Another outing! Reading Town Forest (again)

[hob...@techno-fandom.org]

I went to one of the Reading Town Forest committee meetings, just to sit in
and hear what they're dealing with nowadays and ask questions about all the
dead trees and cleared areas. [Answer: apparently all their red pines were
dying. weird] Anyway, a couple of their members expressed interest about
the whole barefoot thing, and one suggested we organize an outing and get
it announced in various town resources. This seemed to involve a complex
permitting process, which puzzled me, but they're up against a lot of
bureaucracy on many fronts over there.

Anyway, we finally scheduled a date! November 1, at 1pm [that's still EDT].
We'll meet at the new parking area, visible centered at

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/42.546582/-71.128769

Hopefully we'll get weather like we had locally yesterday, in the 50s or
60s. Know that once you get moving on a hike, your feet won't feel nearly
as cold as perhaps when just standing around. Now, the parking area is a
little gravelly but I'm planning a route that should keep us off the *really*
nasty new gravel they laid down on a couple of the fire-road caueways. That
stuff is apparently giving dogs trouble, too, and was a somewhat poor choice
the town did, but they're concerned about erosion and subsidence. Once we
get into the park it's mostly lovely soft dirt and pine needles and occasional
boardwalks.

_H*

[hob...@techno-fandom.org]

There's been a bit of a mixup sourced by someone on the Reading committee,
where they posted somewhere (FB? and some Signupgenius page) that the hike
was starting at 9AM. This is *not* true, we're starting at 1pm as originally
specified, and hoping the day is a little warmer by then to possibly tempt
folks afraid of chilly temps to come join us anyways. I asked the Reading
folks to correct any of these resources under their control, but given the
rather burdensome bureaucracy they appear to operate under, have some doubts
as to their ability to do that.

_H*

[hob...@techno-fandom.org]

Well, we were reasonably successful! Four [actually 4.5] folks from outside
the Committee field of publicity, and one Town Forest committee member. The
recorded route is attached; we did almost 3 miles at a quite leisurely pace
which allowed everyone to really savor [?] all the different underfoot
textures, for better or worse in terms of rigor.

_H*