Boldly Go Solo

While many people spent Easter Sunday at church, 14 of us spent it in nature's cathedral, hiking seven miles in Sky Meadows State Park, on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. While the cherry blossoms are now past peak, the trees in Delaplane, Virginia, are just beginning to bud.

Many people may not realize that while the U.S. has some grand and well-known national parks, states also maintain a system of beautiful parks. Sky meadows is less than an hour from downtown D.C. In "the country."

Once in the parking lot, we were greeted by the sounds of a cow lowing and, later, the smell of, well, cows. As the state park brochure says, "Generations of farming these hills makes for an incredible blend of pasture and woodlands."

The Sierra Club scheduled this hike three months ago and our leader got extremely lucky in that the weather was just about perfect. A light breeze and temperatures somewhere in the 70's.

As
you might imagine, these local hikes are perfect for solo travelers.
People bond quickly. In fact, 12 of the 14 hikers who joined the group
came alone.

We met at a Metro station, as is typical, so any visitor staying in DC would be able to join. We carpooled from there. Five in one car, four in another and a few people met us there. As we hiked at varying skill levels and took breaks to let others catch up, I conversed over the course of the day with half of the group, plus got to know two others during the car ride.

One hiker knew the area very well and was explaining what kind of woodpeckers we likely were hearing. I think he said pileated woodpeckers were the most common in those woods but the discussion also turned to Woody Woodpecker, an American cartoon character based on the pileated woodpecker, so maybe I'm mixing things up!

One woman mentioned she is writing a book on Berlin and a woman born in Germany just happened to be on the hike. So the two of them got involved in a deep discussion of war-time Germany.

A Sierra club regular sat next to me during one break and told me about the "marathon" hike that several clubs do in the spring: a 100-kilometer hike from D.C. to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, a national park. That's about 60 miles in a day!

He's done the crazy long hike three times. Two of those times it took him 18 hours. His fastest hike was 15 hours. No thanks. A few hours of hiking is enough for me. Nevermind having to start at 3 or 4 am to hike for 18 hours worth. Blech. But I enjoyed hearing about it.

If you're not a chatty person, you can keep to yourself by dropping back, leaving a little room between you and the rest of the group. Nobody will mind. Group hiking provides safety. If anything happens, there are people there to get you out of jam.

Photos: Ellen Perlman, via a Droid (Verizon multi-media phone) camera! (Who wants to carry anything heavy on a hike?)

Sky Meadows State Park and view of Paris, Virginia.