4 miles hiked.
Difficulty: very easy
It isn’t much. In fact, it’s pretty similar to training for a race by running thirty seconds at a time (which incidentally is something else I’m doing). But it’s a start! It’s more than we did yesterday and it means that next time we’ll hike somewhere a little more difficult and we’ll carry more and eventually, almost by accident, we’ll be pushing ourselves further than we thought we could. I am a big fan of baby steps.
We spent our afternoon/evening at John Bryan State Park in western Ohio. Ohio is no mecca of good hiking and I will be the first to admit it, but my sore feet and tired legs by the end of the day also mean that the hiking wasn’t as easy as it should be for somewhere so flat. The important thing is that it was easy enough to be fun and encouraging, which is quite a good start. I’m more than happy to save the inevitable painful-and-discouraging times of getting in good hiking shape for another day.
Fortunately, spending time out in the woods was definitely as easy as it should be. It’s a remarkable thing to suddenly have a deer cross the path twenty feet ahead of you. Or, while exploring a small outcropping, to happen upon some woodland magic like this fairy house.
I fell asleep on the car ride home, I don’t know whether it had more to do with a short night or a long day. But I was trying to imagine how it will feel a year from now to spend day after day hiking and falling asleep twice as tired every night. It’s a little beyond my imagination right now, but even getting a little taste by spending an afternoon walking through the woods is enough to keep us headed in that direction.
A String of Colored Beads 