Miracles on Moon Watching
September 22, 2007
In order to combine hiking and moon watching activities, my agenda was a tough hiking at 1pm for 4 miles and then hiked 1 mile easy to nearby hill top to wait for the moon raising. Since we had to watch the moon until dark, we were going to prepare simple dinner for all participants at the mountain. The tough hike scared 20 people (from a few families) away so they would join only moon watching. We had another 20 hikers who would take the challenge of finishing 4 miles up and down West Mountain within 4 hours. We had new friends liked Yao Rong, Vivian and Helen. We had relatively new hikers liked Kelly Kwan, Lu, Yat, Magy and Sum Yee.
Miracle started at 1pm. This was the time we supposed started hiking when it was raining heavily. Luckily, we were still in our cars because of bad traffic condition. The rain stopped with miracle when we were ready to hike at 2pm. The rain had cooled off the high temperature of the mountain given us more favorite weather to hike. The foggy mountain was liked fairyland. It was beautiful.
The sky was still cloudy during the day. We climbed up from Yellow trail to West Mountain. The unexpected little Vivian did fantastic great to hike on the stony trail. We took a short break at the shelter but the far view over Hudson River was blocked by dense fog. We met a group of boy scouts whom were going to stay overnight at the backyard of the shelter. We were questioning where they could find water in this area unless they carried it up in their huge backpacks.
We continued the trip by hiking on the Blue trail. The West Mountain ridge gave away a lot of great viewpoints over the area. On a section of trail, yellow leaves were covering the trail and hanging on the branches of both sides. We seemed entered into a golden corridor. Joe was busy taking notes for his trip article. Blue trail merged with AT in quarter mile. Miracle came again at this moment that we had a clearer sky and the viewpoints on AT were terrific. Last mile on AT were mostly downhill. We needed to be hurry because there were other 20 people waiting at the other spot since 4pm. It was almost 5pm now, our trip was pushed back because of late started.
Chris, Kwok, Feng, Wallace and Lalita’s families were waiting at the parking area of Torrey Memorial when we reached there by 5pm. We rushed to take out all dinner stuff and proceed to our moon watching spot. It was a short 1 mile hike with some slopes to climb. It would not be so easy when we went back the same trail with only flash light and moonlight tonight.
We knew where to be set as the kitchen and assigned a restroom area as we had scouted the place a few days ago. Ray and Sarah were there for an hour and finished a lap before we moved in. The view of sunset was great so all photographers were busy catching the last moment of the sun before it went behind mountains. Jessica started her cooking assignment with the help of Pei Pei, Chris, Karen, Aliena and Kelly. Kelly Kwan and Michael decorated the area with lanterns to make the arena more related with Moon Festival. Jeffrey started his career of tea supplier for everyone with his tiny mini teapot. Feng set up a tent so the kids had a place to challenge the record of “how many people can be fit into that small tent?” Since the cooking utensils were not functioned well, the dinner were served in segments. It had more than an hour difference for the last person to get his dinner. The rice noodle with homemade BBQ pork, egg and meat slice were delicious. We were also served with peanuts, strawberry and moon cakes. The moon was not perfectly round. Miracle kicked in to give us quite a long moment of clear sky so we could practice moon watching. Not even 1 drop of rain was recorded during the whole event.
When all food was finished and all faces were cooled by strong wind after 3 hours, it was time for departure at 9:15pm. We packed the stuff quick and started the night journey. Parents were worried about their kids since it was totally dark at the mountain. A long line of flash light probably would be showed if someone flew over us. The move was slow since the downhill slope was not easy without clear vision. Moon led the fast group while I led the bigger group at the back. We reached the parking lot around 9:45pm. It was the first moon watching trip of Nature-You which I thought it would attract an even bigger signed up next time.
