Saturday, October 28, 2017

Pinchot Leaves His Mark

September 18 - 21, 2017

Gifford Pinchot was against the formation of many National Parks, wanting instead to create areas that would be "managed" rather than "preserved".  Thankfully others saw the value in not cutting down trees in say, Yosemite, but clear-cutting in many National Forests is due to his policies.  Bainbridge Island had a Graduate Institute (recently acquired by Presidio) started by his grandson who has the same name and all I knew about the man was that he did believe in sustainability - balanced with usability.

Turns out that Pennsylvanians know all about the guy, seeing as how he was governor of Pennsylvania for eight years.  He also has a nice park named after him.

Needing some time in the dirt I decided to stay a couple nights at his park and regroup. It was delightfully empty in the middle of the week and the camping areas are surrounded by super-easy walking trails.  When I eventually got a map from a helpful park ranger I saw that there was also a trail that circumvented the lake in the middle of the park.  Cool!  Eyeing the scale on the little map and making some guesses about twistyness of trails I figured the route was four, maybe five miles around.

I totally need to stop guessing about things.


About halfway 'round I was thinking that this had maybe not been the smartest decision but by that point I was 1) half way through so turning around wouldn't have been all that helpful and 2) in the middle of the woods, far away from any more helpful park rangers that could give me lift back to the campground.



Happily there was a vending machine at a day-use area around the back-side of the lake and I chugged something with sugar to recover a bit of energy.  Then I checked the time, looked at how much farther I needed to go, and tried to remember what time the sun set.



Then I hustled.  Getting caught in the woods in the dark was not high on my list of experiences that I was looking to do.  The path on this end of the lake was not as steep as at the first end and I made reasonable time, huffing and puffing much of the way until reaching the campground road.  Where, of course, I realized how much my feet hurt.


I made it back to the camper a good half hour before sunset and had plenty of time to hobble to the shower and sort out just how many blisters I had on my toes.  Bah.  But hell, I just did a 9.2 mile hike!  Woot!





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