I walked this little trail above the Cedar Lakes Center several times. In West Virginia, there are mountains everywhere and so you first must climb up the edge of the mountain on the leafy, rainy, foggy trail which circles two dark green lakes with yellow and brown leaves floating on their surface. In places the path is very muddy. Last year, I am told, the quilting instructor was bittten by a snake on her heel while on this trail.
So don't wear sandals on hikes.
Unassuming Sarah, who painted beautiful water color flowers at my table, said that the first hiker stirs up the snake and the snake bites the second hiker. She learned this when walking the entire Appalachian Trail with her husband. Second only to having children, it was the greatest experience of their lives. She carried 35 lbs of food, but they mailed packets of food to general delivery along the route. They stayed in the shelters or just in their tents, often finding books left by Trail Angels along the way. Their children were grown. The husband's company had downsized and he was retired early. She had taught 5th grade for many years and now retired. They decided to cross the full expanse of the United States from California to Maine on bicycle.
Her husband died in a tragic accident along the way. She climbed to the top of Mount Katahdin in Maine, the terminous of the trail and scattered his ashes.
The fly fishing teacher told me that there was a "geocache" up on the trail, that there was a fallen tree with another fallen log across it and a stone on top of that. Without a GPS, I searched without results for the cache. Later he told me that it was about 30 feet off the trail.
I drove back down the magnificent mountains in the fog and rain on Friday. At Tamarak, I gave a woman gas money. She was stranded without gas to get home. Although the trees and fields are still green and the sky a pale insistent summer blue, there was a wind with yellow leaves swirling down on the road to my house, hinting at fall on its way.
I walked the familiar Rail Trail Saturday morning passing my fellow travelers:
the political refugees from Columbia, the fit Japanese man with the foot shaped running shoes, the attorney with his cell phone to his ear discussing a ruling, the two women and a man from the Phillipines, the home school family on bikes, the jogging girls with their pony tails swaying mightily, the roller bladers, the tall, sturdy New Zealander woman, the elderly woman who walks eight miles a day, the two handsome gray bearded brothers ambling on their long legs, the two sisters with dazzling smiles, identical except one is tall and one is short, all the dog walkers and the dogs in the Rail Tail dog park.
Bull Hawg's Barbeque has made a path from their back door to the trail with wooden steps, a bike rack, picnic tables and a sign advertising breakfast bagels. The biggest lure, however, is the aroma.
Volunteers are cleaning and pruning and have provided a big dry erase board for ideas for the new year.
I suggest "Little Libraries", the kind they have in Decatur, essentially a box on a pole where you can leave books and where you can take books to be your own, if you wish.
Children are returning to school. Everywhere on the edges of the woods, Confederate Jasmine vine is blooming.
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