I like hike

I went on a pretty fantastic hike up Table Mountain (via Skeleton Gorge) on Saturday. It was the first really significant thing I'd done by myself here, barring a few afternoon and morning walks around the City Bowl (museums, coffee shops, gardens), and while one passer-by told me I had pretty terrible friends if none of them wanted to hike with me on such a beautiful day, I was glad to have some introversion-indulging alone time to think about anything but what to say next.



It was the sort of hot, bright day that you get in Madison around early July, minus the humidity. It will get hotter. The topside was humming with dragonflies and enormous bees and the occasional stream-dwelling frog. Oh, and hikers. Tons of hikers. I think I made about a dozen friends just by passing them on the trail and exchanging pleasantries and then passing them later on the way down. There was this old Canadian, also hiking on his own, and we chatted at various points. He told me, "People from the United States are only ever from four places. Either they're from California, or they're from New York, or they're from Texas, or they're from the United States." He was happy I knew where Calgary was, and I was happy he knew where Wisconsin was. Recognition. What is this instinct to friendship with people based solely on geographical proximity?



I found a big rock off the trail to eat my lunch and spy unseen on passers-by, and then, deciding I wasn't ready to go down the other ravine yet, took off for Maclear's Beacon, named after Cape Royal Astronomer Thomas Maclear. It added about 2 hours, but the views were spectacular, and, you know, there's a certain magic to reaching a named destination or a summit, to looking down on as big an area as possible from as great a height as you can.