A change of pace

Literally. About three MPH on average.

After coffee and breakfast this morning Tal and I set out to fulfil a promise we'd made to ourselves early in the week -- to do something fun on Saturday. We had options, some of them more fun than others: the Garnet and Black game, marking the end of football spring training, at Williams-Brice in Columbia; a ground-breaking for a new chapel at Gravatt, the diocesan camp and conference center; the Spring Fling at Monetta Farrier, to include horse-shoeing demonstrations an anvil shoot (very exciting, by the way) among others.

It turned out to be a hike -- and the closest of the things on our list of possibilities -- at the Lick Fork Creek Recreation Area. The Horn Creek Trail is a loop of 5.7 miles and "travels along the hardwood bottoms, across streams, and along pine ridges" (from the Sumter National Forest brochure). We are home now, weary but enthused. We walked in sudden showers and through just as sudden dappled sun, cold and damp to warm and steamy. Check out the trail at the link provided below.

I had the camera in the backpack, but used it little. Being aware that people with cameras really irritate people without cameras, I didn't want to push my luck! A snapshot is one thing, a 15-minute process to set up a shot is another. This was an outing to enjoy together. Having Tal standing around waiting for me wasn't part of the deal, from my perspective anyway. These are two of the flowers, however, that caught both out attention and paused our steady forward progress.

The trillium were in a low, swampy, heavily shaded spot and the lilies, interestingly, were scattered in several places on a slope in a place that looks as though it floods when the creek is up.

I can't help, tired and satisfied as I am at the moment, but reflect on the times I've felt this sort of contentment. I'm not going to enumerate at this point. Rather, I simply want to acknowledge that, while I'm a good priest, perform well on assorted office tasks and like to struggle with words, I also need to be outside and to make my body work. Today I was wearing Timberland boots, Carhartt jeans, a Life Is Good tee shirt, a vest from REI and a Royal Robbins cap -- all pretty indestructible clothing, nothing froufrou, and pretty much the real me!

http://sctrails.net/trails/MAPS/HornCreekMTB%20map.html

The trek to Eagle Rock

This day began the same way yesterday did: a 6:30 alarm, a 7:00 call home, a shower, breakfast at 8:00. After breakfast I tidied my little room and, sitting in the lobby where WIFI is available, gave e-mail about an hour. I felt productive and, when I closed up the computer, I felt finished. That’s one of my most persistent longings – to feel finished. So, today I know I have received at rare gift. I am grateful.

As lunchtime approached, I organized my photography vest with an extra camera battery, a polarizing filter, crackers, sunglasses and the “Kanuga Trails” map and began the trek to Eagle Rock via a trail known as Baldwin’s Reach. Although it is only about two miles from my room to Eagle Rock, over half of the way a steady climb, it took me nearly an hour to reach my destination.

Other than not being a young as I used to be slowing my pace, along the way a melodious brook caught my attention, resulting in a slight detour to get closer to it. While I watched and listened to the water, gradually I became aware that I was surrounded by small yellow flowers tucked into the shade all around me. What a surprise; what a delight. Efforts at getting close enough to photograph them and at getting the exposure and light balance right seems to have paid off, though I did tramp away up the trail afterward with damp knees.

It was the sound of the water, though and not the flowers, that changed the way I walked today. I saw less and heard more: the whisper of the wind in the tall pines; the rasping clatter of the back-lit, fluttering, golden leaves still clinging to the limbs of the beech trees; the multitude of chirps, tweets and other calls of the birds along the path, which for most part I could not see.

With high thin clouds shielding the sun somewhat Eagle Rock's long views weren’t particularly noteworthy. But, to me with the persistent breeze providing a hushed sigh above and around me, it was the perfect place to spend some time. I had Elie Wiesel’s “Night” in the vest and I read -- with my back to a warm boulder -- for about an hour. The subject of the book, his account of being in a Nazi death camp as a teenager, conflicted with the scene in front of me rather dramatically, somehow making me experience both of them more intensely.

I returned to Kanuga proper on the northern arc of the Corn Mountain Loop, an old road which gave me much more stable places to put my feet than descending Baldwin’s Reach would have. All told … a three hour excursion, making for a really great day. .

The long way around

Not as young as I used to be, not as young as I used to be ... That was my mantra this afternoon as I hiked the trails of Kanuga. Not content to choose one place to go, I studied the map, linked three trails together and set out. First of all, I was a bit too heavily dressed, even though the day remained in the upper 40s, low 50s all day. The outer layer came off in the first 15 minutes. And, secondly, I can no longer made the pace I used to set, particularly on the steady climbing portions of the paths. All that is to say that I had to deal with expectations and disappoitment as I settled into the hike. Once I got over those frustrations, I enjoyed the adventure.

From Camp Bob to Long Rocks to High Rocks to the Wolf Mountain Rest and back to Kanuga. I went in that order so as to avoid the treacherous final climb to the summit of Wolf Mountain. Been there, done that in the past, but the ascents along the way were hard nonetheless. And, of course, my walking stick, which I made while here last summer during a guest period, is hanging on its lovely hook by my coat closet in the laundry room. As always, though, the difficulty encountered along the way was quickly forgotten as I looked out, satisfied, at the long views available this time of year at the locations intimated by the trail names.

That these forests are in transition is obvious this time of year with the foliage not yet on the decidious trees. The results of the 2005 Christmas ice storm is evident everywhere, the fallen trees beginning to settle in for their long rot with skads of 18-inch white pines covering the open forest floor all around them. More sad is the march of the woolly adelgid infestation through the hemlocks. Many of these trees close in to the conference center buildings have been treated (although not all successfully), but there is nothing to do in the forest but to let the infestion run its course, changing for a very long time the look and compostion of the forest.

Where to tomorrow? Eagle Rock, perhaps.