Date: 2017-07-30
From: MA 23

To: Tyringham Main Rd. 
Miles today: 12.1
Weather: scattered clouds

What a glorious day!  It began inauspiciously.  It was 48 degrees out when we got up at 5:00.  But we started with a big hill, which warmed us up.  Arlene, Bill, Terri, and I started out together, and Lizzie hiked south. The trail first took us through meadows, where we saw a red barn and passed a pond with bullfrogs singing. We stopped briefly at the Ledges to look out over a valley.  When we got partway up Mt. Wilcox Arlene and I came upon Bill.  He was sitting on a rock at the edge of Benedict Pond.  When he got up he told us he'd been contemplating the nature of existence and had figured it out, "The ineffability of God is in the quantum signature."  This can't be known epistemologically but only ontologically.  Well!  My cup of McDonald's coffee didn't get me nearly as far.   Maybe I should have had a large.  I sat by the pond briefly but didn't contemplate the meaning of life or the universe.  Instead I thought how much the pond reminded me of the lake in Maine where our camp was during my childhood.  It felt really good to be there and to remember the happy times I spent there with my family.  We continued on as a group, with Bill talking about quantum mechanics.  From there he told us a story about Niels Bohr.  A young scientist came to visit Bohr and found him in his yard doing household chores. The young scientist noticed there was a horseshoe hanging on the house and asked Bohr if he believed that hanging the horseshoe on his house would bring him good luck.  Bohr replied, "They tell me they work whether you believe in them or not."Our next group stop was at a pond on top of Mt. Wilcox. There were dead trees in the pond, and we speculated on how they got there.  Then Terri noticed some nearby trees that had been gnawed by beavers and two beaver lodges.  We surmised that the pond had gotten deeper from the beavers' damming up the stream at the outlet of the pond.  One particularly large tree had been gnawed a lot but had neither fallen nor died.  Bill said the beavers had it on a 5-year plan.  We wondered: how big are bullfrogs?  What do beavers eat?  We continued hiking through evergreen forest.  In some places there were large patches of ferns, with at least three different kinds.  It was quiet in the woods - no birdsong, only the muffled sounds of our own feet on the pine-needle-covered ground.  We passed magnificent huge pine trees, some three feet in diameter. The temperature was perfect - neither too hot nor too cold, with a light breeze.  When we emerged from the woods the trail took us across neat pastures under a deep blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds.  The low humidity made the air clear, and everything looked fresh and clean.  We also passed through wetlands on boardwalks and bog bridges.  We stopped to talk quite a while to a local couple out hiking with their cute bulldog Hazel.  Merry, the wife, had thruhiked the Pacific Crest Trail.  This led to a discussion of where we all would like to hike: the Camino de Santiago in Spain, the Te Araroa Trail in New Zealand.  I want to hike the Allegheny Trail, which runs the length of West Virginia in the mountains.  (It would be shameful not to hike a substantial trail that's in my own backyard.). Arlene has decided she's not a long-distance hiker: she doesn't plan to hike anything longer that 45 days in the future!?! Merry is planning to hike the Trail du Mont Blanc, which is in France, Switzerland and Italy, next September and is looking for people to go with her.  We exchanged contact information.  About a mile from the end we crossed a paved road with a snack stand in someone's yard.  It was a closet-sized shed containing soft drinks, chips, cookies, Poptarts, etc. that you pay for on the honor system.  It even had books to exchange like a little free library and a picnic table in the shade.  We stopped there for a drink and chatted with a hiker called Spider Man.This day had a little of everything - varied terrain, beautiful weather, encounters with interesting people, coffee before the hike, and spare time at the end of the day to relax.  It's not the perfect day, but it's the perfect hiking day.