Néant or drifting, take your pick

The days just drift past with little to differentiate one from the next. Occasionally I have a meeting or appointment and yesterday supplied at a church 40 miles away.

Otherwise, life up at the end of a dirt road is extremely quiet.

So I read and read. I actually like this set-up on the front doorstep. The house has a built-in planter that demanded flowers and vinca vine. And there has to be an outrageous hibiscus to complete the scene. The fish gizmo was in a snowbank when I moved in. Who knows to which tenant when it belonged? The chair desperately needs to be repainted; I sanded it down and painted it when I moved to Vermont 18 years ago. (The basket on the chair is what I use to carry my prayer book, amice, cincture, shoes and sundries when I supply.)

As for the reading? The Blue Book (digitally on my iPad), the Barefoot Sisters' account of walking the Appalachian Trail southbound and then northbound, Guy Deslisle's Jerusalem (had I known it was originally in French, I would have tracked it down), Terry Tempest Williams' latest, When Women Were Birds, and Francisco Goldman's Say Her Name... all delicious and since I have the time, I read. (I vowed I was not going to buy any more books, but just could not resist these.)

I also have been hankering to get out and walk, partly to see if the injury from last August (when I landed on a rock and banged my ankle and gave myself a humungous hematoma that still is on my calf and from which I still have edema in my ankle and foot) and mostly because I need to walk things out as I wait and wait to see if I have been called to a congregation and, if not, think about what will I do, and avoid the reality that I must move again by 15 August. Reading and hiking are good ways to escape.

So call it nothingness or drifting, in some ways they are one and the same.

Mill River

It was such a gorgeous day today that I ignore the cold I have and the leaf peeper crowds and the packing I have to do and the sermons I have to write (tomorrow and funeral Monday) and took off for a short walk on the LT/AT. I haven't been out since I fell in the NH Whites two months ago and gave myself a huge haematoma and banged my ankle so any stamina I had had is long gone.

Clarendon Gorge and the Mill River were altered by Tropical Storm Irene. This leaf is in a dry spot that up until 28 August 2011 was underwater. The river flows with greater volume of water today than three weeks ago but it still is not the river of this summer.

This whale-like rock also was underwater; the force of the river smoothed it out to transform its shape, to soften its edges. It is now covered with fine river silt.

This living water flows far too fast and strong for any nice baptisms. It churns enough to make one dizzy watching it.

I don't know how many more times I will have to return, how long it will take until my presence will be but a shadow of memory.

On my mind...

My theme song...

Todo pasa y todo queda
Pero lo nuestro es pasar
Pasar haciendo camino
Camino sobre la mar

Nunca perseguí la gloria
Ni dejar la memoria
De los hombres mi canción
Yo amo los mundos sutiles
Ingrávidos y gentiles
Como pompas de jabón

Me gusta verlos pintarse
De Sol y grana volar
Bajo el cielo azul temblar
Subitamente y quebrarse
Nunca perseguí la gloria

Caminante son tus huellas el camino y nada más
Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar
Al andar, se hace camino, y al volver la vista atrás
Se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar
Caminante no hay camino, sino estelas en la mar

Hace algun tiempo en ese lugar
Donde hoy los bosques se visten de espinos
Se oyó la voz de un poeta gritar:
Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar
Golpe a golpe, verso a verso

Murió el poeta lejos del hogar
Le cubre el polvo de un país vecino
Al alejarse le vieron llorar
Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar
Golpe a golpe, verso a verso

Cuando el jilguero no puede cantar
Cuando el poeta es un peregrino
Cuando de nada nos sirve rezar
Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar
Golpe a golpe, verso a verso
Golpe a golpe, verso a verso
Golpe a golpe, verso a verso

Serrat Joan Manuel

Wistful

It has been thirty years since I have been to London. My father lived there three years in the late 70s, early 80s and I would go visit whenever I could.

He lived in on the third floor of a four storey flat on Upper Devonshire Place (purple dot). From the bedroom and bathroom, one could see and hear Saint Marylebone Church... not that we ever went there, oddly. He rented the flat from the father of a colleague from work and it was all he needed: a front living room/kitchen that looked out on Upper Devonshire Place, a front hallway that led out to the stairs, and then said bedroom and bath. When I would visit, I would sleep on an inflatable mattress in the living room. He and I went out the summer he moved over there and purchased a receiver and turntable so he could listen to his music.

I no longer remember exactly how far down the street the flat was (red dot) other than it was about halfway and a long walk from the Regents Park tube station when arriving with a suitcase. While he would go off to work, I would walk all over London, miles in a day. After my first spring break there, I had done so much walking that I ended up with tendonitis in my foot.

So, to hear all the fuss about the royal wedding in a matter of just over an hour, I am wistful because I have very fond memories of my summers and March breaks in London. There are so many other places to travel that I have not gotten back there since 1981 and I wonder if I ever will. Besides, without my pied-à-terre, it won't be the same.

Still alive

Just not posting all that much...

A grey day in Vermont after a mid-week snowfall — not nearly as much as folks got down in Connecticut or even southern, southern Vermont (Wilmington VT got 36 inches whereas we got 10 or so). There is talk of rain next week, oh joy.

Ruminating on the events of the past week, realising that Vermont only gets a score of 8 from the Brady Foundation (as in James Brady's group for gun control), thinking that trying to have a reasoned, sane and non-visceral conversation about gun control is about as successful as having one about marriage equality.


I think about how such carnage could happen anywhere, here in Vermont. Here's a photo taken last July of my talking with Vermont's lone representative, Peter Welch. Given how loose Vermont's gun laws are, the same sort of thing could have happened, though the rhetorical temperature is much lower here than in Arizona.


What a difference several thousand miles make. Both states are border states but there is nowhere near the anxiety about it because it is true, who wants to come into Vermont? I still marvel at the open border that we crossed when we walked into Canada in September.

In any event, I don't hold much hope for the tenor of political discourse cranking down. And off on a slight tangent, I don't know how I am going to be able to stand two years of the Speaker of the House boohooing all the time. Get a grip.

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]

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.

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.

Caminar es pensar

To walk is to think.

That is what I told the office staff of the Iglesia Anglicana Episcopal de El Salvador on my last day in El Salvador three weeks ago. I had not been able to go on any walks during my time there. I accepted having my wings clipped, given what had just transpired with the assassination attempt. But I so needed to walk to sort things out in my head that I finagled a walk on my last morning from where I was staying to the diocesan office, a 15 minute-walk, if that.

Caminar es pensar. Walking is where I can pound out thoughts, such as my frustration with the increasing power grab attempts on the part of the GAFCON (I keep typing GAGCON) primatial contingent and fatigue with repeated referrals to Lambeth 1998 I.10 as though it is holy writ.

And walking is where I pray... for Francis. Nearly four weeks later, he is healing somewhat. His stomach is fairly well healed. In his operation, the doctors put in six screws and plates in his elbow. He suffers a lot of pain from that injury. His soul, too, suffers. He understandably is afraid to venture out into public.

The folks of the IAES greatly appreciate everyone's prayers. Keep them coming. It makes a world of difference.

[photo: heading toward Acebo, Spain, Camino walk 2004]

Absolutely nailed

David Hiscoe's 'America's Worst Trail: A Love Story,' in the January 2010 Backpacker magazine absolutely nails the Long Trail. Here are some quotes that combined had me laughing so hard I was in tears. I have said the Long Trail exists to beat you up. He goes one further.

'The Long Trail, I swore, is the worst damn recreational path in America.'

He has so injured himself so many times on it (the most recent shattering his ankle) that his office had two pools: 'one on how long I'd actually be gone, one on the type of injury I'd bring back.'

'Hiking this path, above all, is a miserable, dangerous experience.... As a hiking trail, it's the mother of all disasters.... A hike on the Long Trail is like some sort of bizarre vacation in a wooded Bermuda Triangle.'

'It's an eroded, ankle-torquing mess...because the folks who laid it out did not really believe that anyone would actually hike it.'

This next part is so, so true and what I found so funny (yes, my sense of humour is odd):

'On the northern two-thirds of the Long Trail — and I swear against my mother's good name that this is not an exaggeration — the next nine feet forward is as likely as not attained first by dropping down 16 feet vertically. The method of getting there is varied. There's the "Christ almighty, that's a 5.9 stretch of granite and I don't have a rope and besides folks don't usually try to climb down a pitch because gravity really throws your balance off" descent. Or the "If I grab those ragged, much-abused remains of a birch root, and slide over to that muddy place there, then throw my pack into those bushes and maybe step lightly on that wet, mossy pile of crumbling limestone, I'll only fall five or six feet" technique.... You've just knocked off another three yards... I don't remember a total of more than 30 switchbacks on the 200 miles I've covered so far. [A complaint is the descent to Route 9: aren't there any switchbacks?]

'The sons and daughters of unwed parents who constructed the LT have managed to turn the gently sloping Green Mountains into 273 miles of demonic jungle gym.'

Yes, that is the Long Trail of which we have done about 125 miles and have 150 to finish off next year.

[Burnt Rock: I have to go up that way??? Actually not but the route up does leave you awfully exposed and you wouldn't want to fall over backwards. I also realise I never posted photos from our last time out, going up and over Camels Hump... maybe later after I have raked up the leaves.]

Long Trail Part 3 of 3

Last installment of photos from last week…


We missed sunrise but the early sun (at 7.00) was nonetheless striking as it rose above a fog-filled Mad River Valley looking up toward Waitsfield.


A cup of java, looking out at the valley from the Stark's Nest... life is good.


Then things got a bit challenging. This portion of the LT had two ladders but it could have stood several more...


as in, you go first and figure out how the dickens how to get down this ten-fifteen foot drop.


Another night, another shelter. Entries in the journal in the shelter indicated the strong presence of mice, ants and porcupines so we hung everything — boots, packs, pants, food — from the rafters.


Last day, after breakfast and a short walk, we faced this slope going up (this portion of the trail gets gnarly).


Here's the view from up top with Compa working her way up.


Looking up [Burnt Rock Mountain]: Are we really supposed to go up THIS? (No, not quite.)


Instead, we come up this, which still leaves you pretty exposed and it's not somewhere you want to lose your balance.


'I can see for miles and miles….' In the background is the ridge we hiked the day before.


this photo makes Ladder Ravine look fairly benign, but it's not a place you want to fall... and getting to the ladder when the rocks are wet looks awfully treacherous.

We've got a lot more sketchy parts of the LT yet to do... just wait for Mount Mansfield and the Nose which has several ladders and drop offs into nothing.

Long Trail Part 2 of 3

OK, here are more of the photos from our recent LT trip.


One of the delights of the LT is meandering on ridges, through forests, being able to look out to either the east or west and seeing views.


And then there's the temptation of lying down in gentle hay at the top of a ski trail on Sugarbush and taking a short nap while letting a sore foot get some fresh air.


This part was almost like being on the Camino de Santiago, probably because we missed the turn-off back into the woods for the LT. We kept on going down the trail and eventually bushwhacked our way back to the LT.


After more meandering through the forest and some up and down terrain, we emerged onto the Antelope trail of Mad River Glen and in a short amount of time, saw the terminus of the famous single chair lift that dates back to the 1930s or 1940s. Having taken it in the winter, it was fun to see it in the summer.


The chair recently was restored completely and various plaques remember those who contributed to the restoration. This view is to the northeast.


The best part of staying up top (not original plan but the shelter 0.7 miles downhill was in major repair process, i.e., they had torn the floor out the day we were planning on staying) was seeing the gorgeous sunset over Lake Champlain...


and almost full moonrise to the east...


with final look at the setting sun over the high peaks of the Adirondacks.

Long Trail adventures, part 1

Last week we knocked off another segment of the Long Trail, walking from Lincoln Gap to just before the ascent up Camels Hump. The previous week we walked from Brandon Gap to Lincoln Gap. So we have now covered about 113/270 miles. We have a long way to go to finish yet. Here is part one of the photos from this past week's adventures.


Our first night out was a bit chilly as you can see. Since we only do three-four day hikes, we actually bring fresh food, such as cherry tomatoes to put into the pre-mixed pasta stuff we eat (Knorrs variants).


This rock pile ascent actually is fairly benign compared to later rocks and tree roots we encountered. This is the south side of Mount Abraham.


Finally we had good views from the top. This shot looks south to Killington and Pico. Those mountains you see are ones we have walked. Way off in the distance is Mount Ascutney.


That little pimple on the horizon is Camels Hump about 25 miles away (not really visible in this photo but trust me). But to get there, you have to go over the mountains in the foreground.


A 73 year-old bagging all 3000 footers in New England (he's up to 72-73) took this photo of us (I am less than charming, ahem).


To our dismay, we discovered a cell signal up top so Compa is busy sending a photo to her family and friends.


After walking on the ridge 0.8 miles, we arrived at the top of a chairlift at Sugarbush on Lincoln Mountain. It's a bit incongruous to be walking in the woods, up in these lovely pine trees all of a sudden to pop out to 'civilisation.'

to be continued...