looking back at bad decisions

wooden stairs go down from a green forrested area and end at a shallow river

One of my part-time jobs is having a big company retreat at a fancy resort in Vermont. This is a good opportunity for me to meet my colleagues in real life. Since COVID I’ve curtailed my travel to nearly zero (first for COVID reasons and now mostly for save-the-planet and “I’m a homeowner now and I like being here” reasons) and it is nice to get a chance for a change of scenery. The place where this event is held is like a Vermont Disneyland, almost unrecognizable to me as Vermont even though the actual town is the same size as the one I live in. I work for a small group (maybe five of us) within a larger group of about 300 people.

I showed up to the event and did not know anyone since my colleagues hadn’t arrived yet. I decided to go for a short hike. The hike, which I’d researched online, said it was “moderate” which me, a non-hiker, didn’t quite understand but I figured it was one step up from “easy” so I would be fine. And, ultimately, I was fine. But the hike was strenuous for me, someone who walks a mile or two most days, but rarely uphill. And it was sort of warm out. The good news was I was well dressed for it and decently prepared. I had the foresight to pack water, snacks, bug spray, sunglasses, a good hat and a well-charged cell phone. But what I hadn’t done was tell anyone where I was going (“on a hike!”) and as the trail got steeper and I got more sweaty and tired out and looked at the rest of the uphill trail as I was in a strangely-empty forest I got a sudden ping of nerves.

I learned a weird family story when my great uncle Johnny died in 2005. He was from the branch of my dad’s family who had stayed in Vermont when everyone else moved to California or New York. I did not know him well because my dad was not a real “hang with the family” sort of guy. There was a photo of Johnny at his memorial service with his brother, my grandfather, and his own father. The caption, written by his daughter, read “Daddy, Uncle Joe and Grandpa West. Picture shot day Grandpa died on the Long Trail.” This seems like one of those stories which, if it were in your family, someone would have told you. But my family on that side were not great storytellers, so I didn’t know this one. Apparently he’d dropped dead of a heart attack, Johnny had stayed with the body while my grandad went to get help. It was 1932 and he was forty-five years old. That whole story sprang into my head unbidden as I scrambled up the side of a short mountain and walked across a stream I later learned was called West Branch Little River. I was on the Long Trail and I was really tired out. I wondered if I should text someone what specific subtrail I was on–at least I had great cell service–but then it felt like one of those ominous portent things and I ultimately didn’t. It wasn’t smart. I realized there is sometimes a gap between knowing the right thing to do and actually doing it.

a bad photo of a sideways photo in a photo album with the caption that it saysin the post. You can barely make out two men standing next to a sign saying Long Trail.

It wound up okay, the trail started going down not up. I came back to the friendly little Barnes Camp visitors center. I sat in the shade and drank a lot of water. I showed back up to the event and saw a few faces I recognized. I introduced myself to the President of Flickr and chatted with the CFOs daughter. The endorphins of the hike gave me a little more capacity for chitchat and I enjoyed myself. Headed home before I hit a wall of tired and overpeopling. Once I got back home I told a few people about the little hike, about how it was lovely but also oddly scary in a way I didn’t expect, and how I’d tell them if I was heading out into the woods alone next time, as much a promise to myself as to them.

a little hiking

hummingbird at the feeder

At some point, I will max out what I am able to do with my iphone’s camera, but a combination of good luck, a steady hand and some good lighting have led to some impressive shots. This is one of them. Summer is shaping up pretty okay. I am back from a speedy road trip to St Paul MN via the Baseball Hall of Fame and a motel with unadvertised free kittens. I got to spend a few days in the twin cities on both sides of the river and saw lots of libraries and a few good diners. Was waiting to post this until my photos were up but they’re still not all up so here we are.

I’ve been back in Westport trying to go to as many places for quickie day hikes as I can. I had to get over my general aversions to 1) hiking alone and 2) driving someplace to go hiking. I found a good day pack that holds just enough stuff and have gotten better at finding and evaluating trails, printing maps, following trail directions and signs, and keeping bug and sun hazards to a minimum. I’ve always really liked the outdoors but have rarely felt competent enough to go for long hikes, where “long” for me is more than an hour or so. I am gradually getting over that. Here are a few recent hikes I’ve been on, left here as much for my own memory-jogging as for information that might be helpful to others.

Helpful websites – a few sites are the jumping off points for most of my exploration

The Westport Land Trust has a “places to walk” page with local walks
The Trustees of Reservations do land trust stuff at a state level and have a places to visit section
Dartmouth Natural Resources Trust has a trails section
– The Commonwealth of Massachusetts just redid parts of their website leading to a lot of broken links from Google but they have this list of places to hike and this general parks page.

So, wishing I had been doing this for previous seasonal hiking, here’s a list of where I’ve been so far.

Westport Town Farm – really just a lovely walk through a field but it’s one of the prettiest fields around.
Dunham’s Brook Conservation Area – an actual place to walk that I can walk TO. A few short paths one of which I think would be longer but ends at what is now a cornfield
Old Harbor Wildlife Refuge – a short set of trails that connect two roads. Teeny parking lot which had a slightly odd dude in it when I was there.
Herb Hadfield Conservation Area – another “connect two roads” set of trails. More well-marked than most.
Bird Street Conservation Area in Stoughton – about halfway between Jim and me (thanks MeetWays!), a nice simple trail that goes some neat places.
– I was put off from visiting the Freetown Fall River State Forest because of the big “crime” section of their Wikipedia page (though seriously, escaped emu?) and wound up at the Copicut Woods instead which were totally abandoned on the 95° day when I was there.
– Yesterday despite flash flood warnings–nothing like a cell phone warning alarm going off just as you’ve started your hike–we walked around Ponkapoag Pond which is part of the Blue Hills Reservation. In the pouring rain. This trail is less than half an hour from downtown Boston so I suspect this is the only way we would have gotten it to ourselves the way we did. Or maybe it was the flash floods closing down all the roads. Had a great time and found the best boardwalk I’ve ever been on. Fascinating part of Massachusetts with some neat (and somewhat appalling) history.

Got a few more Westport/Dartmouth walks planned over the next few weeks but they will have to wait until my boots dry off which, by the looks of things, may take some time. I’m sure Sarah Scully did not think that she’d be kicking off a whole hiking extravaganza by gifting me these boots several years ago, but that’s exactly what seems to have happened.