Well, out of the corner of my left eye I saw a bunch of orange! It was a hunter!  Just off the trail to the left!  As I ran by I said "Man, I never saw you there!" to which he countered "Well, I heard you coming a long ways."  To which I replied "I'm glad of it!"  I saw two more hunters crouched in the bushes just off the trail - not 10 yards off the trail, and this within 1/2 mile of the parking lot.

When I got to the junction with the Lost Creek-East Pond Trail I waited for Bob.  This took 16 minutes.  I stashed the water bottles and showed him where, then let him go on ahead.  He waited for me at the East Pond junction, then again at the Blackfoot Trail junction, where the broken sign was.  Up to this point, it was noticeable how good the trail maintenance has been.  All the blowdowns had been cut off the trail and it was good running.  But from here to the South Inlet bridge it was rougher trail, and the blowdowns were in the way.

Now, if you remember, I had a lot of spider webs to break through last week.  This week, with Bob, the amateur spider web clearing person ahead of me on the trail, this was not a problem.  Now, I call him "amateur" since to be a professional used to require compensation, and I was not compensating him, per se.  Compensate, from the Latin compensavedi, compensaveri, compensaveci, means, loosely, "to compensate."  I was not then, am not now, and probably never will, compensating Amateur Bob for breaking down the spider webs.  But he was performing this role admirably, and there were no spider webs across the trail when I reached any point along it.

Bob waited for me at the trial junction at the east end of East Pond, after passing Little Simon Pond and climbing up the big hill.  He took off again as soon as I got there, after telling me he could hear me coming for two minutes.  He waited again at the Blackfoot Trail junction.  He asked me if I saw the cat, which I hadn't.  Bob had seen what looked like a black cat, bigger than a house cat, but definitely like a cat, not a skunk, nor a bear cub.  It ran away and climbed a tree.  Later in the week, he researched it and found that this is what he saw.  Now, does that look like a cat to you?

Bob took off again and I followed along, enjoying the spider-web-less trail.  Until, that is, I reached a point where there were spider webs, such that I noticed them.  I recall this was at a point where there was a blowdown across the trail, requiring a brief bushwhack, and it was not really clear at one point which way the trail went.  I was back on the trail, but there were spider webs there.  I kept running for a while, and kept noticing the spider webs.  After some time, less than a mile, but more than a few meters, I wondered if Bob had taken a wrong turn.  Then I thought, well maybe back where I started noticing the spider webs, he was bushwhacking around the blowdown and didn't get himself properly back onto the trail.  He, being after all, an Amateur Spider Web Removing Person, could not necessarily relied upon to always find his way back to the trail.  At least, not as reliably as one could depend upon a Professional Spider Web Removing Person.  And definitely not as reliably as one could depend on a licensed NYS Outdoor Guide.  Which Bob was not.  And Bob was, after all, Amateur Bob.  So I decided it would be prudent to return to the point in question and begin a search for my little buddy.

I turned around and got going, returning forthwith to the scene of the blowdown, which was still there.  There was no sign of Amateur Bob, although there were several more signs of bear (scat) on and near the trail.  I began to wonder if foul play had occurred involving Amateur Bob.  Could it be?  He was quick, and had been ahead of me most of the morning, but where could he be now?  I looked and looked, and started down a game trail where I thought I saw some (rather tiny) running shoes tracks that looked fairly fresh.  This could be Amateur Bob's track, since he does have rather tiny feet (for a runner) and these were, indeed, very tiny tracks.

And then up ahead, around a corner, behind the vertical root base of a blowdown, what did I see?