Jan 05 2015
First Hike of the Year
Like most everyone else, I was busy through the holidays so I didn’t get outdoors much. It can be put off a long while. But there comes a time when nothing else is that important, when I have to push away from my writing desk, don several thermals and layers of wool and get out there. That time came this morning around 9.
My dog Matika and I went to Niquette Bay State Park. No other cars were in the parking lot when we arrived, which suited me just fine. I pulled the Microspikes over my boots and away we went down the icy trail. Temps were in the teens and falling as an arctic high blew into the region.
The sun played peekaboo through the fast-moving clouds overhead, occasionally illuminating the snowy forest floor. Trees creaked. The wind roared through the canopy. Granular snow crunched loudly underfoot. Not the best day to be outdoors, yet I found it strangely exhilarating.
The frigid air stung my cheeks. I broke a sweat while cresting the hill. Hot and cold. Between the two I kept tramping, one carefully placed footstep after another. My long-haired German shepherd looked wolfish as she ran through the woods, leaving paw tracks in the snow. The arctic did not feel far away.
Times like these, I live up to my blog handle: woods wanderer. My thoughts go places that they simply cannot go when I’m comfortable indoors, walking through town, or in someone else’s good company. I wonder what it is about this elemental world that is so alluring. Regardless of the season or what the weather is doing, it feels right to tramp through the forest, entertaining whatever image, idea or memory that leaps to mind. Sometimes it seems like every tenth step liberates some taboo thought. I wander, I wonder, then later go home to write about it.
Wildness, I’m convinced, isn’t a behavior. It’s a state of mind.
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