Lost and found
Before I started on my hike, Mark admonished me "You'll stay on the trail, right?"
"Of course I will," I promised. And I really did mean to. The trouble was the blazes.
Actually, I was highly
impressed by how well the trail was marked at first. If you understand
blazes --- pay attention to the color and look for double-blazes to
alert you to an unexpected turn --- following the trail from the High
Knob Tower to Edith Gap was child's play.
Okay, yes, I'll admit
that as I got closer to Edith Gap, the trail got slightly trickier.
Orange blazes joined the yellow as a horse trail cohabited with my
walking trail. And, in some spots, only orange blazes existed to mark
both avenues. But after I figured out what was going on, I was okay with
that.
The trouble happened when
my trail crossed the next forest-service road...and seemed to
disappear. While the higher-elevation portions of the Chief Benge trail
could just as well have been located in a National Park, this region
shows the reality of trail-building in the National Forest ---
clearcuts. Through some oversight, a clearcut had been smacked down
right in the middle of the trail, meaning that I was suddenly walking
through a thicket of five-year-old trees with no blazes in sight. Gulp.
Enter my handy, dandy
map. When walking over new ground, I try to bring along a high-quality
topo map at all times. And here's why --- the visual helped me figure
out how to bushwhack in just the right direction so I could meet back up
with the trail less than half a mile downstream. Success!
I think I probably used
more calories during my fifteen minutes being lost than I did during the
whole rest of the hike. And since the blazes were suddenly scanty from
there on out, I tired myself out yet more wondering if I'd actually
found the right trail and was heading in the right direction. Boy was I
glad to see this boardwalk at the upper end of Bark Camp Lake, proving
that I'd not only guessed correctly, but was also on the home stretch.
I'll admit that I wouldn't have wanted to walk longer, and I did end up with tired muscles and sore feet. But I learned that a hike of that magnitude is definitely not beyond my means, which is an empowering feeling.
I do think I'll wait a while before hiking the other half of the Chief Benge trail, though....
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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