A Glorious Day for an Epidemic

Posted on December 10, 2004 in Geocaching Hikes and Trails The Orange

The Santiago Flu infection spread across Orange County. Sufferers flocked to the Modjeska Grade off Santiago Canyon Road for relief. I kept running into men and women, wheezing asthmatically as they pedaled their bikes up and down the foothills fronting the Saddleback. Some wore “find-me-from-the-sky” orange and yellow jerseys. Many wore a shade of blue which camouflaged them nicely against the sky. Bosses crouching under the sagebrush and the black sage might not see them as they passed.

I was out setting geocaches. I saw much of what the bikers missed including rain-scoured fossil rocks, four mule deer, and a wisely frightened western cottontail. I made a stop at the memorial for the dead geocacher then pressed on as far as the slopes of Fossil Hill where my water ran out and I had to turn back.

On the return journey, I ran into joggers, hikers, and plenty of elderly bikers. “I needed this day,” said one cardio-rider as he huffed and puffed up the first segment of the trail. When I walked to my car, I ran into a man shoveling gravel back onto a road leading to a mysterious construction project. “It never ends,” I said. “No,” he smiled. “It never does.” He took a deep breath of the storm-washed air and smoothed out the surface to show me that he was uninfected by the bug of the day.