Welcome to Running: A FEVER. This is a show about fitness, diet, and medicine. My name is Michael Davis. My goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the end. And I do it by loving my life enough to make it last as long as possible.

If you’re watching on YouTube, you can see just how beautiful the view is right from my cabin that I just walked out of. Nice people. When I woke up this morning, I wasn’t planning to go hiking today. The story of that goes back a few days, when I got here, and even before I got here. It looked like the weather was going to be bad. I had only Tuesday and Wednesday morning to hike, and it was going to turn bad Wednesday night. Then, there was going to be rain on Thursday and Friday mornings. I usually like to go hiking in the morning. It’s currently afternoon. I’m going to try to go out for an hour, and then come back for an hour. There’s a nice little stream here. The first two days were as they said, overcast. And if you’ve seen or listened to the last two episodes, you know that I went on the Bench Trail.

Last night there was a terrible storm. It blew over a tree into my cabin. A tree fell on the cabin last night. I called the after-hours number and left a message. Nobody ever called me back. I couldn’t get through to the visitor center even though it was during working hours, presumably because the power was out. The power went out about 4:30 yesterday, and it was out for about five hours. Fortunately, it came back up. They came out this morning, a maintenance crew, and cut the tree up and put it all on a truck using a tractor with a big claw thing on it, and took it all away. They worked until about half an hour ago. So that was interesting. It is the worst wind I’ve ever seen. You’ll remember if you’ve been paying attention and listening to all the episodes that I went through a windstorm at Mt. Magazine, and that was the worst storm I had ever seen, but now this is, on April 30, 2025.

As I mentioned, the power was out for five hours. So not much to do for a while. Before the light went completely dark, I tried to read. And I read by candlelight. I brought some candles for inspirational purposes. I had to get into a contorted position to read, so that the light would shine on the pages I could see. I didn’t want to use my phone flashlight because I thought I might need the phone later that night, and the only way I could have charged it was to go out to my truck. In the worst part of the storm, I just hunkered down in my bathroom. I sat down in the bathroom, which was the safest place to be in this cabin, because we had a tornado warning earlier. That’s another nice view. I spent a while in there. I prayed my rosary because I couldn’t do anything else in the dark. I like to do that when I come out to these parts, in the solitude.
So I did a little prayer while the wind was raging outside, and the rain.

Fortunately, it didn’t turn out to be a tornado, at least not right here. Although I wouldn’t necessarily know it was a tornado. I’ve never been in one before, thank goodness. Then I went to bed kind of early. I had been asleep for thirty-five minutes or an hour. There’s the Summit Park Trail, a strenuous level of difficulty. The Rim Trail, I just came on here for expedience. It’s right in front of my cabin. I think I’m going to run down to Lover’s Leap and see what that looks like. It rained a lot last night, so there’s a lot of water. I don’t know, it seems treacherous here. There must be a good view there, but I’m going to bypass it. I woke up around 9:30 or 9:45. I woke up when the lights came on, and the fan came on in the fireplace replacement. I unplugged that, but I was awake and I hadn’t been able to cook dinner because of the electrical outage, so I cooked dinner and stayed up for a while.

So I stayed up late, and the forecast had changed. So I had initially planned to go out today and do some more of the Bench Trail, more about that in a minute. I woke up, and I’d been up late the night before. And unlike the first day and morning I was here, I felt some muscle fatigue and soreness from the day before, and probably the two days before. I was exhausted, and decided not to go out, and took a shower and everything. And the maintenance crew came. This turned into the most beautiful day I’ve seen so far, and I couldn’t resist, so that’s why I’m out here hiking on the Rim Trail.

The Rim Trail I believe is a moderate or intermediate level of difficulty. I am still feeling a little fatigue in my muscles right now. But it wasn’t enough to keep me away on this beautiful day. Those rocks over there look similar to what the Lover’s Leap rocks probably are, based on my view from up here. I think that might be it down there. The Rim Trail has better views than the Bench Trail; the Bench Trail is in a valley, which leads me to my next point.

I had gone out for an hour and come back an hour, roughly, on each side of the Bench Trail starting from the east side parking area. It’s four miles, and it’s supposed to be a four-hour hike. Now that I think about it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It seems like an easy trail would be a shorter hike than that time-wise. Anyway, I think you’ll hear in the episode how I went past Fern Lake. And the second day I went past Fern Lake again. And because I thought it was a four-hour trip, I figured I was seeing a different lake, because I couldn’t have come all the way around in just that short time that I had been walking that day. It looks like there is another tree that has fallen over, possibly due to last night’s storm. So I looked at the trail map and there’s only one lake. It would have been strange for them to have two lakes with identical placards, descriptions, and everything. That’s what I read, and I recognized it from the day before. So I now believe that I did the entire Bench Road Trail in those two days, and overlapped actually. Which means I did the whole trail in less than two hours. So there you go. I was expecting to have four episodes on that, possibly in another trip. But it looks like I covered the whole thing in two hours or less, two episodes. I know I had gone past Sunrise Point on the second day, and Sunset Point, the connector that leads up to Sunset Point.

Thus, I am on the Rim Trail, which I ‘ve done before, and I’m sure it’s shorter than the Bench Trail because it’s right on the top of the mountain. I just did it, as I mentioned, for expediency. I decided that I couldn’t resist the good weather, and I decided to come out. I regained some of my confidence, knowing that the muscle fatigue wouldn’t bother me anymore. Not enough to keep me inside, anyway, so wonderful out here. And I was thinking, I don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring. I haven’t looked at the updated forecast. The last time I checked, it was still calling for rain and thunderstorms, perhaps, so we’ll see what the morning brings. Maybe I’ll go the other way on the Rim Trail. We’ll see if I ‘m feeling up to it and the weather looks nice enough. But I’m glad I’m getting in another episode here. This will be four on this trip.

For some reason, my left leg is more fatigued than my right. I’m going slow, so maybe an hour was overly ambitious. But as they say, pain is just weakness leaving the body—no pain, no gain, etc, etc. There are not as many mosquitoes as I experienced over the last two days. Though with the rain, I would expect some pools to be filling up here. The mosquitoes were terrible. I think I complained too much for the listener. But it was taking all my mental activity at that point. I’ll stop and rest here. This is part of the rough part that makes this a moderate trail instead of an easy one. I’ve met a couple of people on the trail today. Nobody yesterday. I’m not going to like coming up this way on the way back. There’s quite a bit of mud, rocks, and moved around trees all over the place. Like I said, last night was one for the books. A pretty big, bad storm. But no impassable objects so far today. Just the usual rocks, sticks, and stones.

I see a yellow blaze there. When I’m not out on the trail, I’m usually reading. I like to read in solitude and occasionally walk outside and remind myself how beautiful this place is. And I’m reading faster. I wouldn’t be surprised if I finish three books start to finish on this trip, even though I’m doing a lot of walking and hiking. There’s one of those streams that might have been very dry and slow-moving today, but I think the rain is causing it to be active, lively, and splashy to the ears. I could walk down there. It looks like a path, but it’s not marked as a trail. There’s a big metal thing. Looks like it was grown or driven into that tree. I wonder if there’s one on the other side. No telling what that was for. Now we have some big steps.

That tree probably came down not long ago, or at least part of it did. It looks pretty new. I’m not sure where it came from. I’ve still got cabins and houses on my right. One of the interesting things about this park is that there are private homes mixed in within the park. The state government obtained this land in the great depression, taking over foreclosed mortgages, and not all of them were foreclosed on, so some houses remain. That cabin looks like one I’ve stayed in before—an A-frame with a loft. Beautiful view.

This is a shorter trail, but I’m sure I’m not going nearly as fast as I was on the Bench Road Trail. I’m getting a lot of sun here. And I believe I’m on the west side heading north. It’s hard to tell. I’m heading north. If the west is to my left, I must be heading north. So we’ll see about tomorrow. I’ll no doubt be tired, if not tireder than I am today. And we don’t know what the weather’s going to hold. I may not go out for the full hour. Looks like I’ve only been going about twenty minutes or half an hour. I’m worried about my left leg here. I’m hearing something behind me. I don’t know if it’s an e-bike or what. Maybe just a chainsaw where they’re handling some situation like there was at my cabin this morning. Lots of rocks bleached by lichen it looks like, if I remember my sixth-grade science. I think that’s when I learned about lichen.

So, yeah, I think I mentioned I’ve been reading faster. I’ve read twenty-five books this year. I’m about halfway through. My goal is fifty. I guess I’m nine books ahead of schedule according to goodreads.com. This looks like a parking area of some kind. I noticed there are tennis courts up here. I drove by them a couple of times. There may be a pool somewhere, I don’t know. I certainly wouldn’t want to swim in Fern Lake, that’s for sure. There’s a water processing plant or something. Summit Park Trail. Well, I’m pretty sure that’s not part of the Rim Trail. So, where does the Rim Trail go? Well, I don’t want to get into a strenuous trail. I didn’t bring the trail map with me because it’s too big to fit in a pocket. It’s huge. It’s got an arrow down, which is interesting. Doesn’t have an arrow up, which would mean forward, or to the right, which would mean to the right. But I’ve been on yellow blazes. There’s a yellow blaze and a red blaze, so I think I have to go down this way.

I’ve been walking for thirty-four minutes according to my watch, and it’s about thirty-five minutes into the walk. I’m thinking about turning back. I’m feeling the fatigue in my left leg. Yeah, I’m going to turn back. I’ll keep the recording going since we’re not quite up to an hour. I think an hour is a good recording time. I can deal with it on my computer. 4K video takes a lot of resources. On other days, I went out for an hour and didn’t record the trip back. Today I’ll keep recording up to an hour, and we probably won’t make it all the way back. That’s okay, the trail looks different depending on which direction you’re going. It’s a different viewpoint. If we went back in time, it would look different from going forward in time. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, correct some mistakes, or make some different decisions. I guess it’s not worth the time to make a list of those, since it’s impossible to go back in time. I do like time travel movies, though, and books.

Some guy is using a leaf blower at one of the cabins. I can see the maintenance people still at work, of course. There’s the tractor they used this morning. There’s the truck they used this morning, and those little vehicles, whatever you call them. That truck they used to haul away the tree. That tractor, I’m pretty sure, could fit on the trail, the Bench Road Trail I’ve been on the last two days, but I don’t know if it’s got enough power to remove some of those tree trunks that I saw. They were pretty huge.

I’m encountering some insects flying around me. I don’t think they are mosquitoes, but some of them might be—more storm damage. It’s not ideal having a maintenance crew around your cabin for half a day, but it was an interesting experience. I’ve been through some storms before, but never had a tree fall on my cabin. So I got to watch them do their work. I’m sweating a little bit out here, but there is a nice breeze. Steep steps there. Gotta be careful. Now we go back up this thing.

It’s hard to imagine how these things were built. More insects now. Maybe there’s a museum somewhere around here that tells more about the history. This is pretty steep. I wouldn’t want to fall down that hill. I suppose if you’re a hardcore hiker, you go off trails, which may indeed be more adventurous. But you’d have to know where you’re going and how to get back to where you started, or civilization. Speaking of that, I’m reading a book. And this, I suppose, falls into the happiness aspect. It’s a spiritual book. It’s Letters from Henry David Thoreau to a Spiritual Seeker. The name might have been Gray, but I’m not sure. He lived in Worcester, Mass. And Henry David Thoreau lived in Concord. I think they met up in Concord. And the seeker guy found inspiration in Henry David Thoreau, and I believe this is before he even published his most famous work, which is Walden, about his almost two years living alone out in nature at Walden Pond. And it’s known as one of the classics, and I enjoyed it the last time I read it. So it’s one of those timeless works of literature. Anyway, I just started reading it. I haven’t read any of it on this trip. I’ve read two Tony Hillerman novels, and I’m most of the way through the second one. I’ll probably finish that today. And then I have a book by Faulkner, one of my favorite authors, called Mosquitoes. It’s perhaps my favorite work of his. Even though I don’t think it’s among his most literarily appreciated works. It’s fun. It’s a fun book. But I will probably finish that one too. Even if I go out tomorrow, I’ll have plenty of time for reading. I don’t know, maybe the bad weather has blown through, and tomorrow will be like this. And I’ll take you on the other side—the south side, from my cabin.

I like how all those big clouds leave shadows. You can’t usually see those in the city, reflected onto the green hills like they are now. It just gets dark in the city, and you say, “Oh, it’s just a cloud passing over.” Get out of the city if you can. Maybe you can’t live out here in more wide-open country, but even the town down below, the traffic is crazy, and it’s a pretty small town. The things you see out here, you can’t see in the city. The things you can feel out here. Everything, all the senses. One of the good things about them cutting down that tree. It was a pine tree, I know because I had to remove a limb from right in front of the door, and I got sap on my fingers. But you can walk outside, and you can smell that pine. Not a candle or an air freshener, but the actual tree. Also in that book, that Thoreau book, I found mention of a book he wrote before Walden, that I’d never heard of. It was something like Two Weeks on the Merrimac or something like that. It had to do with rivers. Probably something similar to Walden on the Water, or something. I don’t know. I want to check it out, though. The problem if you’re a book or reading addict is that everything you read leads you to something else to read, and you never get everything done. But why would you want to get everything done? What would you do then?

Summit Park. The name doesn’t sound like something strenuous. But that is a strenuous trail according to the signs. If I had gone out as planned today, it would be a medium-term plan. I probably would have gone to the Miller’s Goat Trail. That’s another thing I found out, looking at the documentation, is that Miller’s Goat Trail is longer than Bench Road Trail. I thought the Bench Road trail at four miles would be the longest. Miller’s Goat Trail meanders. That’s one of the reasons it’s longer, it zigzags everywhere. It’s a moderate difficulty trail, and it goes around the entire mountain. So it crosses over the Bench Road trail many times, as we saw. So it’s six miles. And I didn’t know a time rating on it, but it’s probably significantly longer than the less than two hours it took me to do the Bench Road Trail.

Alright, we’re nearing the one-hour point, and this will be forty minutes for you because we’ll edit it down. Interesting, it splits off there. So I hope you’re enjoying this week at Mt. Nebo. It’s turned into four episodes so far. Remains to be seen whether there’ll be another one, but we got to see quite a bit of the park. And enjoy some communing with nature. So if you ever come here, you’ll know what the trails are like. Until then, if you’ve got the fever, keep it burning, and if you don’t, catch the fever, and I will talk to you next time on Running: A FEVER.

CCC at Devil’s Den history video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KeCOFQjm80&t=5s