What a day!

Sunday! Get up early, shower, get dressed, have breakfast, make sure your fingernails are clean and you have a fresh handkerchief in your pocket and get to church before the door closes and the congregation starts on the first hymn--which they sometimes do before the door closes! But make a detour to the cemetery and take a full watering can and deadhead the flowers! Pressure? No! All self-made.

I had time for a quick bowl of my favorite: raw bits with banana, today dressed with a tiny harvest of first blueberries from the bushes down by the pond. The flowers at the grave were beautiful. I had some minutes to stay, and look and breathe the calm mountain air.

Doug's sermon was on Philippians 4:4-9 and the thrust was "relax, don't worry"--all is under control and all will come out OK.

After church, the blue sky and the fresh air sidetracked me. I decided to go for a little walk. I drove to Wilmington, and this weekend you must know your way along the back roads because teh main road, VT 100, is cut off for bridge construction. The official detour must be about 20 minutes down to Readsboro and up Searsburg and down Rt 9 to Wilmington. Along the back roads, you have a trip maybe two miles longer, and is it beautiful out there! It is probably beautiful anywhere, on a day like this.

When I reached Rt 9 I drove through Wilmington and west another couple of miles or so and then turned onto the National Forest Road #71 that takes you up to Somerset Reservoir. There, the road ends and trails begin. On the schematic below, Somerset reservoir is in the upper left corner. This sign saw only when I came out of the woods after I had put Doug's message to the test.

I chose the East Side Trail that leads along the lake shores. It begins as a wonderful trail, smooth and clean as if you were walking through a groomed park, and I was glad about it, because I was dressed up in my Sunday's best for church.

Soon, there appeared obstacles--fallen trees, rocks, boulders, creek crossings where you had to dance over stones to keep your feet dry. I felt good! After all, just a few years back, Lulu and I crossed the Alps on foot along, over mountain trails. We were then 15 and 13 years old. We had our backpacks and sleeping bags and good shoe work and we were on our way for five days. So what can a lakeside trails hold for me other than the views over the lake, the peace of the woods, and the blue sky overhead? My only company was that nice woman's voice in Runkeeper that keeps you apprised of time and speed, and if you want more information you can pick up your phone and get to know all those other details.

For one who has done nothing for the past four or five weeks because of back aches and arthritis, I did pretty good. After a warm-up I was prancing along the trail at a decent clip of about 30 minutes per mile. I thought it was a good clip, because the prancing was slowed by the need to watch where you put your feet on the next step.

But the going got tougher and then there were some obstacles that made me think going forward would be easier than trying to go back. Eventually, I thought, without looking at a map, I get around this lake and back to the parking lot where I had left the car.

There was a crossing over a creek on shaky stones, and I realized that I was not as secure on my hind legs anymore as I used to be. There there were some boulders you had to climb up and over, or you had to jump down from. And the trail often became almost invisible at times, overgrown with weeds or defined only by the way stones were lined up over wet areas; definitely man had been here before and, thoughtfully, nailed an occasional way-sign to a tree. Those signs were between seven to nine feet above ground and hardly served as guides, because one had to keep one's eyes on the ground to determine the next step and occasionally raise one's sight quickly and just enough to make sure one was still going in the right direction.

Then there came a crossing over a large, wet area. Here, the path was well-marked by a foot log, but when I stepped on it, it crumbled, rotten as it was under its bark. I lost my balance and sat in the muck.

Muck! I said. If you ever went skiing on fresh snow, a few feet deep, and tried getting up, you know the situation I found myself in. Like the ski pole that sinks to the hand grip down into the snow, so my arm sunk into the muck to my elbow, my feet disappeared, and the so-called foot log could not serve to push myself out and up again. One overcomes any obstacle if the other choice is giving up completely. I had not seen a living soul on this trial since I got on it, and I had visions that, perhaps late this evening, rangers would check out the parking area and see my car and start wondering where its driver and perhaps its passengers might be--"roughing it somewhere deep in the woods, sitting around a campfire and getting ready to turn into their sleeping bags? We'll have to come back tomorrow and check this out."

So eventually I maneuvered myself--half hanging, half sitting--onto that rotten log, and from that position I got up on my feet again and my mind was made up! I will not try this crossing again. I walked on.

At the full hour of my hike, curiosity overcame me. There was an old tree on the tail side and it served as a bench and I sat and took out my phone and switched to Google maps and I saw that I had covered about one third of the lake's length. You know of course that the Data signals you can get in a place like Somerset Reservoir, one hour's walk into the thick of the woods, are stronger than the ones we get at home! I was glad about that! Anyway: one third way in one hour, would make six thirds and six hours plus the end was formed by two long arms to get around which, by distance alone would be the equivalent of perhaps two more hours for a total of eight to hike round this lake and it was now almost noon. What would you have done? I turned around. I'm glad I did. When I came back to the muck, the hollow where I had taken my seat was filling with water, black as the devil's blood.

Going back out of the woods took me a half hour longer than going in. But I made it. The shoes I wore I had thought to wear to Evie's wedding. The shirt might have served for the same occasion, but perhaps not, because January in southern VA is not like August in southern VT. And my slaks--well, they are of an original color not unlike the muck with which they were caked, so maybe they'll serve. All of them, except the shoes, are in the wash. The shoes were new New Balance walkers. They have not given me a new balance, as I noticed now that I got proof I have lost my old.

During this day I thought a lot about the sermon this morning. I'm glad I was there to hear it. I came home and showered and changed and made me my meal--marinated grilled chicken tenders with stir fried mixed veggies, and a bottle of lil' Kola Chardonnay. All this in place of 'relax, sit back, have a home brew,' which in normal life replaces so easily the words Paul and Timotheus wrote to the Philippians.