The "45-Minute" Walk

Those of you who know my editorial proclivities know I don't use quotation marks indiscriminately. The "45-minute" walk was just that: 3 hours (cue the music from Gilligan's Island).

First, though, breakfast of champions, buttered beets and all the rest from the tiny roadside stand just a few blocks away.

Blocks being a misnomer since it's down the hill from those beautifully perched houses, where our rental sits, and onto a nearby road, the totality of Glenduan pretty much as described.

This is the road from the rental. We're setting out on a lovely morning walk and to get more vegetables from the stand. We've gone there every day and have eaten largely from her unsprayed greens, herbs, tomatoes, cukes, and zucchini.

Well-named, this rocky expanse of beach.

Here's an outside area at the rental, lush with lots of succulents and herbs growing in crevices. It's afternoon now, and Art is saying hey, why don't we go try that 45-minute loop walk? I'm in.

So we set out, walking up the hill the house sits on to the beginning of the Cable Bay walk, an eight-hour round trip that takes you over hill and dale to the gorgeous vistas of Cable Bay. Here's a comprehensive description with pictures of the big walk.

We'd hoped to do it and our host even offered to drive us there so we could walk back one way, but the weather's been rainy so we put it on the list for another time. The loop walk is part of the larger Cable Bay walk, but local in scope.

Here's the route to Cable Bay if you're driving. The walk traverses the shoreline hills. (Trouble viewing click here.)

You can tell from my vantage point I'm already uphill from Art as we set out on the loop walk. And so it would go.

Still working on the assumption we're taking a short walk, I turn to capture the view.

And yet we never stopped climbing. About an hour in, I was desperate for water and realized I hadn't brought my water bottle on the "45-minute" walk.

When does this loop turn?, I call out to the ever-climbing Art.

Beta-blocker boy pauses at a path marker to breathe. This trek is a real heart-pounder.

The little forest is perfectly peaceful.

Back in the open, I turn around to snap yet another view, a LOT higher than the last.

"All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking," Nietzsche said. Except for the ones now roiling in my head.

One more?

Now just one minute, I holler. Where is this loop and why do we continue to climb? There's a marker, says Art. I'm going to go look. Of course I follow, feeling like a dry husk who could suck down two liters of water this very moment.

 

Black and white

I'm now obsessed with making photos behind me.

Ever upward.

One more? Why not?

Seriously now? I'll be honest: we're having a little disagreement because the path is not clear. I'm hollering: Are we actually walking the four hours to Cable Bay with no water?! This is how every one of those stories begins, about people who are relatively experienced who end up spending the night in a forest. Let's just see if the path back is up here, Art says, for the eleventh time.

At the marker, we find a rough road that looks like it returns to town, but trail markers are nonexistent. Soon, though, we see a couple coming toward us and verify that it returns us to our lodgings (and water). This is apparently the other leg of the loop.

The punchline to this story is a reminder to trust, but verify. We had both got it into our heads that the loop was a 45-minute walk. But when we returned to the sign it was clearly marked a two-hour trek, our tortoise-like pace likely due to off-the-path meanderings to ensure we were on a track. A good day nonetheless. After a little dinner, I fell asleep faster than I can ever recall.