Hiking...3 weeks ago

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Several weeks ago I went hiking with some others from the drop-in center and a couple Englishmen who visit a couple times each year to do work around the center. Thought I’d post those pictures. It was an interesting day. We left at 6am because we had to take a couple busses, a ferry, and another couple of busses in order to arrive at the ‘mountain.’ The ‘mountain’ looked more like the Crafton Hills to me, but it was still a good little hike. An interesting side-note was that on one of the bus rides I sat next to a woman who had a live chicken in her bag. Even more interesting is that I didn’t notice this until Robin pointed it out.
Anyway, we had to walk through a village and hike a bit before we came to the actual trailhead. At which point I came to realize that we were hiking in what appeared to be pastureland. Truly, one could not take a step without landing in poop. At first I tried to avoid it, but it was unavoidable. Without going into too much discussion about the poop, suffice it to say that they were small bits, I think from goats or sheep, which somehow made it better.
So, we hiked and upon arriving at the top we ate lunch. Actually, on the way to the top we stopped often to have little snacks, mostly shared by Magda who is the woman with the dark hair in the picture with me and the brilliant blue sky as our backdrop. At the top we ate and then, no joke, people spread out and took naps. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. First of all, as I said, the ground was covered in poop, and secondly, how could anyone sleep? But sleep they did and the Englishman even snored. Josh spread out, as you can see in the picture, as if he was getting a sun tan. Except every part of his body was covered (it was cold and so the warmth of the sun was a welcome hiking companion). Eventually I figured that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So, I laid down. And then I thought: ordinarily I wouldn’t lie down on poop. My next thought was: nothing is ordinary anymore, just like a new normal, this is a new ordinary. Nevertheless, given my unimpressive record of being able to fall asleep in unusual circumstances, (I’ve never been able to do it, a Death Cab for Cutie show being the one exception much to my shame and horror), I did not fall asleep. Eventually, everyone woke up and we headed down the mountain. Literally. It was decided not to use the trail, but to scale the mountainside (can you scale something if you’re going down?) My legs were shaking as we did this…it felt like I was doing squats all the way down.
And then, we headed home, the way we came, via a few busses, a ferry, a few more busses, but no more chicken toting women. It really was a lovely day…so pretty to experience Romanian countryside, get to know people a little better, and discover that no poop had stuck to my shoes.