A little too much excitement for one weekend
By Katharine
What a weekend…
As a prelude to the weekend…something seemingly innocent may have set the weekend up for events.
Timeline and brief outline:
Friday after chill time with Sabine and Laurel..
an innocent stop at Agway for one item…
As I opened my door a handsome red Pitbull to whom of course, I said hello, jumped into my lap and kissed me… moments later, the “papa” asked me for a favor: “could I drive him to Newfield?”… guess you can guess, I did.. (after two stops at other stores… during which the pit and I waited in the car)
Saturday Morning Hike: South Hill Rec Way… As the dogs and I lingered with Big D..
We came to Stephen’s described Y trail devide: “only for the brave” (or foolish..) and Big SMART D went to the right and I to the left…but it was not the reasonable challenge one that I recalled as the upper level trail with one rocky waterfall gorge crossing ..it was the one that takes one to the floor of the gorge and the creek… with the BEST option: TURN around….the second option, the cliff path that appeared to be gone-filled in by large old disintegrated tree trunks…
or…
…… scale the steep (VERY STEEP) “hillside” to the path above..which seems not so far from the bottom…(oh the trickery of the eyes and the foolish wish)
… well we made it, but not without immense fear and shaking knees..and many epitaphs and urgings and dodging sliding rocks and reaching for roots… POOR DOGS… leashes held tightly to keep the little ones from certain injurious falls and urging Vivien to move ahead and to the side to keep the rocks from bombarding the little loves…and praising her for her good listening.. .
We got to the top and noticed a small goat trail to which we had to descend a few feet.. yikes… but, we lived to tell the tale..I ACTUALLY considered whether we would need to call for ropes… we could not return down… we will NOT NOT NOT do that again.. I have scaled other cliff sides but not like this with three dogs in tow and a pole (and a poop bag..haha which I would not let go of… strange what we consider when life passes in front of us).
Sunday Morning Hike: Connecticut Hills and the cairns hike… lovely…
yet, midway… I noticed Vivien’s odd behavior to be caused by a ground bee/yellow jacket on her side… she trying to disengage it… I flicked it off, AND POOR Cary Grant stepped on it… pause the hikers… is there a shorter way out? Nope…so I carried Cary Grant and a bit further along… Eckhart to the rescue with onion and his advice to squeeze the juice of the onion into Cary Grant’s pad… it helped.. I carried poor little love and Gopi led (or was led by) Vivien.. by the end… to quote Jim Rolfe from his Friday, “all’s well that ends well”…