By Gregory Naigles<\/p>\n
Date: 6\/27\/15<\/p>\n
Location: Kent, Connecticut<\/p>\n
Difficulty: 3.2<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It had to be the right day. After suffering through two long weeks of temperatures in the 80s, I finally found a day where the temperature would be only 70 degrees \u2013 perfect. My choice of hiking destination wasn\u2019t too difficult \u2013 I figured I\u2019d return to a beautiful set of rugged hills in the western Connecticut town of Kent, located in a state park called Macedonia Brook.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I had done the 6.7-mile loop, climbing the highest hills in the park, once before, eight years ago. I wondered how much I would remember from then. The most salient facts that I remembered were that the scenery was incredible, and that the trail had, to quote the hike book, an \u201ceight-foot ledge with minimal handholds\u201d and a \u201cthirty-foot sloping ledge\u201d that were always interesting, and they proved to be this time as well.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And so it was at 10:15 AM on Saturday, June 27th<\/sup> that I pulled up to the trailhead in Macedonia Brook. It was located near a series of campsites, and the namesake brook babbled peacefully nearby. Without much hesitation, I started up the trail on the east side of the valley.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I hiked the first half of the loop in record time. This is the easier half, with relatively good footing (at least compared to the second half), and mostly gentle slopes. I enjoyed listening to the birds chirping and watching the ants crawling and the squirrels jumping. At one point, I crossed a road right next to a stream, and out of the stream flew a heron! Once I had joined the trail on the other side, the heron went back into the stream. I felt bad for disturbing it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Twenty minutes later and one more hill conquered, I tumbled out onto another road, where a vehicle was parked. I noticed that the vehicle had a Georgia license plate, and briefly wondered why a Georgian would come all the way up to Connecticut just to hike Macedonia Brook. Then I saw that the license plate had Fulton County emblazoned on it. It all made sense to me now. Clearly Owens had come to do some hiking here, and I wondered briefly if I would bump into her. Of course, if she had started at the same place that I had, then she would probably have finished the entire hike already by the time I got to the vehicle, but that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (The vehicle wasn\u2019t actually Owens\u2019. Her vehicle does say Fulton County, though.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I then walked along a road that had been built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and mentally thanked FDR for it. I soon approached another road. However, as I did, I heard a strange noise from the other road, and looked down to see what it was. I could hardly believe it. It was a yeti.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I quickly hid behind a tree, hoping that the yeti would just continue along the road and not notice me. However, the yeti stopped moving, pointed its head in my direction, and started to growl. I got very nervous.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The yeti took a few meaningful steps toward my position. I wasn\u2019t sure what to do. Should I run away as fast as I could? Should I yell and scream in the hopes that someone was there nearby who could fight off the yeti? Or maybe I should try to fight off the yeti myself. I did have my walking stick with me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Suddenly, I heard a noise in the shrubs next to me, and a small child emerged. He waved at me, and then ran along toward where the two roads met. I realized that what I thought was a yeti was actually just a group of hikers coming up the road. I laughed it off, and we enjoyed witty banter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One hill after that, and I was standing at the bottom of the eight-foot ledge with minimal handholds. I ultimately scaled the ledge without too much difficulty, but I needed all of my five feet and five inches to do so, and that left me wondering, \u201cHow on earth did I do this eight years ago?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After I climbed the 30-foot sloping ledge, I suddenly felt exhausted, as if all my energy had just suddenly disappeared. I wasn\u2019t too surprised, though. I had, after all, done the whole hike so far at a pretty quick pace. It reminded me of the Katahdin trip my junior fall, where I had plenty of energy to climb the Abol Trail, but as soon as I got to the Tableland I felt totally drained. However, I knew that the summit of Cobble Mountain, which has the best views in the area, was pretty close, so I summoned up my energy reserves and made it to the top.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The summit of Cobble Mountain is exposed to the west, and thus has an unobstructed view in that direction. I could see the Taconics in New York, and beyond that the Catskills. When I opened my lunch, I suddenly remembered that, along with my standard peanut butter and Nutella sandwich, I had also brought a special strawberry from the garden at my house. I named this strawberry BERR, and for the remainder of the hike I carried it in my pocket, wrapped in a spare sock that I had brought. From this exposure, Berr clearly learned a lot about the outside world that most strawberries don\u2019t have the opportunity to learn. Unfortunately, once I reached the trailhead again, I found that Berr had started to turn colors from internal and external bruising, and that the leaves were going brown. Berr clearly needed immediate medical assistance. Luckily for Berr, I did just earn a diploma from a particularly fine institution, so I used the knowledge and skills represented by the diploma to tend to Berr. I opened my mouth and my stomach\u2019s fluids welcomed Berr\u2019s not-particularly-doughy substance with great pleasure. He had a good home in my digestive tract for a few hours.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the summit, I also briefly considered holding a flag behind me in a pose that Eric knows well, however I was deterred from this by the fact that 1) there were other people on the trail, and 2) it started to rain. I hiked the final 1.5 miles downhill through a light rain, which was refreshing. As Sam knows, it wasn\u2019t my first hike where precipitation began while at the summit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The hike was pretty close to perfect. The weather (mostly) cooperated, the trail was a mix of easier and more difficult sections, and the scenery was classic Litchfield Hills. I hope that all of you are going on lots of hiking trips (or, in Owens\u2019 case, sea kayaking trips), and I\u2019d love to hear about them!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Gregory Naigles Date: 6\/27\/15 Location: Kent, Connecticut Difficulty: 3.2 It had to be the right day. After suffering through two long weeks of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[268663],"tags":[563400,563403,563408,114028,563435],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/outingclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/outingclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/outingclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/outingclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/outingclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/outingclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/outingclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/outingclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/outingclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}