Secluded trail “Secret” in Ch’ville

I, for one, am impressed that Helena manages to keep running, and running well, even while writing an instant important book. Bravo!
Alas, I’ve not been one to run much on hard surfaces, not since breaking an ankle running X-country decades ago on a hard road course in West Chester, PA. Yet I have been “running” a lot lately, mostly on softer surfaces. I’m always on the look-out for “softer” trails for walking and running — and getting away from cars and crowds.
At the risk then of spoiling a well-kept exercise secret around Charlottesville, I recently have been enjoying the new extensions to the Saunders Trail system. I am not talking about the popular Saunders Trail that begins at a parking area near the intersections of Route 53 and 20 and extends nearly two miles to the Monticello entrance.
The core Saunders Trail is so well designed and maintained by the private Monticello Foundation that even wheel-chair athletes can enjoy its perfect grading. I recommend the upper boardwalk section of the main trail late in the fall, when the leaves are down and just before sunset — great vistas.
But I’ve never been one to stick to the “beaten path.” So last fall I began exploring rather un-marked side trails that cut up into the steep hills along the trails. Somebody maintains these side trails nicely. If you go back these side trails, don’t be in a hurry — as they can be confusing, until you come to the next intersection. (!) For locals who know the general topography, such mild uncertainty is “invigorating.”
The newest formal addition to the Saunders trail system comes in the form of 2+ miles of informal mowed trails that wind in and around the 150 acre “Secluded Farm.” If you like “soft trails” in pastoral settings, these are great for exercise and for reflection. Road-runners may find the “carpets” soothing when the joints get sore from pavement pounding.
Alas, unless you get high up onto the ridge, the sounds of highways and “civilization” are often too nearby. (For a real escape, that’s what the George Washington National Forest or Shenandoah are for — but those fragile glimpses of paradise are an hour away.)
For a regular nearby sanctuary, I’m grateful to Monticello for these trails and for not charging us to enjoy them. May these “green pastures” go on restoring many a soul and heart.
And let’s keep it a secret too. :-}

7 thoughts on “Secluded trail “Secret” in Ch’ville”

  1. I’m glad to know there are other blogger joggers. I’m 67 and hope to do another marathon next summer, participating in an Ironman (aka Vineman) with my grandson swimming 2.4. miles, my son biking 110 miles and me running, possibly walking and running the 26.2 miles.

  2. Ah, ok, we’ll get back to the various hells created by the Bushies….. (especially the pending “selling of the next war” re. Iran — Murdoch media is “all over this one.”)
    Yet speaking of walking, Juan Cole this morning has this sardonic assessment of the latest Congressional “alice in wonderland” tours of Iraq:
    “Now the ‘good news’ appears (I swear to God) to be that you can “walk” in Iraq. That’s the good news. The 8 billion people in the world walk every day, in most of the world’s locales. Now it is an achievement to walk. That’s good news of the highest order. Only, if you are American in Fallujah you might need a company of Marines with you so that you can . . . walk. (See below).”
    http://www.juancole.com/2007/09/on-how-al-anbar-isnt-that-safe-and-on.html

  4. Since the blog has momentarily lost its way allow me to kick-start it with a recommendation to everyone to read
    “Intellectuals and the ‘War on Terror’
    An Occident Waiting to Happen” by David Keen at
    http://www.counterpunch.com/keen09012007.html
    It has many nice remarks on “liberal hawks” such as our old hero MI. Although even Professor Keen falls into the trap of calling these monsters ‘liberals’.

  5. Who you saying’s lost his way? This is a Quaker blog. We’re not afraid of silence here.
    What do you think a liberal is, anyway?

  6. Gentle Consoli, be not offended.
    “Interventions” (wars) are always “humanitarian”, are they not? So how are we, under the shadow of the B52s, to know the minds of the pilots, so as to judge whether they may be “genuine” liberals, or the false variety, what you call “monsters”. To us in the range of the cruise missiles, this is a distinction without a difference.
    Here’s a couple of quotes, for the gaiety of the nation. The first in from Frederick Engels’ “on Authority”. The second is from Kwame Nkrumah in “Neo-colonialism, the last stage of Imperialism”, quoting Macauley on Warren Hastings.
    “These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.”
    —
    “The position of the leaders of the developed capitalist countries of the world are, in relation to the great neo-colonialist international combines, very similar to that which Lord Macaulay described as existing between the directors of the East India Company and their agent, Warren Hastings, who, in the eighteenth century, engaged in the wholesale plunder of India. Macaulay wrote:
    ‘The Directors, it is true, never enjoined or applauded any crime. Far from it. Whoever examines their letters written at the time will find there are many just and humane sentiments, many excellent precepts, in short, an admirable code of political ethics. But each exultation is modified or nullified by a demand for money. . . . We by no means accuse or suspect those who framed these dispatches of hypocrisy. It is probable that, written 15,000 miles from the place where their orders were to be carried into effect, they never perceived the gross inconsistency of which they were guilty. But the inconsistency was at once manifest to their lieutenant in Calcutta.
    . . Hastings saw that it was absolutely necessary for him to disregard either the moral discourses or the pecuniary requisitions of his employers. Being forced to disobey them in something, he had to consider what kind of disobedience they would most readily pardon; and he correctly judged that the safest course would be to neglect the sermons and to find the rupees.'”
    —
    Plus ca change, or what? Deja vu all over again, if you ask me.

  7. This is a Quaker blog. We’re not afraid of silence here
    Oh Yah, what this means?
    What you did for humanity other than bulling others with your selective special Wight English words and expressions.
    Is this what Quaker values you have learned or it’s yours but Quaker can not changing you and other not afraid of silence?

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