A timeless spirit

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Dedicated to Christine Julia (CJ) Hobbs

“You’re now free mama. Go build that fire so I can come find you in the night.”

This poignant prayer was offered by a former PATC ridgerunner as she posted her mother’s obituary on Facebook.  Her mother was a former park ranger who instilled in her daughter a lifetime of love, respect and stewardship for the outdoors and the Appalachian Trail.

My hope is that her mother’s spirit finds its way to every campfire, everywhere, and spreads peace, love and joy in the cast of its flickering glow.  May its sparks be our forgiven sins sailing away into the velvet beyond.

Campfires have a mythical place in the American psyche.  The romance of cowboy’s chuckwagon fire and the ambiance of an American Indian pow wow fire have served as literary and cinematic window dressing for generations. Norman Rockwell’s “The Scoutmaster” inspired more than one boomer to outdoor leadership.

“The Scoutmaster” Norman RockwellMore recently, campfires have been recognized as a form of therapy.  According to Axios, “A growing number of therapists and nonprofits are tapping into the therapeutic powers for fire to help veterans, recovering addicts and at-risk teens.” 

“The Scoutmaster” Norman Rockwell

Watching flames dance and sparks fly can be soothing and even mesmerizing as you let reality slip into cruise control and you tune to a better channel.  Sitting fireside reportedly can lower blood pressure and boost relaxation.  It can also improve your sleep. No doubt fire has served that purpose since the beginning of human history.

One of my “happy places,” as a PATC volunteer, is parking my butt in a chair near the fire at the Indian Run maintenance hut or gathering around the fire at Hoodlum’s September trail maintenance workshop. 

Indian Run Maintenance Hut Shenandoah National Park

Indian Run Maintenance Hut Shenandoah National Park

I love being with like-minded people, imagining the workday’s caterpillar morphing into midnight’s butterfly.   Somehow the stress diminishes as my breathing slows. My muscles slacken as the embers brighten and the stories are told, their imagery unfolding in flaming brush strokes.

Writer Terry Tempest Williams described the magic of the outdoors, “Public lands are public commons, breathing spaces in a country that is increasingly holding its breath.”  She added, “We stand before a giant sequoia and remember the size of our hearts instead of the weight of our egos.” 

The eternal light burns in many forms.  May our dear friend’s mother be free now to build that fire.  May her timeless spirit be a gift that lights the way for all of us.

Sisu

Hurricane Helene Clean-up

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Lots going on in this photo. The river jumped the bank and wiped out the connector trail to the Appalachian Trail (AT) in Taylor’s Valley, Va. The homes in the background have been knocked off their foundations and soaked in flood water. They are uninhabitable. The group is hiking to the AT to clear blowdowns. The Virginia Creeper Trail which runs parallel to the AT on lower ground, on an old short line rail bed, has been erased. It was the area’s economic engine. To date congress has not appropriated money to restore public lands in the affected states.

Mt. Rogers National Recreation Area, Damascus, Va. December 3 – 6, 2024 — The tragedy of Hurricane Helene has been well documented by the news media. Entire towns in Western North Carolina and East Tennessee have been obliterated. Even I-40 was largely destroyed near Davenport Gap.

In these situations, human life and recovery take rightful priority over everything else. My colleagues and I recently spent four days working out of Damascus, Virginia, “Trail Town USA” because national bicycle trails and the Appalachian Trail intersect there.

Flood water soaked the center of town in about two feet of water. All around bridges were obliterated. Now, most of the town is open for business and recovery is well underway. Superficial recovery looks fine, but the deeper full recovery may take years.

As FEMA and other agencies have been doing their work, attention has turned to the recovery of public lands which include the AT.

Thousands of large trees were down, blocking the pathway. Root balls ripped the tread to shreds in places at the same time rushing water scoured and erased the pathway from existence. This is an eight-foot vertical drop created by the root ball on the right.

For reference, the 2,200-mile AT is maintained by a collection of 30 volunteer clubs. Each has a section for which it is responsible. My club, the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC) is responsible for 240 miles. In addition, we maintain another 800 miles of hiking trails in the National Capitol Region. We can do that because we live in an urbanized area of 23 million people.

Volunteers gather for the morning safety briefing at the AT visitor center in Damascus.

For the PATC, volunteers are plentiful. Clubs in more rural areas are less fortunate. They don’t have a dense population base from which to draw. Most of the southern clubs fall into the latter category. They’ve called for help. That’s why we were there with volunteers from five of the eight Virginia clubs. We are all committed to preserve and protect the AT. All for one and one for all.

As we marched in on the first day, the damage to the Virginia Creeper Trail below us was obvious. Steel Railroad bridges were bent, twisted and hydraulically washed far from their moorings. It’s going to take $ millions to restore this national treasure.

As noted, thousands of trees were down. Many of these were live 30-inch tulip poplars – big, heavy and full of unusual binds that release stored energy in unpredictable ways. It was not amateur hour.

This is why we clear blowdowns. Imagine yourself as a hiker pawing through mile after mile of this.

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    This is called bucking and limbing. It took a couple of hours to clear this copse.
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As you can see, the first day was cold and snowy. Winter is poking its nose under the blankets. Soon the ground will be frozen rock hard. The weather favored the second day.

We were in an area where the contract arborists had proceeded us. They did some heavy lifting that volunteers with aging, less limber bodies would have struggled. We still had clean up and side trails to clear.

We saw mile after mile of profound damage. War zone was an apt analogy.

Danger persists. This “widow maker” could come down at any time. It would not take much wind or ice to bring it down.

Plenty left for the volunteer sawyers.

None of us had ever seen anything like this. Thank heaven for the rigorous training standards required by the National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service.

It will be a long time before the southern Appalachians return to their factory settings. It was an honor for me and four other PATC members to help, to contribute and to prepare for tread repair next year. I expect we’ll will be sending volunteers for several months soon after spring thaw.

Sisu

The Antidote for our Times

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Friends out walking and doing a little trail maintenance in Shenandoah National Park.

The Great Outdoors, November 18, 2024 — The rhythm of time flows differently when boots stir the leaf litter, the trees squeak spooky messages in the wind, the sun splashes through the trees, and campfires crackle.

Long distance hikers love this ambiance. We revert to the circadian rhythms of our ancient ancestors. In the woods, the rigidity of railroad time gives way to the ancient and more traditional rise and fall of the sun. We awaken at dawn and sleep when it gets dark, or as we say, hiker midnight. It’s utilitarian. Returning to our brain’s original factory settings feels healthful and natural. Out there, time keeps itself and you don’t need a watch.

“Into the forest I go to lose myself and find my soul.” John Muir

Recently, Prof. Heather Cox Richardson, who writes the “Letters from an American” on Substack, wrote of the advent of standard time in 1883. This was truly the dawn of the modern age, initiating cascading change that flows to our time. Her letter is here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-151805132?source=queue

For many of us, we live in times that try men’s souls to paraphrase Thomas Paine. The daily grind is brutal. Divided algorithmic public discourse is worse. Alchohol (pan líquido – liquid bread in Panamanian slang) becomes the Roman bread while, sports serve as the circus. Sadly, these are intentional features, not bugs.

Pretending to watch Caitlin Clark play basketball.

The deafening silence of nature quenches the crescendo of civilization. It’s the antidote for our times. As Mikey said in the cereal commercial of decades past, “Try it. You’ll like it.”

Shenandoah was created from land condemned and taken from those who farmed the area. Cultural artifacts remain. Among these are a number of family cemeteries. Many are lovingly maintained by descendants. Some are still active. Of note is the tomb stone of Annie, a five-year-old. In the context of our day, one cannot help but wonder, “What if they had modern vaccines?”

Windmills of our minds
Cutting brush
Teaching battery powered tools
Learning to paint a blaze
Taking a break
Nature’s archway
Teaching kids to crosscut
Clearing a drain field
Marie splits wood
The second half of the job
Toy box
Eventually a bear’s den
Leaner
The hut

We’ve spent the past several weeks doing woodsy stuff. It’s helped redirect our minds towards peaceful pursuits and away from the death march toward history that surrounds us. To all, we would say, “Come on in. Join us. The water’s fine!”

Sisu

Welcome Autumn

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Summer 2014 — Summer is over. It won’t be that long before we’re headed toward days defined by more darkness than light. Our clocks are about to flip back to their factory settings as we search for our thick socks and warm sweaters. Cue the fireplace logs.

The dusty roads of summertime were unfortunately just that. Most of our region is behind on rainfall.

Fortunately tropical storm Debby dropped a bucket or two of rain that recharged the springs in Shenandoah National Park. Former ridgerunner Wendy Willis volunteered for a day of trail work that included repairing the piped spring on my AT section.

The cats are aging. Sophie has arthritic hips and Mustache is exhibiting neurological problems. It’s sad that pets’ lives are so short.

Made it to the ballgame on the Fourth. The park eventually filled up.

Ridgerunners find weird stuff along the trails. Death march to a dance party?

My co-trail maintainer Caroline married her fiance Kevin in Glacier National Park at the end of July. His last name was LaBelle and hers was Egli. Now they’re Caroline and Kevin LaBegli. Well played.

My wrist recovered enough to return to chainsawing after eight months off.

Marie learned how to split firewood at the Hoodlums’ workshop.

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The workshop accomplished a lot.

Got to see Kaitlin Clark on the Fever’s last game of the regular season. The Iowa club of Washington showed up in huge numbers. Iowa fans outnumbered Mystics fans by about 2:1. The game set a new WNBA and arena attendance record 20,707. They beat the NBA men!

Sisu

Summer Vacay

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Piney River

Shenandoah National Park, June 24 – 27, 2024 — Crew week has bit of groundhog day feel to it. Opportunities to get outside for several days don’t grow on trees. I mean if you want to keep your idle hands out of the devil’s workshop, staying busy is the thing to do. When crew week comes up, you don’t hesitate.

Normally have have a single large project. We join forces with the park ranger crew to git ‘er done so to speak. This year we had random trail work and the rehabilitation of two buildings ‘gifted’ to us by the park service for use in storing tools, equipment and creating a workshop. We divided into teams to tackle our assignments.

Freaking blowdowns never stop. When working in federally designated wilderness areas, we have to use traditional tools which are muscle powered. Battery powered or motorized tools are a no no.

This year we were joined by our two current Shenandoah ridgerunners, Kara and Emily, plus Alex Gardner who was in the park last year. That so many return to volunteer speaks volumes about the quality of the program and who they are as dedicated stewards of the our national treasures.

Kara brushed a perfect blaze. Blue is the color used to mark side trails that connect to the AT. Those of us who blaze know that paint drips usually decorate our clothing. Kara managed to avoid that fate.

Of course we had to dig. Tread work is ubiquitous. It’s usually hard to photograph. This is the beginning of a rolling grade dip designed to shunt water off the trail.

Everybody hates weeding. Clearing weeds is necessary to reduce the number of ticks and by extension, Lyme disease. Here we’re clearing the camping area around the Indian Run Maintenance Hut.

Making sandwiches for lunch at the Pinnacles Research Station reminded me of my first crew week in 2013.

First crew week in 2013. Of this group, four regulars remain – Wayne Limberg, Noel Freeman, Cindy Ardecky, and me.

Please tell me what you did on your summer vacation.

Sisu

Here we go again.

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Shenandoah National Park May 1 – 5 — When it’s spring the wild azaleas bloom. They come first, closely followed by the mountain laurel about three weeks later. After that, it’s all weeds.

We started by joining the Crapper Crew emptying the compost bin on the Calf Mountain Hut privy. Everybody thinks this is task is as attractive as waking up in a French Quarter back alley. In reality it’s more like opening up a bag of potting soil from your local garden store.

On the way to the trail section Caroline and I maintain, I stopped by to check out the fire damage in the north district from last month. The understory is coming back. The canopy is normal. All told, it appears to have been a healthy event for the forest.

“Greetings,” said the bunny. “Do you know the way to Mr. McGregor’s garden?” For a rabbit, this time of year, the world is a giant salad bar. Not need for Peter Rabbit’s coordinates.

Unfortunately, this little bunny was unafraid. Saw it on my way back down the mountain. Sad to say, there are too many hawks and coyotes on the hunt for fearless Lepus sylvaticus to survive for long.

One of the sentinel trees that stand watch over the AT.

Saturday was “Show Your Love” to the park day. Almost 90 people showed up to volunteer on what was a cold and drippy day. Thanks y’all.

Sisu

The fourth quarter begins

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Kensington, MD, April 23, 2024 — It’s common for people to list the age of 100 as the aspirational length of their life. Centenarians are widely celebrated has having achieved greatness in just about every human culture. Why not?

Today the calendar marked seventy five years since my birth. That means three quarters of the aspirational century is now in the books.

If sports were a metaphor for life, today I started playing in the 4th and final quarter of the game. The difference is that the human fourth quarter is literally sudden death overtime. You never quite know when the clock will run out. The only thing you do know is that life can dunk on you at anytime it wants. You won’t be taking the final shot.

The logic works sort of like this. My broken wrist will take 9 months to completely heal, restored to pain-free, full function.

When you’re 18 months old, 9 months is half of your life. That’s a long time. When you’re 38, it’s more or less a blip. However, when you’re 75 and don’t know how much time remains on the clock, the functional deprivation can seem like a disproportionately huge fraction of the time you have remaining.

You’re back to square one. At 75, time matters more than ever.

When I turned 65, I was on my AT thru hike. I posted a birthday blog, the premise of which was that at 65, my utility to the American economy was about the equivalent to a snotty Klenex – useless. No longer was advertising or other marketing targeting me at that age, in spite of the fact that I had more disposable income than ever and was blowing through the Appalachian Trail like a kid in a hurry to catch the school bus. Consequently, I might as well have been dead.

Here’s the post: https://jfetig.com/2014/04/23/mourning-bells-on-madison-avenue/

Things have changed. Seventy-five-year-olds are a valuable demographic. Now, suddenly, folks want to sell me lots of stuff – senior living condos, Depends, prepaid funerals, walk-in Jacuzzi tubs, hearing aids, power chairs, retirement annuities, life insurance and Medicare supplemental policies and, of course, cures for all those supposed aches and pains.

Really?

To be honest, decrepitude is evermore visible – except through a gauzy lens. The aging body is protesting from time to time. But, I can still keep time with the fifty-somethings. (Nobody says ever 70 -something.) I’m slightly slower up the mountain on occasion, but I’m always on the summit, lugging my chainsaw, when it counts.

April 23 is a birthday shared with Shakespeare, Shirley Temple, Prince Louis of Wales, William Penn, former U.S. president James Buchanan, and others.

I wish I could write like Shakespeare…

Sisu

PATC

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Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (PATC), January – April 2024 — There was a lot going on over the winter, broken wrist aside.

The PATC dedicated a new website at http://www.patc.net. It replaced a 1995 design. That was a welcome change.

A few PATC stats are in order. We are a volunteer managed and led organization. For the past 97 years the club has been connecting people to the outdoors through rental cabins, guided hikes and volunteer opportunities, mostly maintaining hiking trails, our 49 cabins and 45 shelters.

We have 8,400 members, 1,000 of whom are active volunteers, plus 9 full-time employees and several seasonals. The remainder of the membership rents cabins and participates in hikes.

Our volunteers maintain 1,200 miles of hiking trails in the National Capitol Region, including 240 miles of the AT and 500 miles in Shenandoah National Park. We work with a total 16 national parks, two national forests and various state parks, forests and wildlife management areas.

The PATC’s geographical footprint covers 45,000 sq. miles in four states (Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania) and the District of Columbia.

Those stats represent a lot of effort, tradition and history.

Richard Lee and Venus Foshay dig a rolling grade dip (drain) on an AT section in Shenandoah National Park.

Trail maintenance goes on year-round, but becomes a force to be reckoned with starting in mid-March with the ground in our region begins to thaw. That’s when prep begins for thru hiking season on the AT and the influx of hikers everywhere.

    Meanwhile there are winter meetings with our agency partners across the region, including regional planning meetings that include sister trail clubs.

    PATC also hosted a book signing for Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. His new book, “Walk, Ride Paddle: A life outside” is about hiking the AT, biking the Blue Ridge Parkway and paddling the James River in Virginia. https://www.amazon.com/Walk-Ride-Paddle-Life-Outside/dp/1400339456 PATC is prominently mentioned, not to mention he used vintage PATC guidebooks so he could see what’s changed in the past several decades.

    If you think winter was busy, stand by. Spring and summer will be busy like this past winter on steroids.

    Sisu

    Solar Eclipse

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    Kensington, Md., April 8, 2024 — The ancients thought eclipses were omens. Don’t we wish, except what side would receive the benefit of its support? I prefer to think of it as a Bat Signal as described in a “Screen Rant” story entitled: The Secret Meaning of the Batman’s Bat-Signal Revealed.

    According to the story, “These are the nights when Batman and the GCPD are pushed to the brink, and the people hunker in their homes, kept awake by the sounds of chaos. On those dark nights, Commissioner Gordon deliberately leaves the Bat-Signal on all night. “That’s the funny thing about the signal,” Gordon reflects in a text-box. “People think it’s an alarm, a warning that danger is coming, a call for help. ‘It’s to make them know we’ll make it to morning, even if we make our own d*** light.“

    “… At first the citizens saw the Bat-Signal only as a call for help, but little by little they would have found comfort in it, realizing it meant Batman was active and on the way.”

    So, let’s just call the eclipse a symbol that the best is yet to come.

    So much for hope as a personal priority. I was too lazy to charge the battery for my Sony A6000 SLR. Instead my iPhone 12 pro had to do. “Do” it did with a sunlight filter held in front of the lens.

    We were in a 95 percent-plus obscuration zone that was unfortunately compounded by a broken overcast. It took luck, but I got one good shot shown above.

    Note the eclipse image captured in green in a camera flair to the lower left.

    The clouds added to the dramatic effect. At its maximum, the light from the sun dramatically decreased, it wasn’t enough to trick animals into assuming nocturnal habits. The birds continued chirping while the squirrels danced in the shrubbery. All seemed to be normal.

    Guess the bat-signal was the correct omen.

    Sisu

    Busted!

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    When you break your wrist, you’re stuck mostly with calisthenics.

    Kensington, MD, Spring 2024 — Being president of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club is a full-time job. It doesn’t leave time for extra curricular activities including this blog.

    As winter tightened its grip, so did my volunteer gig. From a raft of regulatory compliance issues to a key staffer with an unfortunate cancer diagnosis, slogging through the so called dormant season has had all the joy of chomping into a tepid corn dog at the Iowa state fair.

    The stale air inside was smothering me. Much like a pup with a full bladder, I wanted out.

    Then I broke my wrist. How’d that happen?

    It was a leaden day in mid-January with light snow on tap.

    A group of my friends organized a trip to crosscut several blowdowns on hiking trails in a federally designated wilderness area near the eastern boundary of Shenandoah National Park. Count me in? Hell yes!

    Hell yes! That is until I was literally thigh deep “in” the Thornton River slipping on snot rocks. As I unsuccessfully Attempted to stiff arm a chilling dunk, I smashed my right radius at the distal head. Then I slipped on another snot rock cracking my knee and jamming my wrist again. Ouch!!!

    It felt like a polar bear swim in Chicago’s Lake Michigan. There I was … soaking wet, scrambling up the river bank while assessing the growing, throbbing ache in my right wrist. It was about a nano second before it was absolutely certain that I needed to get the hell out of there before I morphed into a lime popcicle and became a carry-out casaulty.

    Working my way across the river on a fallen tulip poplar. The going was good on this end of the trip.

    Knowing three water crossings were part of the day, a full change of clothes was ridding on my back, nestled next to my store-bought Italian sub and water jug.

    Changing clingy wet clothes one-handed was a contortionist’s circus trick. Once dry, and a little safer from hypothermia, more than a mile separated me from my Subaru Forester which was parked along an access road. Fortunately the crew was full of folks with advanced first aid credentials. We had enough splints and ace wraps to equip an ER.

    I immediately thought the wrist might be broken, but chose not to splint it so I could better balance on my hike out. We wrapped it tightly with an ace wrap to retard the rapid swelling and everyone hung around while I waded, avoiding the slippery stepping stones, to recross the river.

    Patiently waiting in the Page County Hospital, (Luray, Virginia) ER for the diagnosis post X-rays. Doesn’t look that bad. The ace wraps really kept the swelling in check.

    The movie “Barbie” was inspirational in choosing the color of my cast.

    I have been a woman’s basketball fan (WBB) for decades.

    Squeezing medical putty … over and over and over and over.

    The swelling made it too painful to type, even after the cast was off. The rest of the winter has been limited one-armed weight lifting, squeezing putty to rebuild forearm muscles and coaching the neighborhood trail crew to fix some muddy spots on the Silver Creek pathway.

    Prognosis: Full recovery. Late summer.

    Susu