Summertime silence

Once fall kicks back in, I should be a bit more regular in my posting here. Between working with CREDO and the Strength for the Journey Haiti (Kouraj pou Vwayaj la Ayati) initiative, parish work, and finishing off the Long Trail, my time has not been free to putter here. We only have about 65 miles left to walk of the LT and then we will have finished its 273 miles of punishing rock and root-strewn paths.

Cats are fine, missing me. Miss Funky Paws is back from the brink, has put on weight and is fully herself, loud and feisty.

[photo: from the Forehead on Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest peak, looking south at Camels Hump, the third highest in Vermont]

Belated wishes

¡Bendito día patronal al pueblo de El Salvador!

[photo from Co-Latino of fireworks over El Mundo, the round-about near the pro-cathedral of the Iglesia Episcopal Anglicana de El Salvador]

Back to basics

So, midst other things, I have been dealing with a grumpy lower back. It has not prevented me from doing my Long Trail walking but it has made things interesting.

This nonsense has been going on since 17 June when I first was aware of discomfort. At the June Executive Council meeting I had been sitting for three days on hard chairs and then went out for a walk during which I felt twinges. The next day I flew to Santo Domingo for the first Kouraj pou Vwayaj la Ayati conference, which meant sitting on more hard chairs. By the end of that week, I could barely move and felt like everything was crunching inside. The flight home was not terribly comfortable. The following week I went home on Monday because I could not sit happily.

Things got better and then I went back down to Santo Domingo for the second conference. Same deal though not as bad. However, when I got back to Vermont, by the end of the day of flying, I could barely get out of the car.

Fast forward to now. I have gone to the doctor, gotten a slew of x-rays taken, and had four visits to a physical therapist. She initially thought the pain came from the sacrailium joint being frozen and my pelvis is tilted forward causing lordosis (which is true) and got me doing exercises to de-freeze it and my hip joints and is working on getting me to sit up straight. But now that the pain still is here and radiating down on both sides below my hips, she is beginning to think that it is an inflamed nerve (she has not mentioned sciatica) or a herniated disk. Oh joy. But that is just her hypothesising. We will know more perhaps when I hear from my doctor with the radiologist's report.

Meanwhile, I will go back to the Long Trail to knock off another 45 miles. Right now I am uncomfortable most when simply standing still (like four hours behind the altar or in the pulpit on Sundays). Walking last week was OK I am having conversations with my back informing it that this is not acceptable behaviour and it is time to shape up. These days, the pain is only about a 1 to 1.5 out of 10. No big deal, just reminding me that I have a lower back.

And I am trying to stand and sit up straighter. So maybe I should not spend as much time reading blogs and puttering on the computer. Ahem.

An odd Trinity

The Transfiguration
Día Patronal de El Salvador, Salvador del Mundo
65 years Hiroshima

Dieu, dans ta tendresse,
Tiens pitié de nous.

Back on the trail

So, we are back on the Long Trail, finishing off the sections we have not yet walked with the goal of completing the LT by the end of the summer in the 100th year of its existence.


As we are 'sectioning' the LT, we decided to knock off the very first one, the MA-VT border to Rte 9 in Bennington. We dropped one car at Rte 9, and then the other, walked in, set up our tent and then walked 2.9 miles south to the actual state border. Like any border, you wouldn't know the difference if it weren't marked. So here we look into MA.


Do a 180º turn and you now look into Vermont, aka, Vermud. The sign clearly is new.


Proof that we were there.


The turn-off to the Seth Warner shelter has seen better days.


Beavers lead a very active life in this neck of the woods. This is the first of three beaver ponds we passed in 14.5 miles.


Note the beaver dam across the top of the photo. Woe if it were to break; the trail passes below it.


Different pond, same sort of builders. Note that we stand on puncheons below the water level. The beavers had chewed out the previous puncheons so the Green Mountain Club (of which we are members) simply put new ones over the old ones.


Two-thirds of this section could be walked on puncheons because it is so muddy underfoot. We met one hiker, 'Olive Oil,' whose boots have had it which means she is walking in mud all day long. I hope she doesn't have trench foot.


The first 105 miles of the LT overlap the Appalachian Trail so the cover to Bill Bryson's book, A Walk in the Woods, could have been this sight.


The sign at Harmond Hill helpfully informs the hiker how many miles there are to the US/Canadian border or Mt Katahdin in Maine. For the AT through-hikers, they now have walked three-quarters of the whole trail and for them, the end is in sight... sort of. [Click to embiggen.]


Someone left two of these chairs up on the hill so we sat in them while we had lunch and enjoyed the view overlooking Bennington as well as the wild raspberries nearby.


The descent down to Rte 9 starts out innocently enough but soon devolves into this...


and this...

granite stairs that go on for 0.9 miles down. It's an impressive descent and hard on the knees.