Originally printed April 7, 2018.
There are several sayings about the folly of making plans. Most people have heard “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.’ A few years ago, I heard the advice that if you want to make God smile, tell him you have a plan. So, I should not have been surprised when I had to curtail my planned three days of hiking due to an injury.
A couple of days before Thursday’s hike, I became aware of pain in my left hip. It wasn’t much at first – mostly a minor hitch in my giddyap. However, it worsened to the point that it began to affect my gait. Particularly in the morning, I looked like Grandpa McCoy as I hobbled around my apartment. Still, I had a three day window, and I didn’t want to blow this chance. So, on Wednesday I made the trip to Montello. I knew I would be sore at first, but I hoped that thorough warmup would help me lose the discomfort in my hip so I could hike comfortably.
The trip to Montello went smoothly, although sitting in a car wasn’t doing my hip any good. I had arrived early in the afternoon, and took advantage of the time by driving to the three pickup points for my hikes and marking them into Wayz and into my pseudo GPS maps in my Prius. It had snowed earlier in the week – anywhere from 4 to 8 inches, depending on who I asked – and the country looked really pretty as a result. After checking in, I ate at a nice sandwich shop called Rendezvous. Really nice food at a reasonable price, plus friendly service. I enjoyed a grilled chicken breast sandwich, a steaming cup of homemade chicken and dumpling soup, and a glass of wine. When I returned to the motel, I stopped in the office to ask directions to the nearest pharmacy because I was hurting and needed some Ben-Gay. Unfortunately, the only pharmacy in town closed at 5:00, but the manager gave me his personal tube of Ben-Gay. I then retired to my room for the evening. After talking with Jane, I did a lot of slow stretching to try to loosen my hip before knocking off for the evening.
I awoke at 5:15 on Thursday to brilliant, sunny skies and 10 degree temps. My hip was sore, not merely tight, and I seriously considered calling off the hike. But, I decided to have faith – hope? – that my muscles would loosen as the hike progressed. So, after breakfast at a nearby coffee shop, I made the trip to Westfield’s Pioneer Park to meet Gary, who again was my trail angel. We had a chance to talk on the way to the drop off point. Before retirement, Gary worked in anesthesiology. As he put it, “I was paid for passing gas.” I told him I noticed a sign at the local Catholic church advertising a Friday night fish fry. Was this current, or did it end with Easter? Gary promised to check it out and advise me. We arrived at the drop off point and said our goodbys. I got started at 8:20 with some halting, pained steps. The hip seemed to loosen as I walked, and I continued west along Montello’s main drag. The highlight of this section was The Emporium, an art shop with a slew of whimsical, kitschy sculptures of all sorts of animals. It certainly wasn’t the prettiest part of the hike, but it was the most distinctive.
The most unpleasant part of the hike was the opening two miles of WI-23 heading west from Montello. It is a major thoroughfare with not much of a shoulder for hiking, which forced me to be extremely watchful for approaching traffic, since they couldn’t swerve to the left to give me some space. This was particularly true as I was approaching rises and couldn’t see vehicles coming my way. I was relieved to get off the highway and turn north onto Fern Road.
When I cross an intersection, I make it a point to text Jane to let her know where I am, and when. She then marks the time at the appropriate point on her copy of the map. An example would be “Turned off 23 onto Fern Ave at 9:00.” In this way, Jane can keep track of me. Even if I am currently in a cell phone dead spot, the message will eventually be sent once I get to a place where the cell phone service is good. What I noticed today was that whenever I stopped to text Jane or to take a picture, my hip would tighten. That cause me to limit the amount of photos I took.
This was too bad, because the country was really pretty once I got off 23. The route cut through gently rolling hills of very tall pine forests broken by farmers’ fields, some of them vast and others not. I’ve observed my fair share of farms on my hikes, and something I didn’t notice until I started hiking was that most of them have a smoker on the premises. On this particular hike, I passed the smoke house shown in the picture above. I think they were smoking pork; the smell of bacon on a winter morning is truly wonderful!
While I saw scads of deer tracks, my critter sightings on this hike were limited to birds. For the first time in a while, I saw turkey buzzards riding the air currents high in the sky. To me, they are objects of contrast – gracefully beautiful as they soar on the currents, yet plug ugly up close. I hadn’t seen them in a while, and I wondered if they migrated(the answer is yes). Today I also saw a good number of hawks. Where I spotted them were in trees that lined open spaces like lakes and farmers’ fields. To me, they were staking out these areas and waiting for the first small animal to make a move. Most humorous to me was the rafter – I had to look that up, folks – of 14 turkeys that I saw scurrying single file across a road in front of me.
Most of the time I’m hiking by myself with lots of time to think, and I marvel at some of the things that pop into my head. Often, those things are snippets of music – a section of something we’re working in a chorus rehearsal, a tune played by a drum corps, or some other piece. I don’t know why – maybe it was the fresh snow on the ground – but Michael Praetorius’s “Psallite” popped into my head and stayed their for a good portion of the hike. I didn’t sing aloud, but I performed it in my head. Sometimes I recalled the words; when I didn’t, I kind of went to a wah-wah, sort of like the trombone taking the place of Woodstock speaking. “Psallite,unigenito/Christo Dei filio/Psallite,wah-wah, wah-wah…Ein kleines Kindelein…”
There are worse ear worms.
I was grateful for all these diversions because they helped keep my mind off my hip. As I hoped, it did loosen up as the hike progressed. But I was hardly pain free, and I became aware that other parts of me were starting to bark as my body was compensating for the bad hip. I knew I had to cut my planned days of hiking short. The only problem was that I had plunked down three days’ payment to booking.com for the room, and it was now past the checkout time, so I was already in day#2. What to do? I decided to not ask for a credit, but to instead ask for a voucher for two days’ stay in the future. The manager would know that I was being honest with him, since I had told him about it when he gave me the Ben-Gay. It was worth a try.
I got off the trail a little after 2:00, a pretty good pace for doing nearly 15 miles on a bum hip and leg. I made a beeline for the hotel and spoke with the same manager I had seen the previous night. He nodded as I explained my situation and agreed with the idea of a voucher. How to administer it was a bit of a challenge since I booked my stay through booking.com. In the end he gave me a business card and told me to email him directly when I want to return. His only request was that I do it sooner than later, before his busy season got started. I readily agreed, and I cleared out my room and was on my way in 15 minutes.
We’ll catch those two days of hiking as soon as my body says yes.
My Days on the Ice Age Trail 