Ask Eric Stones for his idea of a fun way to spend a summer evening, and he”™ll likely recount his “death march” through the Fairfield County jungle a few weeks back.
This time, flare guns were not required, according to the march”™s planner.
By day, Stones heads up operations for MBI Inc., a Norwalk company that imports collectibles for use in corporate award and promotion programs. By night ”“ at least Thursday evenings, rain, snow or shine ”“ he is bushwhacking through the woods, streams, and dumps of Fairfield County as a member of the Bethel Hash House Harriers, which until recently used Ridgefield in the club name.
A hash is a steeplechase-style run (or for some participants, a walk) through challenging terrain, with the trail at times forking into multiple false paths to lure runners astray. Besides creating a fun diversion, the resulting confusion allows slower runners to keep up with faster participants, who are honor bound to alert others of the correct path once locating it.
Stones took up running at the age of 16 in the United Kingdom, mostly as a way to get in shape for field hockey season. He undertook his first hash seven years ago, which started in the halls of Sacred Heart University and then broadened to include most of the school”™s Fairfield campus.
The term hashing also embodies the counterculture tradition of most clubs, which have been described as “drinking clubs with a running problem.” Most hashing clubs freely drop alcohol, drug and sexual references into communiqués and nicknames they use.
Given Fairfield County”™s status as a bedroom community for corporate executives, the Bethel group is buttoned up by hashing standards, according to Stones.
“Hashing with some groups likely wouldn”™t appeal to Fairfield County business folks,” Stones said, saying he feels sufficiently comfortable with the Bethel group”™s tone to have invited MBI colleagues into the group. “Our group is very conservative but we still have a good time.
“Most other groups have a very short run with a focus more on the drinking ”“ our group is the opposite,” he added. “The nickname issue is tradition, and again we”™re not big proponents of it. I”™ve been hashing for about seven years and don”™t have a hash name.”
The Bethel Hash House Harriers do follow most other traditions of the some 1,700 hashing groups worldwide ”“ there”™s one in Antarctica ”“ including winding-up runs at a tavern for a round of beer, wine and refreshments. Of course, the Antarctica group has few options on the latter front.
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Hashing clubs are undeterred by the seasons. A typical run might be one that occurred last January. Starting in Redding”™s Huntington Park, the group bushwhacked through mud and mountain laurel, traversing streams, swampy ground and slick rock faces before taking “a last, lingering lope” through the Redding dump, in the words of club organizer Rick DeWitt, a philosophy professor at Fairfield University. DeWitt also runs the Western Connecticut Orienteering Club, which sponsors competitions in which participants must navigate a course using a map and compass.
While participants enjoyed unseasonably warm temperatures that day, another run weeks later had them splashing through ice-cold creeks.
That can be especially trying if a run organizer uses every trick up his sleeve.
“We identify the course by marks of flour on trees, or sometimes chalk marks on roads,” Stones said. “An ”˜X,”™ or three marks, designates a check where the trail goes off in several directions, but only one is the correct way. You know it”™s the correct way if you get to the third mark ”“ that is, unless after a while you see the mark ”˜F”™ designating a false trail. Then you have to return to the last check and find another way with three marks, at which point you are on the correct trail.”
Stones himself organized his annual “Lose a Relative” hash in mid-July. . It is not uncommon for Stones to go door to door requesting permission from homeowners to lead his straggly band across small strips of their properties.
“Each year I have one of my siblings visiting from England and this will be the only hash they do until their next visit,” Stones explained. “They usually struggle and finally get back in the dark, with me wondering if they”™re lost in the woods.”
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