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Big shoes to fill in Eastham

 

Don Heyer, 71, scrunched his lean athletic frame until he was about a head shorter than Hortense Kelly, whom he was about to replace as president of the Eastham Hiking Club.

Looking up at Kelly, he told the crowd of 75 hikers gathered yesterday for a walk in her honor that he hoped, in some way, he could measure up.

''Even though my feet are bigger than yours, I can never fill your shoes,'' he told Kelly, who spent 21 years as president.

Possessing a year-round tan, wide-eyed optimism, and a quick and easy smile, Kelly does not look her 86 years. For many, her good humor, her unflagging belief in the positive power of exercise, and the gospel that walking is for everyone, not just the perennially fit, brought them to the club and kept them coming back even when life's blows threatened to knock them down.

In 1989, Mary Coleman met Kelly and a friend emerging from a swim around Eastham's Herring Pond. Coleman, who retired to the Cape in 1984, had just lost her husband and

was suddenly alone. Kelly convinced her to come to a hiking club walk, and Coleman has been a steady participant ever since.

''You meet all sorts of interesting people,'' she said. In 1991, she married a fellow walker, Jim Gaylord.

These weekly walks have become one of life's constants for retirees on the Outer Cape. Every Wednesday from September to May, Kelly blows her whistle and takes her position at the head of groups. They range in size from about 30 to 40 people, and she leads them down fire roads and along beaches at a pace that is challenging, but forgiving. She makes it look easy, but hours of research go into each session, scouting trails, sometimes clearing them, and studying the local history and geology to make even the necessary stop to regroup stragglers, entertaining.

Heyer knows how hard that can be. For the past few years, he's been cataloguing the many walks the group has been on with Kelly, taking notes while on the trail, looking at maps, writing directions and re-walking the route himself.

''I know 50 percent now,'' he said.

Margie Gibbs, who has been walking with the hiking club for 14 years, called Kelly ''amazing.'' She remembered when Kelly found a neglected trail through the Cape Cod National Seashore park and negotiated with park officials for permission to use it, then cleared it herself of the poison ivy that clogged parts of the route.

Kelly's daughter Wendy said her mother has been contemplating stepping down from the presidency for years. She wants time to do other things like yoga. And, her step has slowed enough that fellow walkers routinely pass her by now.

But she's not hanging up her sensible walking shoes just yet. She intends to settle back into the pack and talk a little more.

''It's lonely at the front,'' she said while traversing from Doane Rock to Nauset Light and through many trails before returning to the Eastham site.

But it wasn't his shoes that worried some in the pack yesterday about Heyer, a former marathoner, leading hikes.

''He's got great long legs,'' Coleman said.

''He'll have to slow up or hold up ... but he's a good listener, and can take a hint,'' she said hopefully.

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