Beeline
 One
of the many interesting things I learned about as a Boy Scout was the
beeline hike, named after the straight line route that nectar laden bees
take back to their hive. We scouts would pile into cars at dawn and be
driven up to Cook's Forest State Park, some 20 miles away. When we
arrived, we put on our day packs containing lunch, a first aid kit, and
a change of socks. We then divided into patrols, and each patrol was
given a map with an "X" marked on it. We were to walk a compass bearing
straight through the woods, and arrive at the designated location at the
end of the day. All morning long we would hike through the woods, using
our compass as our guide. We might deviate from our course just a little
to avoid a swamp or to skirt a bramble thicket or to ford a stream at an
easier spot, but we always afterward returned to our beeline and kept
walking along this toward our destination. At lunchtime, we wrapped
potatoes and biscuit dough inside tinfoil packets and threw these into
our small fire. As these baked in the hot coals, we used the rest of the
fire to warm instant chocolate and frizzle pieces of corn on the cob.
Our meals were often marred by culinary failures, but our appetites were
so large that we always ate everything, burnt, raw or just right. After
lunch we did the long, tired second leg of the hike, and about four
o'clock we would arrive at the spot marked "X" on our map. There we were
picked up in cars and shuttled home ¾ dead tired, dirty as dogs, and oh
so satisfied with the doings of the day.
When I lived in Newark, Delaware, I would drive up to Clarion three or
four times a year. The distance between these places is a little over
300 miles, but only if you go on the interstate highways. I grew bored
with these and started traveling by other routes to add novelty to the
journey. I began with a beeline route, following the roads that caused
me to cross and recross a straight line drawn from Newark to Clarion on
a road map. Sometimes I would select a town that I was interested in
seeing, and then do a beeline from there to Clarion. These beeline
routes were always interesting. Between Newark and Clarion lie the
Appalachian mountains, and I had to find a different way across them
with each new route. There were times that I got so lost that I actually
had to ask for directions. As my interest in history and in "match
shots" grew, I found other routes home. There was the "water" route
where I followed, as best I could on the road, the line of the old
Pennsylvania Canal westward to Pittsburgh, and then the Allegheny and
Clarion rivers north to Clarion. There was the "old road" route which
only included roads built before 1850, and along which I found many a
quaint old diner to select from for my noontime meal. What with my many
different routes home, I ended up knowing my way around a fair chunk of
country, and I also gained some knowledge of how that country developed
from Penn's Woods into the Pennsylvania of today.
I don't jog, but I do enjoy a long walk in unfamiliar surroundings.
Whenever business travel allows, I budget an extra day to see the city
that I am visiting. On that extra day, I often put on blue jeans and an
old shirt and go on a beeline hike along unfamiliar streets, from one of
the city's attractions to another. Usually I figure things so that I get
to walk through a park or the old part of town, and as I walk along, I
stay very alert to my surroundings. I have walked 90 blocks up Fifth
Avenue in New York at a late hour on a noisy Saturday night. (In the
1960's. I wouldn't try it now.) I have walked through a beautiful spring
Sunday morning in Baltimore to the glass conservatory in Druid Hill
Park. I have wandered, befuddled and confused, through the eerily,
silent medieval streets of Lyon, France at siesta time on a hot August
afternoon. The best of these rambles gave me a sense of the life of the
city I was visiting, the worst of them made me grateful that I lived
elsewhere.
Last summer my nephew, John Pierre Hufnagel, who is a couple of years
older than Pete, came to visit. One Thursday afternoon, I drove him and
Pete out to Megnin's farm for a look around their old barn and a short
beeline hike. The Megnin's live way back in the beautiful boondocks, in
a valley surrounded by hills. We spent the first half hour exploring the
barn, with its interesting haylofts and piles of rusting farm machinery.
The boys had a good time feeding grass to the horses, and I remembered
doing the same thing at a different barn when I was a kid. Finally, I
rousted then out of the barn, pointed to the bare top of a forested
hill, and told them it was time for our hike. I gave them each a
compass, and we took a bearing on our destination. Then we began to
walk. We walked straight through a large fallow field filled with weeds,
across some swampy ground and a creek, and up into the pines,
rhododendron, and briars. They both struggled manfully with the
obstacles we met, and after a rugged forty minute climb we arrived at
the open area at the top of the hill. As we reached the summit we looked
back and could once again see Megnin's barn and the track of our beeline
across the field of weeds, pointing straight toward where we now stood.
From up there the view stretched for miles, and we all had a sense of
satisfaction at having been such good little bees. |
 
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