Elegy for a Corrupted Spreadsheet

It’s 2:30 AM. My fists are clenched. My mind paces like a confined animal. I have a fervent wish to go back to sleep, but I keep going back and back and back to the missing notes. Days’ worth of notes. Meticulously organized, cited, vanished.

Ah, Microsoft Excel, how I trusted you. I came to you a supplicant. Reams of notes needed to be cited, they needed to be organized chapter by chapter. My head was heavy with information. An orchestra of ideas squawked aimless and out of tune. You promised to take up the stick and get the unruly band into marching formation. Sure enough, with the help of your firm administration, I mustered information into columns. Section by section, the mob became a legion, matching colors, a uniform purpose. There were plenty of unruly folk, still some cuts to be made, and plenty of additions to the ensemble. What mattered most is that we were moving together.

And yet, by the end, you were the Pied Piper. You led the march to the precipice.

I won’t recount the dry language you used to describe the loss. This would be less maddening if you had said something along the lines of “I screwed up” or “I got bored, so I torched everything you were working on.”

Well, libraries burn all the time. I would not be the first laborer to pile up fruits, only to watch them molder and go to the flies. Bodies and Microsoft files succumb to corrupt inputs. This is the way of our world.

I resent the lost hours, however. I am entitled to that selfishness. It has been a long battle making music out of noise: the noise of doubt, the noise of distraction, the noise of other obligations. Right now, the lattice of order has fallen. The clatter reverberates through the halls of my mind.

I’m about to turn back over and try for sleep. Some other day, I may wrangle that cacophony and teach it to play sweet music. For now, I will settle for silence.

Waves and Wheels and Waves: A four-day, 108 mile, doorstep kayak adventure off the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island gives me the opportunity to surf, contemplate connection, and think about my role in the burgeoning climate apocalypse.

Waves from Tropical Storm Henri approach Rhode Island's Charlestown Breachway

Doorstep adventure: Noun. An adventure in which the traveler refuses to use motorized transportation, usually for personal and environmental reasons.

 

Quick Stats:

Start/stop: Ledyard, Connecticut

Farthest point out: Narragansett Rhode Island

Elapsed adventure time: four days, three, nights.

Total distance paddled: 86 miles

Total distance portaging, jogging, walking, biking: 22 miles

Total distance: 108 miles.

Key terms: Doorstep adventure, kayak wheels, tropical storm, kayak surfing, William Butler Yeats, breachway, climate change, connection, disconnection, The Extended Mind, seal, dorsal fin.

Click here for an interactive map

 Part One: A Widening Gyre

The nose of my fiberglass sea kayak met the fist of the furious ocean.

A hard rain pocked holes in the whitecapped waves. To the right, the Rhode Island beachfront was a pitched battle where looming giants toppled into angry froth. On the left lay thousands of miles of open water. The tropical storm was yet days away from landfall, but it made its presence known.

I was three days into my self-supported, kayak doorstep adventure from southeastern Connecticut into Narragansett Bay. I had only recently beat a path through the surf to get offshore. Sanctuary lay only a few miles ahead in sheltered Ninigret Pond. Paddling those miles would test the limits of my skill.

For all the adrenaline that had marked my surf launch, I was surprised to find lethargy creeping in. The agitated water left no stable frame of reference, leaving me exhausted, disoriented, disembodied. The drifting sensation was even more frightening than the waves.

I started bellowing songs, then reciting poems at top volume. (No need to be embarrassed; no one on shore would hear.)

The words of William Butler Yeats fit:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre…”

That would be the storm, I thought.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

 

Apocalyptic words resonate with our times. Unsurprisingly, many writers have wedded Yeats’s themes of gathering chaos and subjugation to current events—i.e. the fall of Kabul.

Disaster piles on disaster. We’re left feeling disembodied, as psychically disoriented as I felt discombobulated by the churning sea. It is as if we were only seeing a movie about terrible events unfolding, with no part to play except to watch.

I felt helpless rage at the western wildfire smoke that dimmed New England skies. Here was more evidence that we are far from in control; we can hold back neither fire nor rising water. Things have fallen apart. The gyre will carry us where it pleases.

We have only entered the outside circle of the sizzling hell that climate change has prepared. Yet, instead of slamming the brakes, many are stomping the gas pedal. Come heat wave, come storm, come fire, they’ve got a full tank, AC and places to go. The highways are jammed again; the sky full of planes, carbon trailing in their wakes.

 

The need to connect with nature is, in fact, much deeper than the vapid pursuit of selfies. Nature is linked to our profoundest, most spiritual selves. This is not cliché, but science. I have encountered some of the most persuasive arguments for this truth via Ann Murphy Paul’s recent book, The Extended Mind. Paul’s research shows that people who experience awe, perhaps a waterfall or double rainbow, exhibit greater empathy and willingness to help others.

Critically, the book pointed me to the three-day effect. This principle holds that nature’s greatest psychological benefits tend to accrue to those who can get out in nature for three days or more — ideally, while disconnected from electronics. Nature, to paraphrase Edward Abbey, is not a luxury; it is the foundation of a good life.

The fundamental question: How can we fulfill our need to connect with nature without harming it?

My compromise has been the doorstep adventure (see above definition.) I accept the added effort and time dealing with traffic, as well as other irritants I’m trying to escape.

Not only would I ditch the car, I would have to find campsites on a heavily developed shore.

Despite these obstacles, the four-day trip presented an opportunity to utilize the three-day effect and still have one day left over. I intended to detach from noise and make fresh connections with nature. However, although I eliminated the car, I couldn’t eliminate the pavement. This created conflicts with some of the very systems I sought to escape — roads, crowds, noise. I hoped that four days would nonetheless provide lessons and renewal.

Launch in Old Mystic

 

Part II: Conviction

So, who is willing to roll a 16-foot sea kayak down four miles of asphalt while dodging traffic in 90-degree heat?

It’s a rhetorical question.

It was Day 0 of my doorstep adventure: Preparation.

I had to roll the kayak from Ledyard to Old Mystic on a makeshift cart. Here, my future landlord has been kind enough to let me store a boat near the river. Ledyard was still the doorstep, still the official starting line. I wouldn’t a roof rack to get the kayak to the water; but would experience every mile with my body.

“That’s just ridiculous,” a bystander told me as I wheeled the boat past houses.

“Thank you for your opinion,” I replied.

 

The morning of August 17, I left Ledyard by bicycle for an easy ride into Old Mystic. Here I loaded the kayak and eased it over a seawall to the head of the river.

The stress of trip preparation floated off my shoulders as I started paddling with the ebbing tide between rows of marsh grass. The favorable current carried me into downtown Mystic. From there, I entered Fishers Island Sound, and then skirted Little Narragansett Bay for Napatree Point in Rhode Island.

Blue skies were dappled with wispy mackerel scale clouds. These made beautiful, undulating reflections on the silky seas. Such clouds also meant that fair weather had an expiration date. There was a tropical storm brewing to the south. I would be ending the trip just before it made landfall.

 

Protected water met open ocean at Napatree Point. The area is in fact, one of the passages between Long Island Sound and the Atlantic. An outgoing tide tussled with incoming swell, provoking mild waves into sharp breakers.

I was hungry for excitement. I deliberately steered the boat over a shallow sandbar. I carefully watched a building wave on my left side, only to have a different wave break on my right and carry me for a sideways ride through chest-deep froth.

I had no sooner caught my bearings when I was startled by an enormous splash beside the boat. The water writhed with baitfish.

Swift along the bottom swam the striped bass; some of the bass were the length of my arm, all harassing and snapping at their prey.

Thrash! Bite! Bite!

Sets of teeth lunged for the surface, setting more terrific splashes.

I moved my hands closer on the paddle to keep my fingers out of the water.

 

Beyond Napatree the horizon was wide open. Block Island was a gray smudge, 10 miles offshore.

On my other side, lay the wealthy beach enclave of Watch Hill, guarded by a lighthouse at the end of a peninsula. I wove through a rock garden as big waves crashed. There was the nearby Ocean House hotel—a sprawling, Victorian-era spectacle of sweeping balconies and turrets, done up in sunny yellow paint and ivory trim.

You also may have heard of singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. She owns Holiday House, on an adjoining hill—featured in her song The Last Great American Dynasty.

The hot weather drew bustling crowds to the sand. The sounds of hooting swimmers and laughing kids drifted over the roar of surf. I could practically smell the sunscreen. Watch Hill Beach was thronged, as was its eastern neighbor, Misquamicut.

Farther east, crowds dispersed. I startled a bevy of black oystercatchers, distinguished by pointed orange bills. A loon, in its less familiar gray and white colors, floated in the water nearby and reproached me with a warble.

 

I reached the East Beach Campground at around 2:30. My shoulders were already sore from about 19 miles of paddling. How I looked forward to watching dark waves roll onto shore through the flames of a driftwood fire!

No such luck.

This campground, along with the nearby Charlestown Beach Campground, were reserved only for RVs. It sure was a scenic place to run the generator and admire the rising, acidifying ocean.

I don’t blame the state of Rhode Island specifically for its doorstep-hostile set of policies. It is just one more example of how systems prioritize automobiles at the expense of simpler forms of recreation. There was a logic to it. RV-ers, with their need for hook-ups and sewage pump outs, were bound to spend more money than dirtbag tent campers.

Plus, there were hordes of these high rollers in rolling boxes, a base which started growing fast amid the pandemic. If an occasional oddball with a tent felt put out, it wouldn’t hurt the bottom line.

I was not entirely out of luck, however. I could still paddle another seven (uggh!) miles followed by a two-mile portage up to Burlingame State Park.

Ninigret Pond as seen from shore

 

I would paddle into Ninigret Pond, one of several vast salt ponds on Rhode Island’s coast. These are separated from the ocean by glacier-created barrier beaches. Ponds and ocean are no longer as separated as they once were; now they connected by breachways, built in the early- to mid-20^th century. The breachways are essentially trenches cut through the beaches and fortified by riprap. The breachways let boat traffic in and out, along with ocean water. The ponds are now much saltier than they had been in the past, changing the ponds’ unique ecology.

The tidal currents at a breachway can get strong enough to send a paddler backwards. My luck was in today because the flood tide was with me. I shot through the opening like a canister in a vacuum tube.

The breachway carried me into Ninigret Pond. Ninigret, named for an Eastern Niantic sachem from the 1600s, is three and a half miles long, Rhode Island’s biggest salt pond. Its shallow, murky bottom is an important resource for birds and sea life. The Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge lies on the north shore.

Several fishing egrets dawdled in the shallows near the breachway in a receiving line. There were also plenty of speedboats and a shell fishing fleet, crab traps on their roofs. The boats buzzed in and out from a marina on the west side of the pond, where I planned to land.

 

I pulled up to an underused corner of the marina and spent a few minutes reassembling my makeshift cart. Finally, I began trundling the boat toward the campground. The route took me along the busy Boston Post Road, against a current of speeding vehicles. The divided highway forced me to go a quarter mile out of my way before I could cross at a traffic light. It’s ironic how roads meant to connect us to places can also separate us from them. Even with the breakdown lane, it was profoundly uncomfortable having speeding cars zooming feet away. After that, it was an uphill climb to the campground.

The sites were almost exclusively taken up by RVs and pull-behind campers. One of the tenants treated the neighborhood to a curated selection of ’80s power ballads. This on top of the hour of pulling the kayak along roads had me in a hostile state of mind. Could there be no peace?

I relaxed somewhat as I set up the tent and prepared dinner, satisfied to have the parts fall into place. I wasn’t camped under a tarp, which meant that I was actually glamping. Flavored ramen topped the evening menu, garnished with kale and tomatoes (both home-dehydrated, both home-grown) cooked over an alcohol stove. The weather was too hot for my sleeping bag, so I stretched out on top.

Camp at Burlingame

 

Part III: Surf and Meditation

I started rolling the kayak down the road to Ninigret at sunrise.

I launched at 8:00, just in time to catch the outgoing tide. I enjoyed a fast ride through the breachway. Opposing waves produced a chaotic churn of two- and three-foot breakers: the perfect play zone. I took the first of many goof-off sessions that day, riding waves and getting soaked.

I ended by letting the current carry me offshore, then rejoined the eastbound ebb. The waves were only a foot or so high, but were stacked higher at surf spots. I was about a stone’s throw off the beach when one freak wave sent me on a bouncing ride into the shallows.

 

I passed several long breaks outside the village of Matunuck.

“It’s like the West Coast of the East Coast,” according to the surfing megadatabase Surfline.com.

I tried surfing in a couple different places, but the best fun lay farther east. Here, a guy on a stand-up paddleboard took swooping, graceful rides on belly-high waves. My sea kayak took to the surf like a kid’s toboggan on a hill. The rides were ridiculously long, perhaps a hundred yards. Unlike most other breakers that would pivot my boat sideways, here I could keep the boat pointed straight as an arrow, racing over the shallows at top speed. With some waves I finished with a dirty lean and brace in whitewater. It was a fun ride from start to finish.

West Coast surfing indeed! I couldn’t think of any comparable breaks since my time in Washington years ago. They were some of the best rides I’d had, period.

The paddleboarder and I traded waves and were soon calling rides for each other.

“Get this one, man!”

“Go! Go! Go!”

“Nice one!”

 

Paltry tenting options along the coast had forced me to plug in a low-distance day. Although I’d initially been bitter about this, I now appreciated the fact that I didn’t have to hurry to a far-flung Point B. Horsing around on beautiful waves was as good a way to spend the day as any other.

 

Finally, I left the fun for Point Judith, where I would camp for the night. A large series of breakwaters create the vast Harbor of Refuge here. North of this lay Point Judith Pond — another salt pond guarded by a breachway.

Docked fishing vessels at the state pier bristled with steel rigging, radio antennae, and exhaust stacks. Some were up to three stories tall. If the sleek yachts in Newport were Maseratis, these were tow trucks — pulling up nets of flopping protein with the drum winches on their transoms. Point Judith’s commercial fleet brought in more than $63 million dollars-worth of seafood in 2018, making it the 11^th-ranked fishing port by value in the United States, according to the National Ocean Economics Program.

There was a faint, but ever-present fish smell. One of the largest (and homiest) ships featured a painted SpongeBob and Patrick, leaping into the air for a high five.

 

The fisherman’s Memorial Campground was conveniently located just off the water. I pitched tent, then got back in the kayak.

I continued east out of the Harbor of Refuge and into open ocean. I passed the Point Judith Lighthouse, turning north into Narragansett Bay. The rocky point below the light acted like a giant magnifying glass, bending the waves together until they stacked up and curled over into appealing breaks. There could be a fun ride here, but that surfy siren song ended with a face full of granite.

I opted instead to travel further off the coast and let attention wander. I would paddle for about another hour and a half before I turned back.

 

Dappled, bulbous, waves shifted in psychedelic mirror, symmetrical, random-seeming, a patch of blue here, the clouds there, the winking sun. Each element remixed, swirled together: first in large swatches, then diminishing to points as my eye tracked to the horizon. Here were the patterns that bring out the best in human nature, according to The Extended Mind. The lines were soft about the edges and colors muted. Shapes repeated, but there was no rigid order.

These patterns pass through our minds like a calming hand. They smooth the fuzz of electric noise, the atomized pops and screeches of intrusive thought. Branches sway in a breeze. A swell approaches shore. A maestro summons a final flourish from the players.

The wave closes, the hand shuts, then…shushhhhhh.

 

Part IV: Reckoning

I awoke the next morning to a cherry-red sunrise and brisk south wind, signs that foretold challenges on the water. The Weather Service validated my suspicion. Block Island Sound would deliver a stiff south wind, intermittent rain, and two- to four-foot waves kicked up from the approaching storm.

Such conditions may not seem huge on paper, but consider that a four-foot wave will come to about the height of a sitting paddler’s head. Meanwhile, every class of waves was bound to have some standouts.

“Individual wave heights may be more than twice the significant wave height,” the Weather Service notes.

I was glad to have a comparatively short trip ahead of me between my current camp and final camp back at Burlingame. The open water section of the itinerary would consist of 6.5 miles between the Harbor of Refuge and the Charlestown Breachway leading into Ninigret Pond.

Flags snapped at their poles as I started paddling. Dark spoils flew across the surface.

The south wind had already enlivened the protected waters with sharp waves. I paddled cautiously into the ocean to meet the heavyweights.

The coast of Matunuck roiled with giants, tripping over the ledge, collapsing into whitewater thunder trains. Even though I steered well clear, there were several rogues breaking further out, threatening to roll me up in a salty barrel roll.

A dark band of rain approached from the west.

I really needed to pee.

 

My usual technique of peeing from my boat was a nonstarter. Conditions demanded that both hands remain on the paddle as opposed to being occupied, uh, elsewhere. The alternative, landing amidst huge breakers, had its own hazards.

I eventually spied a potential opening by a riprap wall. The boulders protected an RV park from the sea fury and also absorbed enough wave energy to make for a (slightly) softer landing at an adjacent stretch of beach. I took a wild ride, leaning into the froth. The boat hit the sand. I lurched out of the cockpit and pulled the boat high up the beach, away from the melee.

I quickly flipped the boat next to a dune fence and relieved myself in the cover of the riprap. It started raining. Rather than get back out in the sea wilderness, I decided to visit the streets of Matunuck.

I walked into a funky seaside hangout: low-slung shacks, beach taverns on pilings, and more than one lot full of RVs and trailers. The rain started dumping. The only thing that held my interest was a coffee stand in a surf shop parking lot. I half ran, half waded to the window, where a small awning provided paltry, but effective shelter.

I paid the young woman at the counter nine bucks, money well spent, for a mocha coffee with oat milk and a toasted bagel with peanut butter and jelly. The peanut butter was silk smooth. The raspberry jelly, dark rich with tang, could only have been procured from a Black Forest faerie cabal. Rain pounded on the roof, and wind lashed the side of the stand. It couldn’t touch me. I ate slowly within my blissful eddy. The rain tapered and then, with my last bite, ceased.

 

The surf launch was no easy matter.

Waves battered the hull before I could snap spray skirt into place. By the time I pulled it over the cockpit, the boat turned sideways. I almost lost the paddle, then flailed wildly. To steer the boat away from the rockpile. A new breaker reared up, slammed me across face and chest. Inches from the rocks, I paddled desperately to meet the next wave. The nose climbed, then splashed to safety down on the other side.

The gear beneath my decklines was an unruly mess. I realized that the waves had knocked a water bottle overboard. Surely it was Davy Jones’s water bottle now. Yet, lo! I turned around and saw the blue plastic rolling forlornly in the shallows.

I took a backwards surf ride into the beach, impressed that I didn’t end up eating sand. I secured the bottle and punched my way out for the next round.

 

The next miles were a game of saltwater football. Surprise breakers detonated left and right. The water would mount, and I would either speed up and slow down to avoid getting caught.

The nastiest surprise breaks formed hundreds of yards out and crashed all the way to the beach in a line drive. Such assassins tended to gather in certain areas but only trigger every fourth or fifth wave. At first, I steered around such places; adding distance to the trip as I paddled long distances to get around. Then they started becoming more and more common.

The long break zones in front of me became so common that I stopped trying to avoid them. I would simply sprint across the foamy water as quickly as possible before the next monster barreled in. It might have seemed that the best option was just to paddle into the deeper water further offshore to stay safe. Unfortunately, I was hemmed in by reefs. The waves were even taller, offshore, more explosive.

It was exhausting trying to process the chaos, to respond to different bumps and jolts, to stay focused on keeping the boat upright. My frame of reference was slipping. This is when I started singing and reciting poems.

 

The Charlestown Breachway was supposed to be my doorway to the calm water in Ninigret Pond. Instead, I found a dragon’s mouth. The current was still ebbing too hard to fight. The breachway entrance was a permanent froth-zone where stalling waves boiled and raged.

Once again, I needed to make a beach landing. I got lucky in that this time I grabbed one of the smaller waves, pulling the boat up before the bigger siblings could roll in to pound me.

The Charlestown RV Park offered a potential portage to calmer water beyond the breachway. The other option was to wait out the tides and shoot the breachway when the ebb current had abated. I decided that I wanted to walk the jetty above the breachway to scout conditions.

The view was unencouraging. The ripping water extended out for a quarter mile or more. The two most likely outcomes of an attempt would be a flipped kayak or a shattered one. An angler stood on the far point, casting a rubber baitfish into the churn. The biggest waves blasted us with spray.

“Look at that!” the angler called.

I looked out just in time to spy a harbor seal, moving easily through the pandemonium, in search, no doubt, of disoriented fish to seize.

Despite the grim conditions, the current was softening. I decided I would wait out the tides, then launch back into the surf and try to paddle my way in. I waited for about an hour. Then I made my move.

The opposing current was strongest in the first 50 feet of breachway. Incoming waves squeezed the current against the wall. I surfed some of these, gaining a kayak-length of progress with each ride. Finally, I cut right in order grab eddies off the riprap.

I slowly edged my way back into Ninigret Pond. The egrets were in the same place I’d left them yesterday, wading in the still water.

See Footage of The Sea vs. Charlestown Breachway

Dinner at Burlingame was more ramen, and the last of the kale and sundried tomatoes. My neighbors in the RV had a generator roaring, air conditioning, and some ’80s arena rock to boot. The diesel scent eventually wafted to my picnic table, and I realized that it really bothered me.

This was, after all, the third day, and I was supposed to be now benefiting from the three-day effect, that I’d read about in The Extended Mind. The noise pollution from the nearby site was clearly taking away from the introspection and exhilaration I’d felt earlier. I now felt the jaw clamped down and a tide of negative thoughts rushing in.

I decided to practice what Anne Murphy Paul describes as environmental self-regulation. In other words, I decided to take a hike. It was near twilight, and the bugs had redoubled their assaults. An ablution of pure DEET put a stop to that. I put a headlamp in my pocket and walked down the road.

I soon took a nearby trail into the woods, which greeted me with a chorus of crickets, the boom of an owl in the canopy. It felt more relaxing than it had any right to be. It was too easy. Looping ruminations melted off, especially after I stopped beneath some sprawling oaks to contemplate their branches against the darkening sky.

The good life in a pot

 

Part V: Landfall

I started the last day of my doorstep adventure by rolling my kayak to Blue Shutters Beach. The new route was only slightly longer than launching at Ninigret Pond. It would save me miles of paddling on the way back to Mystic.

The forecast called for the same wave heights as the day before, uh-oh! but lighter winds good! The first look from the beach showed me a far mellower coast. The air was clear enough that I could see the offshore windmill towers near Block Island. Fishers Island looked so close that I initially thought that it was part of the Rhode Island shore.

A group of skim boarders stood atop the steep beach face, threw boards down the swash, jumped on, and whirled around to catch rides from the next waves.

My kayak launch was less graceful. The sharp waves broke close to shore, leaving little time to prepare skirt or paddle. A longshore current spun my bow to the left — just in time for me to get a breaker to the face. I almost went backwards, then fell through to the other side, climbing over the next wave an instant before it dumped.

It was Easy Street after I crossed the surf zone.  I let the waves roll under me and aimed well offshore to Watch Hill lighthouse.

 

As I passed Misquamicut, however, the sight of a gray fin sticking out of the water made me jolt.

I discerned a large, dim form below the surface, scarcely moving, yet pointed at my boat. It than disappeared only to reappear a moment later. Unlike porpoises I’ve seen, this did not blow air at the surface.

I later concluded that the fin almost certainly belonged to an ocean sunfish, a species frequently mistaken for sharks because it has smooth gray skin and a habit of swirling its dorsal fin at the surface. Ocean sunfish are giants; they can get up to 1,000 pounds. Fortunately, these giants choose jellyfish over human flesh.

 

By 11, I was back at Napatree point, on the threshold of Long Island Sound. The ebb current was going strong, stacking the oncoming waves into tall overhead curls. I would have to fight the tide through Fishers Island Sound and all the way up the Mystic River: miles of effort under the hot sun. Before that, I thought I was due for one last tango with the sea.

I steered the boat back over the shallows, waiting to ride.

The wave tripped over the shoal and fell apart into an anarchy of froth. The kayak nose plunged into the trough. The boat turned sideways, then spun around. I rode the beast until it tamed.

The second oncoming break caught me less prepared. In the ensuing rush of water and adrenaline, I connected to the paddle; to the boat; to the water; and through each of these, to years of paddling experience.

I was connected to every mile that I had rolled a kayak against traffic. I could trace a story from doorstep to Napatree Point and I could remember the effort I’d felt along the way.

I feel connected the waves now, as I write these words and reflect upon how much poorer my life would be without rare moments of wild joy.

I surfed backwards head above the froth. I wobbled, but somehow, on this ride, I landed upright.

 

I want to own such moments, to be able to summon them at will, but connection is shared not owned. It is the opposite of consumption, where we take something so we can use it solely for ourselves.

Burning gasoline is a prime example of consumption. It is a handmaiden to disintegration of our environment. Consequently, the burning fuel divides our spirit from the natural world that should nourish it. Gasoline is connected only to a system that tears poison from fractured ground. Drivers in steel cocoons feel disconnected from the consequences billowing out of their tailpipes, but they cannot change the fact that the carbon dioxide behind them rips our children from their future.

Because of consumption, we now face a future filled with rising waves, with fire and storm. A menace approaches the Gulf Coast as I’m writing. The Category 4 hurricane threatens to take lives and shatter others. I am connected to what happens there by water, by asphalt and atmosphere. The fuel we burn is connected to their fate as it is to ours. Our journey winds around the axis of climate change. It is the wheel that binds and crushes us.

At what point do we collectively fling aside the gas pump with horror and disgust?

At what point do we decide that cheap vacations aren’t worth the destruction that trails tailpipes and airplane wings?

How can we prepare for the long, dark ride ahead if we won’t even try to turn the boat in the right direction, acknowledge our peril, or work with others to patch the holes?

As the world falls apart, we must find better ways to join.

Acquiring a Void: An author reveals how running can inform writing.

 

I run, in large part, alone
.

I enjoy going when and where I want, setting my own pace, and choosing the distance.

Now and then, however, I encounter a runner who is good to lope 16 miles at cruising speed or to take on a backwoods scramble in the hills. To encounter such a runner is to find a fellow pilgrim. We can go on for miles, spending what breath we have left in our lungs describing our quests for the perfect stride, the exaltation of a strong race finish, the transcendent bliss of an empty road where mind merges with breath and footfall. These are the parts of distance running that seem indelible, difficult to convey to someone from outside the clan, yet joyous to share with one who understands.

I recently felt this kind of connection when I read Haruki Murakami’s 2009 memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami, well-known for his fiction books, bridges his decades of distance running with his development as a writer. These two passions, seemingly disparate, benefit from qualities such as determination, and dedicated work. Both require a noise filter, minds focused, shields up against distraction.

Murakami left college as a workaholic, non-runner, non-writer, and smoker, one who pulled long hours in the jazz club he owned in Tokyo. He wrote a novel at 30 (more or less for the hell of it, by his description), which opened a door to a fiction-writing career. Soon after, Murakami left the club, took up running to improve his health, and began writing full time, while shuttling between Japan, Hawaii, and Boston. In running, he found far more than a fitness hobby. It helped him to quiet his mind and carry the psychological burdens of writing. The body, he found, was also an excellent vessel for inspiration. Sometimes this inspiration comes through pain.

In the 1980s, Murakami received a magazine assignment to write about the world’s first marathon. To do justice to the subject, he decided to run the course himself. It would be his first time he had run that distance. To compound the challenge, the course, laid out between the Greek cities of Athens and Marathon, followed dangerously overcrowded roads. Summer was in full swing. He would run his first marathon solo and under a punishing Mediterranean sun.

The photographer working with Murakami offered to let him cheat by riding in his van. They’d get out for pictures at select points along the course. The photographer revealed that he had already performed this service for some previous writers. Murakami wouldn’t have it.

“Sometimes the world baffles me,” Murakami writes. “I can’t believe people would actually do that.”

This was where Murakami won me over. My respect increased as I read how he sweated though the scorching miles, weaving past double-parked cars, and avoiding a disturbing number of road-killed dogs and cats, before arriving at the finish. Because he endured this feast of pain, Murakami’s account is far more interesting and truer, compared to what he could have written from a passenger seat perspective.

“I’m not the brightest person,” Murakami writes. “Only when I’m given an actual physical burden and my muscles start to groan (and sometimes scream) does my comprehension meter shoot upward and I’m finally able to grasp something.”

It is obvious to see how going on a long run can help a writer describe what running is like, but it can also help to structure thoughts. I can attest that many of my ideas arise during the relaxation of a morning run, and other runners will say the same.

Research continues to illustrate the fact that consciousness is not purely cerebral, no ghost in the machine, but a chorus of conversations between our brains and everything outside. I have seen this is in the way students’ thinking changes when they have to stand up to look at a question or move around a classroom to gather information from peers. Many teachers are now finding ways to incorporate body movement to supplement mental work. The mind is further connected to the body based on bodily sensations such as calm, anxiety, comfort, and pain.

Marukami’s running taught him to reverse the mind-body connection, using thought to regulate sensations. When he accepted that pain was inevitable on his long runs, he found that he could choose whether or not he was suffering.

The long periods that writers spend sitting in chairs, wrestling with language and their own thoughts offer plenty of suffering potential. There’s the isolation that concentration often requires. The fruit of lonely labor shrivels all too easily, goes to vinegar instead of wine. Those who confront this alienation, the specter of pointless toil, may be tempted to reach for the wine themselves--or something stronger. The writer-as-substance-abuser archetype, familiar to Americans, is also common in Japan, where Murakami describes how surprised people are when they discover that he isn’t destroying his body to write books. The stresses of writing and handling difficult themes can be like handling poison, Murakami writes. Running, however provides an exit for toxic thoughts.

“I run in a void.” Murakami writes. “Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.”

The void, for me, is never a truly empty mind, but it often means a quieter one. On my best runs and races, I’ve shushed the little complaints from the body and put distance between myself and the chorus of doubts. I often find that the demons in the chorus are loudest during the first miles; keep running and they fall behind. Then I’m free. In this quieter realm, sometimes I hear unexpected voices and inspirations.

So it is with my best days of writing. The little doubt demons yowl loudest in the beginning. I need to warm up, to get absorbed with what I’m doing until I scarcely care whether my work is a success or a failure. Only then can I leave the demons behind and focus on the task.

Murakami advocates for four hours of writing daily. This level of commitment to routine mental exercise may be more difficult than you first conceive, especially when combined with other tasks that Murakami accounts for, such as promoting books, translating, and preparing speeches and lectures. If you, like me, love the idea of writing, but struggle to enforce a routine, Murakami suggests building up to it with smaller goals at first, much like a marathoner who boosts weekly mileage leading up to the race.

Without good habits, Murakami says, talent can easily become a crutch. He has always been a solid, middle-of-the-pack runner, one who must work against his body’s natural tendency to put on weight. Yet rather than resent the effortless natural gifts that other runners enjoy, he considers it a virtue that he has to put effort into his practice. Murakami sees his writing the same way; he has talents, but the work is never easy.

“I have to pound the rock with a chisel and dig out of a deep hole before I can locate the source of creativity,” he writes. Writers with the greatest talent, are enviable, but those who rely on talent alone will be bereft of other skills needed to keep working should the creative well run dry.

Murakami’s writing discipline shows through in his tidy, simple sentences. The prose has a Mr. Rogers quality, wrapping sophisticated ideas in neat packages. The style echoes that of American author Raymond Carver, which makes sense, because the book title is an homage to Carver’s short story/story collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Murakami has also translated Carver’s work from English into Japanese.

Such simple-to-read writing often conceals the difficult tasks involved in snaking a one-dimensional string of words through any number of intersections and decision points. The challenge is like designing a racecourse through a busy city or byzantine network of trails. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running provides a clear, well-marked course with stimulating views along the way. Marukami’s insights are something to run with.

Just a Moment

I stood on the lake’s edge. The frozen surface was mottled white with snow and the gray of bare ice. Further out, the gray had a greenish tinge where water had seeped through. The temperature hadn’t risen above freezing in days, but the snow, treacherous insulator, had directed the warm of the lake against its icy skin, blotching the clear complexion with shallow slush patches. Beyond, the eastern banks rose up into hardwood hills where denuded winter trees clambered up the ridge, branches rasping against the overcast sky.

I unsnapped the skis and started to walk, listening carefully to the sound of my footfalls.

Eventually, the sharp tap of my ski boots on ice diminished to the crunch of snow and then muffled down as I crossed the into slop zone. I looked down and saw slush water playing over my boot tops.

I navigated past ice fishing holes with spiderwebs of dark cracks running out. A small ice fishing colony hugged the north end. Perhaps they were dubious about the ice further down. I couldn’t blame them. Open water lapped not far away, one wound in the ice a casualty of a neighbor’s home heating system, another, apparently maintained by a couple dozen ducks swimming around. I had tested this ice the day before, and now felt pretty solid about it. (I had been less confident at the time and had worn a drysuit and life vest just in case.)

It was nonetheless a relief when I felt the ice solidify underfoot once more, and an even bigger relief to reach shore. I scrambled up steep section of bare rock beneath the rope swing, swung a leg over a guardrail and road-walked a short distance to the start of the path.

 

I’d run on this trail many, many times, but never skied it. It wouldn’t have been practical to carry the skis over asphalt to get here, nor was there any parking. The frozen lake represented a rare opportunity to explore familiar territory in a new way.

Not that the adventure started off particularly promisingly. Only half the trail was snow-covered, forcing me to make an awkward climb uphill climb. 

Good luck skiing back down this later, I thought. 

Sublime ski conditions are rare here in southeast Connecticut. You learn to take what you can get.

 Fortunately, the snow cover consolidated further up the trail. I started to fall into the nice stride and glide, where you can actually go a minute or so without having to break the rhythm to avoid rock or root. It didn’t last long.

Soon I was side-stepping gingerly on steep downclimbs. This felt cowardly, but at the same time, the narrow trails left little room for adjustment, and plenty of opportunities to steer over a bare rock or smack a tree. Then there was the fear of a blowdown on a blind corner that would take me out at the ankles.

Some hills I was bolder than others, earning a few sustained sections of enjoyment, intermingled with an equal number of mild disasters. 

I cruised down one hill and managed to pull the brakes only when my ski tips had practically dunked themselves in Silex brook.

 

.

In most places in the Connecticut woods, to stop is to hear the dull background roar of traffic somewhere — or, more often — from all sides at once. Here, however, the brook’s watery conversation was its own white noise

I took a pause to admire the dynamics of the place.

Fingers of dark water and light air undulated with one another beneath an ice layer— yin and yang. In the open water of the main channel, bubbles maneuvered at the whim of hydrology.

One particularly large bubble sashayed coyly into eddy behind a stepping-stone, a mirror to the world overhead: black branches and white sky. 

I thought about how much I wanted to just take in quiet moments like these, how distinct they seemed to me as life seemed to be increasingly defined by noise and distraction. 

I also knew that it was unfair to ask nature to be more than it was. I could absorb some things, but only so far. However, much I wanted it to be, this was not my true medium. I better knew the din of words and flashing images — the realm from which I had temporarily absconded.

Here, I was a tourist, lucky, sometimes, enough to pick up some things with the help of a phrasebook, but otherwise just another set of uncomprehending eyes and ears.

The bubble held for a beautiful moment, lingered, then was gone.

 

A virtual run with Ahmaud Arbery

I participated in a virtual "Run for Ahmoud" virtual race today for the murdered runner Ahmaud Arbery. I heard through The Day newspaper that Southeastern Connecticut local, Donny Davino was putting on the event and decided to incorporate my weekend long run. My entry was a donation to Black Lives Matter affiliated charities. Per race instructions, I have posted the 13-mile course I ran, and a photo I took of myself out on the course and tagging my course.

I also thought it would be appropriate to add a couple of thoughts about what Arbery's death means in America today, and what my thoughts about it were as a runner.

Running appeals to me because it feels like freedom. It's self-propelled. Unlike, other sports, it requires a minimum of gear. You don't need to get a team together; you just get out the door and go.

But throughout my years of running, there was one thing I always carried with me without thinking about it much: whiteness. Because of my skin color, I've never felt that anyone was going to target me on the street or mistake me for a fleeing criminal. I  can jaywalk fearlessly, run on the wrong side of the road, or even cut across private property, expecting no consequences worse than getting yelled at. I leave home expecting to get my daily miles of chill and exercise. I certainly don't expect to lose my life.

Unfortunately, Black runners and other runners of color do not run with the same privilege that whiteness gives me. They may love running as much, or more than I do, but worry that racist violence, even death might be waiting around the next corner.

Such was, tragically, the case for Ahmaud Arbery in what is now a well-known story. The 25-year-old was  jogging through a suburban neighborhood when three white men immediately decided he was a criminal and pursued him with trucks and guns. Within minutes, Arbery lay murdered. The perpetrators emerged unpunished. The system that would have protected me, did not apply to Arbery. Fortunately, video has brought a day of reckoning to the killers. 

We are all reckoning, however, and looking at the failures in institutions and in compassion throughout this country, looking within ourselves for work that still needs to be done. There are long miles to go yet.

Video: 32 Birthday Miles on the Run

A short video from early May. I ran all 32 of my birthday miles this year! It was fun. It hurt. See you again next year!

32 Birthday Miles on the Run

Pachaug Doorstep Adventure

A small stream flows beneath High Ledge in Patchaug State Forest

Friday

I signed out from the videoconference, flipped my laptop shut, reached for my rucksack, then stepped out into a bluebird Friday afternoon. Memorial Day weekend had begun. I intended to capitalize on every minute. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has changed many things in our lives, including the way people travel. Fortunately, my preferred travel medium, the doorstep adventure, did not require any fear-filled plane rides or dubious highway rest stations. 

 My doorstep in southeastern Connecticut would be the start and finish line for a 60+ mile trail loop through Pachaug State Forest —the largest state forest in Connecticut. There were parts of this forest in the south that I knew very well, but there were also other places in its northern reaches where I had never set foot. I found myself deeply curious about what the trails would be like up there.

Since this was a doorstep adventure, I had to get to the trailhead under my own power. I started shambling through the neighborhood, loaded pack pressing on my shoulders. While the weight made it too heavy for me to truly run, I found I could move slightly faster than walking speed if I broke into a granny-gait on the flats and downhills. 

I ducked into the woods for a quick shortcut, then popped out again at at the base of Lantern Hill, where (no surprise) the road was lined with hikers’ vehicles. There were exactly zero people on the abandoned trolley line nearby however, which worked out nicely.

It used to be possible to follow the trolley line all the way to the Narragansett Trail, but when I tried to explore that route last year, I’d found someone had set up No Trespassing signs and an electric fence — which I’d avoided by pushing through a wall of briars and climbing up a stone dam.

To avoid doing this again, I cut into the woods early, sloshed across a mucky stream, and came out near a graveyard on Route 2. I shuffled along the roadside for a half-mile or so before reconnecting with the Narragansett Trail in a half mile.

The trail was marked with the blue blazes that indicated that it was maintained by the Connecticut Forest and Park Association— the organization which maintains over 700 miles of these blue-blazed trails throughout the state.

The Narragansett Trail would be my companion for the beginning of this adventure, before I turned north onto the Pachaug Trail. The companionship started rocky, with a butt-kicking climb up a steep ridge. The trail dropped down again into the Yawbux Valley, along a heartbreakingly beautiful stretch of beaver-dammed brook. 

The trail wended past a second beaver pond, then took to the hills again, through old stone walls, beneath tall, dark outcrops of layered schist. Often, I think the tortured rock formations in the Connecticut woods go unappreciated simply because they are so deep in the trees. You don’t see them until you are right in front. Moss and mountain laurel often favor such places. They have their own brooding flavor. I passed over the geologic chaos of High Ledge and Bullet Ledge, where the rocks are cracked and jumbled violently atop one another. 

For camp, I climbed another ledge off the trail, and draped my tarp over a fallen branch.

The mashed potato dinner was bland, but enjoyable. I’d shattered some potato chips into the mix earlier, which added a nice oily quality to the meal. I zipped myself into the bivuac sack, shut my eyes and waited for sleep. 

(Top to bottom) I start on the roads, Yawbux Valley, Beaver Dam, High Ledge, dinner

Saturday

It poured that night. At one point, I had a troubled dream that I was sitting in on another video conference, but in every square, instead of a human face there was a whining mosquito. When I awakened I realized that I was, in fact, surrounded by a mosquito swarm. They probed at the defenses of the netting, looking for a weakness. 

I listened to the whining chorus until I could take it no longer. I shot out from the bag and started packing like mad. By 5 a.m. I was already picking my way back down off the ledge and going for the trail. Breakfast could wait.

The night’s rains had suffused the woods with brooding fog. The trail went down and down into a ravine, where I filled my hydration bladder in the swift-flowing brook that ran along its bottom.

Further up, the trail joined the gravel Legenwood Road and headed east. A sign announced that due to a property dispute, that I couldn’t just follow the blue blazes back into the woods, but had to take a detour on the roads for the next couple miles.

I minded this far less than I thought I would. Traffic was light enough that it hardly bothered me. Stone-walled farm fields were ethereal in the gray mist. I was making incredibly good time with my early start and the roads allowed me to take on even more miles. When I had the chance to rejoin the Narraganset again earlier, I opted instead to push on along the pavement to the next crossover — saving myself 30 minutes or more.

I re-met the trail at the Green Fall River, which cuts a narrow canyon through the rock. It was an area of perpetual shade, with cedars and hemlocks growing thick along the ledges, while ferns and moss flourished in the understory. The river’s cola-brown waters foamed and gurgled below in a series of small falls. The path crossed the river, followed a boardwalk, then climbed past a dam to the quiet shoreline of Green Fall Pond.

I remembered these places from elementary school when my summer day camp would take everyone out there in vans, our teeth rattling as we drove along the bumpy forest roads. It had been many years since I’d hiked there last, and I wondered if, all these years later, I might no longer find the place so alluring and beautiful. I needn’t have worried.

 Though I had been travelling in known territory, that was about to change. At the north end of the lake, I found another blue-blazed route. I consulted the pages from the Connecticut Walk Book that I’d brought with me to confirm that this was, indeed, the Pachaug Trail.

I followed it north, winding through another series of dark, rocky ridges and shattered boulders.

Further along, the trail flattened out onto a plain of glacial silt. Pitch pines, with their distinct, lizard scale bark and urchin-like needles grew comfortably here.

An hour later, I emerged at a highway where the blue blazes led me toward Beach Pond. The pond is actually a three-mile long lake, straddling Rhode Island and Connecticut. Today, it was gray and still. A solitary fisherman cast his line from a canoe. 

Rhode Island still officially required out-of-state visitors to undergo a two-week quarantine. Judging by the stream of Rhode Island plates flowing past along the highway, it didn’t seem that the state’s residents were taking things too seriously. I crossed the line, then turned north off the highway as the trail re-entered the trees. 

The trail went up and down along the lakeshore through groves of pitch pine and beech trees. I cooked hot breakfast along a boulder at the water’s edge. A light rain prompted me to wrap myself in a tarp — probably a strange sight for the water skier that went buzzing past.

The rain diminished by the time that I packed up. I crossed back into Connecticut, then proceeded north beyond the lake. My goal for the day was about 10 miles or so to the north. This would be the northernmost extent of the Pachaug Trail before it bent west. It was also at a 560-foot hill called Pharisee Rock, that I intended to climb.

The woods were darkening now; the air became oppressive, heavy. Sure enough, I started to hear the splat of droplets on the leaf canopy. A nearby collection of fallen rocks made a decent-sized cave. According to theI crawled in to eat a Clif bar as the rain began to splatter, then thunder in a steady downpour as the wind shook the branches. I waited 15 minutes to see if it would pass. When I saw that it wouldn’t, I wrapped my pack up in the tarp and threw my poncho on.

The next hours were a soaking slop show. I sloshed through ankle-deep puddles as the rain fell and fell, clutching myself beneath the poncho as I jogged. I was mightily tempted to put on warmer clothes, but also reluctant to dampen anything that I would sleep in that night.

When I saw the sign for the Pharisee Rock trail, I laughed out loud. The rain was slacking, and I decided that it was as good a time as any to pitch camp.  

I pulled on all my warm clothing, and my insulated hat, then lay in the sleeping bag for the next hour, clutching at myself to get warm. I partially extricated myself to cook dinner again, but then got back in the cocoon. Despite my efforts, damp had found its way in. I clenched myself harder. I wasn’t hypothermic, but I was far from comfortable. At least it was too cold for the bugs.

Narrow section on the Pachaug Trail, The Rhode Island line, shelter

Sunday

I was awake around 6 am, feeling miserably cold and pessimistic about whether getting out of the sleeping bag would make things any better. Eventually, the need to answer the call of nature forced the issue. Once on my feet, I discovered that those feet were sore — so were my legs. Everything was battered and creaky. I started up the trail, packless, toward the summit of Pharisee Rock. 

My efforts were rewarded with a lackluster summit view. The only thing that I could see through the trees were the tops of other trees, slightly that were further off. No matter. Sometimes things just work out that way. I stumbled my way back to camp and packed things up. I was back on the trail a little before 8 am. 

 Even if Pharisee wasn’t much to write home about, I got an unexpected lift from the road-walk section of the trail as it followed a high ridge above farm-fields with a panoramic view toward hazy hilltops. The sun was starting to slash away the clouds now and droplets on the hay scintillated like incandescent pearls. Dozens of tiny birds flitted in and out along the fence line in a tittering cacophony. A watchful hawk soared high above it all, looking for its next meal. A bouquet of flavors rose wafted out of the warming grass and into my nostrils. I felt serene and joyous. 

Just as a sponge takes in more water, the longer it soaks, so do travelers take in more the longer they spend in the works of nature. I believe the length of time spent is often more relevant than the location. Even hiking along pavement, now that I was on the third day of my trip, I felt a serenity on par with anything that I’ve felt in a National Park trail.

A sign outside a recent high school graduate’s house let me know I was in the town of Sterling now. I’d really gone north, almost halfway to Massachusetts now. Often, living in Connecticut, I overlook these parts of the state because I get so taken by the coastline. Now I thought that I ought to have been looking over my shoulder more. The Connecticut Interior had its own peaceful beauty that I was appreciating more and more with each step. 

I followed the trail back into the woods where a crow-sized pileated woodpecker soared over my head, then regarded me from the side of a tree trunk. I could perceive a distant lakeshore through the trees and heard its chorus of peepers and bullfrogs. New smells of hot pine needles wafted up from the ground. All these sensations enlivened me as much as the roadside had. I broke back into my granny gait.

I was making good enough time that I decided to add some miles by hiking over to the adjacent Quinebaug Trail. I took a connector through the woods over to Phillips Pond where a sunny picnic table by the lake’s edge made for an attractive picnic spot.

Once again, I was glad I’d waited to eat along the trail instead of shivering through the motions in camp. I kicked my shoes off and set up damp clothing in the warm sun. I enjoyed a languid breakfast, finishing the last of my oatmeal in a double ration while my clothes dried out. 

I continued south along the blue blazes on the Quinebaug Trail, joining a rutted-up forest road. A set of dirt-bikers zoomed past from the other direction. 

Then I saw the sign: “Timber Harvest in Progress: Area Temporarily Closed for Your Safety.” It was Sunday, so I seriously doubted any of the big equipment would be rolling. Still, I hesitated. I had a history of getting lost in logging areas with their morasses of confusing skidder paths. Turning around would mean backtracking two miles to the Pachaug Trail, however. Maybe, I could finesse my way through this time. 

Following the main track seemed to be easy enough. Sometimes there were even blue blazes on trees that hadn’t been toppled. By the time the bulldozed path came out at a forest service road. It seemed that I had navigated my way through successfully. After 45 minutes of kicking along the gravel with no sign of a blue blaze anywhere, I concluded that I had screwed up. The forest roads were not so much fun in the high sun. The trees were cut back far enough from the margin that I enjoyed approximately zero percent of their shade. There were other trails leading into the woods, but I still didn’t see any blazes. What had happened?

I finally made the ultimate capitulation and (ugh!) took my phone out to find my location.  I eventually figured out that I had come out of the woods to a different road than I had expected. The good news was I could regain the trail in about a half mile of road walking. 

Finally, I got back to the blue blazes. I had switched over to the Nehantic Trail, which would loop me back to Green Fall Pond. I followed the path up a slope to the top of Mount Misery, a popular overlook where I had to take turns with other Memorial Day hikers to appreciate the view. 

The parking lot at the base was crowded with vehicles and hikers. There was a large, closed-up campground where the state had stacked picnic tables atop one another so people wouldn’t use them. At another site, I saw a large group gathered having a cookout. It didn’t look very socially distant. Sure enough, a ranger pulled up soon afterward to talk with them. 

Shortly thereafter, I missed another key turn and walked for a miserable stretch of busy highway before I realized I needed to turn around. Finally, I got back into a long stretch of woods for me to walk and jog.

I popped back out at Green Fall Pond at around 5 pm. I had completed the lasso. Now I just needed to retrace the Narragansett Trail to get home. Much like Mount Misery, the area was busy. Crowds of people paddled along the lake and gathered on the ledges above the water. Almost all of the vehicles in the lot had Rhode Island plates. 

At this point my legs were pretty shot. I hiked back through the Green Fall canyon and onto the section of trail I had skipped the other day. I found a flat section to set up camp near the river’s edge. Of course, being this close to water meant that the bugs came out in droves. 

I cooked dinner quickly, then zipped myself into the bivy while Mosquitopocalypse swarmed in.

They climbed the mesh of the bivy sack like pirates crawling up the rigging of a Spanish galleon but thrust their blood-hungry proboscises through the nylon in vain.

Morning in Sterling, CT; Why yes, I've been wearing fingerless gloves, how could you tell?; logging; view from Mount Misery, not a picnic spot 

Memorial Day

The last morning on the trail was gray again and misty. I had to walk carefully over slippery rocks and through muddy stream crossings. I ran the roads back to Legenwood, and then skipped the whole Bullet Ledge section of trail. At the base of High Ledge, I stopped to pick a bunch of stinging nettles to cook for dinner that night — I hadn’t enjoyed eating nettles since Washington. Just to make sure they were the real deal, I ran the back of my hand over the leaves until I felt the painful sting. They would be far more enjoyable after simmering in a frying pan.

The Yawbux Valley was particularly beautiful in the gray. I stopped to watch the antics of a family of geese leading their goslings through the trees around pond. I loitered around the sprays of wild azalea blossoms sticking my nose in them in search of fragrance. I hadn’t seen a soul along the trail all morning. 

In the next couple hours, I would retrace my way along Route 2, the trolley line and the remaining roads leading home. I would log about 68 miles of trail over one Memorial Day weekend. 

I stopped to fill my water one last time, nestled in the cool beneath the hemlocks along Yawbux brook.

I paused and listened to the conversations of the birds, watched the dark water swirl around mossy rocks.  Bubbles and flecks of foam spun in tiny eddies. Water bugs skittered across the surface on their separate missions. 

To be sure, the small place was easy to scoot past on the way to more dramatic sights, but it also had its own patterns and stories to tell. Taking time to appreciate such things fit nicely with the theme of my morning — with the whole doorstep adventure.

Trailside stinging nettle and wild azaleas