Thursday, April 29, 2021 Beaver Creek Valley State Park: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

It’s been seven months since our last hike and our first hike in 2021 was going to be an ambitious one: the 6.2 mile hike at Beaver Creek Valley State Park. I was feeling confident without any reason whatsoever. I haven’t been walking regularly, nor have I been doing the daily water aerobics classes of last year. I was feeling good, though – bring it on!

We arrived at BCVSP around 11:30 a.m; it’s about a 2 hour and 15 minute drive from our house and that doesn’t include some backtracking when roads aren’t well labeled. It was overcast and 50 degrees – perfect for hiking.

We stopped in at the park office to pick up a map and to get our 75-mile patch from last year. I took advantage of the moment to chat the park guy up about the lay of the land, so to speak. What I really wanted to know was how difficult the trails were, especially that part that would include some hiking uphill. He reassured me that the uphill part wasn’t too tough. More on that later.

There weren’t a lot of people at the park, which is just how I like it, as I’ve said before. The hike started at a bridge, the best way to start.

The first part of the trail was on level ground, but I got my hiking poles out anyway. The knees I save may be my own, if I can twist Flannery O’Connor a bit. It was a lovely trail, really – wide and often going right by the creek. You often hear a special kind of silence at these parks, the absence of man-made sounds. Kris mentioned having heard a podcast that featured the story of a man who has made it his life’s work to identify places where you can go and not hear man-made sounds like highways and airplanes. There aren’t very many. We stopped for a moment to see if BCVSP was one of them – it was hard to tell; was that the hum of a highway in the background, or was that the wind?

We saw lots of spring ephemerals, most of them wood anemones. You could say there was a whole sea of them. (See what I did there?)

We also saw some Dutchman’s Breeches, of which I did not get photos, and possibly some hepatica, which is another form of anemone.

There was another couple there about our age with their dog and we bonded with them in the way that you do with other hikers – as long as everybody stays in their own lane. We didn’t want to hike too close to them so when the path split, we went one way and they went another. Eventually, we ran into them again by the creek where the dog was taking a little refreshing plunge. Kris called out “He’s braver than me!” and the guy called back, “He says it’s good – you should try it!” This is the kind of camaraderie you can expect when hiking. It’s downright jovial.

All that hiking by the water got Kris musing about trout fishing and the need to plan a fishing trip soon. We’ve got it all worked out: I’ll come along with some good books to read, and he’ll do the fishing. He also told me an entertaining story he’d heard about some poor woman who was using a pit toilet somewhere and a bear bit her in the butt. You can’t un-hear that kind of thing, sadly.

We left the creek after awhile and ended up hiking a big loop around an area that had burned. Was it a planned burn or an accidental one? We thought perhaps we’d ask the park ranger when we finished the hike, but didn’t, so we still don’t know.

We finished the first part of the Hiking Club trail by about 1:00 p..m. and I figured we’d probably done about 4 miles of the 6 by that time, so the remaining loop, while hilly, shouldn’t be too bad. Spoiler alert: I was wrong.

We stopped at a picnic table at this point and I went to go use the pit toilet, trying unsuccessfully to forget about the specter of bears waiting underneath to bite me in the butt. We had our usual repast of Clif bars and water, and girded ourselves for Part 2.

You will see very few photos from this point on. Gone were the wide and level paths. If Part 1 was Dr. Jekyll, Part 2 was definitely Mr. Hyde. We walked steadily uphill for quite a ways. I tried to focus my mind on the beauty of the landscape, but my challenged legs were always trying to get a word in and interrupting the other conversation. Early on, Kris said, “Naked tree up ahead – don’t look!” which really cracked me up. I had to get a photo of that.

The path would level out briefly (ahh…) and then cruise uphill again, the paths getting narrower and narrower, next to steeper and steeper drop-offs which seemed to be right next to where we were walking. Kris will tell you that I am exaggerating and he’d be right, but don’t listen to him. It felt like my life was in imminent peril – that’s the important part.

At last we got to the top. I sat down for a breather (not the first time, either) while Kris enjoyed the view. It had been rough, but now the going should be all downhill. It was a nice halfway point! Let me say right here and now that those hiking poles were worth their weight in gold on this part of the hike. Gold!

We started our downward hike and could see in the distance down below one of the camping areas – the last part of the trail would take us right past those, so I knew we were getting close. Kris dragged the map out when I was taking one of my many breathers and pointed to where he thought we were, which was barely 1/4 of the way through the hike. I rejected it out of hand. But naturally, he was right as he usually is about these things. The place where I had thought we’d be going down to the camping area, was actually a fork in the road…and our trail led away from that nice downward path and BACK UPHILL.

I’m sorry to have to report that these kinds of challenges usually bring out the worst in me and I revert to the dark, inner pessimist of my soul. It’s not so much a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde transformation as it is Winnie-the-Pooh/Eeyore. I felt a little bit like Adrian Plass in the highly amusing book The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, Aged 37 3/4. He’s generally a cheerful fellow, always full of the milk of human kindness, but then he gets a toothache that gets progressively worse and tries to hide it from his wife, Anne, afraid she’ll make him go to the dentist. He prays and feels the Lord is telling him “I will heal you. Don’t go to the dentist.” Finally the pain becomes so bad that his journal entry devolves into this: “Toothache BAD!!! Wife ugly. Son ridiculous. God non-existent. …Why doesn’t God heal my tooth if he’s so wonderful? Pockets awash with empty pain killer packets. I think Anne suspects.”

What I’m trying to say is that I was pretty close to saying “Everything HURTS! Pain BAD!! Landscape ugly! Husband ridiculous!” Meanwhile, Kris was trying to stay cheerful (thank God – we certainly didn’t need two of me on this trail). The sun came out briefly and he burst forth with the John Denver song “Sunshine…on my shoulders…makes me happy.” I had a brief impulse to throw one of my hiking poles at him, but mercifully this evil notion passed and left me ashamed for having thought of it.

And upward we continued to go, with me stopping more frequently to rest. My dear sweet husband said, “C’mon Frodo – not much farther now!” He knows that a well-placed LOTR quote is a balm to my soul. I said, “Sam actually carried Frodo when things got difficult, you know.” We chuckled over this notion. I began thinking about that hike we did at Crosby-Manitou State Park in 2019. That was a tough one and I made it through that – in fact I had the exhilarating experience of getting my second wind after awhile. There was no second wind at BCVSP, however, just the grueling experience of forcing one step after another. But you know what? That kind of experience is just as valuable as the other. “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”

So, endure, I did. Uphill eventually became downhill, and it wasn’t long before we could see the campground at the bottom. I told Kris that I wanted to go and rebuke the park ranger for telling me that the second part of the hike wasn’t too bad. Kris said, “He probably looked at you and thought ‘she’s up to it!’” But I think it’s more likely that he looked at me and thought “You can’t handle the truth.”

We got back to the car at 2:48 p.m. For all my whining, I want to put it on record that BCVSP is really a lovely park! You should definitely go there. Bring your hiking poles, though.

Knee Score (1-10, 10 being the most difficult):
Part One: 2
Part Two: 10 (only the second park to receive a 10 rating from me)

It’s nice to know that we started the year off with one of the more difficult hikes and can cross that one off the list. We’ve done a total of 86.6 miles now!

I’ll probably delete this in the morning, but you never know.

Next hikes: Kilen Woods, Lake Shetek and Split Rock Creek