between 6:30 and 7:00, with much feasting and chatting comfortably together and sitting about a blazing fire until 9:00 or thereabouts. “Et le vin donc, mes enfants! ça coulait autour de la table comme l’eau coule à la Seine” (And so the wine, my children, flowed about the table like water flows in the Seine” – Ėmile Zola, L’Assommoir); we brought several bottles of wine to contribute to the festivities, and we did justice to all of them.
The snowstorm did not really settle down until well into Saturday morning, and we did not start hiking until 11:00 AM. It was cold and blustery and overcast – not dull-gray but not bright either. As we went into higher elevations the snowdrifts added to the challenges of ascending. Both on this day and on Sunday the drifts on occasion nearly up to my knee. On Saturday we went along a service road that winds upward to the White Oak Trail, which we used (still ascending) to reach the Cranny Crow overlook, whose view extends over five counties. The mountains in the distance had a terraced appearance that was enhanced by the snow cover. I returned by the Howard Lick Trail once I descended and went along a couple of additional short trails before returning to the cabin. But eventually my hands were getting chilled and so I returned to the cabin rather than risk getting frostbitten. The hike was only 7½ miles in all, with 1200 feet of elevation gain, but the effort of plowing through the snow made it somewhat more arduous than these figures would indicate.
On Sunday the trails were likewise covered with snow, but it was a splendid day: sunny, very clear blue sky, hardly any wind at all. This time we went up along the East Ridge Trail, whose ascent is similar in scope to the one to Cranny Crow. The others returned by way of the Light Horse Harry Lee Trail, but I extended my hike to going up the Red Fox Trail to the southwest corner of the park – which I had not seen before, although I have been to the park many times. Then I descended down Piney Ridge Road (the pavement was not visible at all on account of the snow cover) and then the Copse Cove Trail. This last trail was a bit of a challenge, because the snow covered the trail path completely. The blazes are sometimes placed rather far apart, and various animal tracks occasionally misled me into veering off of the trail slightly. But it was easy enough to work out with a little patience.
Today’s hike with the Vigorous Hikers went along the Pocoscin Hollow area, where we did a substantial amount of bushwhacking to obtain glimpses of various objects we would not have been able to see from the established trails: a grove of immense tulip poplars (one so wide that the only way that six of us could extend our reach around it was to extend a hiking pole in one hand and grasping our neighbor’s with the other), the remains of a few homesteads, an old deserted graveyard, a steam engine used for heating purposes, a machine for making barrel staves. Shenandoah National Park was formerly a miscellaneous collection of private farms and the majority of their owners were forced by the state’s use of “eminent domain” to sell their land to the government. It is still possible to come across these reminders of a time, close to a century by now, in which the land was privately owned and consisted of farms rather than forest. The snow fell much less heavily in this area than it did further west, and most of it had melted by the day of our hike.
Former White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has said that Russia’s intensifying of its onslaught on Ukraine and its attacks on civilians are signs that its government is getting “desperate.” Last week Putin has also set up a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss what it called “the military biological activities of the U.S. on the territory of Ukraine” – a patent fabrication, which may be a tactic for bringing in the use of chemical weapons. It is clear that the passionate resistance of the Ukrainians to the invasion has taken Putin by surprise, but how long can they continue to struggle against such odds?
Nonetheless, while Putin might very well conquer Ukraine, he almost certainly cannot occupy it. It takes, on the average, about 1 soldier per 20 inhabitants to contain an occupied country, especially when the inhabitants bitterly resent the intruders. Even if half of the Ukrainians become refugees, Putin would need a force of about 1 million to occupy the country permanently, and he simply does not have the resources to sustain it.
Slowly the pandemic’s impact is lessening. At this point about 2% of Americans lives in counties with a “high” COVID community level. The remaining counties are rated as “low” or “medium,” meaning that there is no recommendation to wear a mask or where the immunocompromised should take extra precautions. Hospitalizations and deaths continue to fall and probably will decrease as the winter season ends and warmer weather sets in. Mask mandates are more or less gone (Hawaii, the last state to maintain one, will terminate its mandate on the 25th), but in this area, at least, people are still wearing them. My bank requests customers to wear masks and when I go to food stores and other services most customers wear masks voluntarily. But there are exceptions. At the office for tax consultation, for instance, none of the employees wear masks and the request for customers to wear them has been scrapped. As one goes further from the capital, of course, the use of masks sharply decreases. My fellow-hikers and I stopped at the store of the gas station in Madison, VA. The area is quite rural: the town contains less than 300 people, while the population of the entire county is barely over 13,000. Needless to say, all of the customers and staff were bare-faced.
Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 459,229,934; # of deaths worldwide: 6,066,461; # of cases U.S.: 81,207,341; # of deaths; U.S.: 990,920.
Today’s statistics as of 9:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 461,530,962; # of deaths worldwide: 6,073,176; # of cases U.S.: 81,244,076; # of deaths; U.S.: 992,302.