find a new trail

I spent nine months in an emotionally abusive supervision experience during my counseling internship. We had weekly meetings on Tuesdays. The minute I escaped from this person's arctic glare, I reclaimed Tuesday as a day of adventure, enjoyment, and rest. Sometimes my partner and I find a way to get out of the city to hike for hours on end (sadly this often involves sitting in traffic for hours on end). Sometimes it's a ho-hum day of errands, dog walking, and exercise. Sometimes we see a movie at the theater that has Tuesday discounts. Whatever happens, my goal is to get as far away from how my Tuesdays used to be.

How is hiking "rest" you ask? Because it lets my mind wander while also helping me stay exactly where I am: putting one foot in front of the other in order to connect with something beyond the myopia of every day problems. And now today's haiku, with options:

crunch of leaves echoed

as we crossed a muddy patch. 

hear the woodpecker? 

alternate ending: where's that damn dog now? 

top picture: hiking on the Appalachian Trail in early October, near Kent, CT, cross-processed slide film, Canon Tlb 

bottom picture: a rare moment of stillness from our hike today on the Appalachian Trail, near Salisbury, CT, iPhone

imaginary friends

At the beginning of August, I had an opportunity to get some rest and hold down the animal fort while my partner went to Maine with friends OR I could rearrange some clients, schedule a last minute cat sitter, and drive 10 hours alone with the dog after having just come home from a 12 hour drive from West Virginia. Judging from the opening picture, you can guess which choice I made. It was one of the longest drives I've ever made, which is saying a lot. It ended with Waze telling me I was at my destination when in fact I was across a small channel of water from my destination. This minor detailed added 25 minutes of windy roads because nothing in Maine comes easy. Add fog, an unmarked fork in the driveway that no one warned me about, and not having eaten dinner, and you have one very cranky Me on your hands. I will admit to making the trip considerably longer because of my driving mania, which manifests in taking small roads off the highway (sometimes the occasional fire road that dead ends into a pond) and stopping for pictures, such as this:

 

The manic journey was well worth it because I ended up having an incredible few days in Maine with Charrow, our friends and their almost 3-year-old. We went berry picking, currant picking, river swimming. hiking, running, and on our last night we saw 3 shooting stars in the span of 5 minutes. One of our hikes was on a semi-maintained trail that runs along the Machias River:

We originally started that day by driving 2 hours south to Acadia National Park, but we got about 10 minutes up our first trail and felt smothered by the hordes of people. I will say this, we gave up quickly, which allowed us to drive 2 hours back to the wilds of Machias and still have plenty of time for a 5 mile hike on the Machias River Heritage Trail during which we saw a total of 0 people until we reached the major connecting trail. It should have been an incredibly relaxing hike, but I kept seeing little piles of smushed berries that I was convinced were bear droppings. I've never seen a bear and the prospect of seeing one with our decidedly idiotic prey-driven dog scared the crap out of me. He had proved his lunacy the day before by trying to attack a porcupine (boy was that a messy and expensive mistake that I may make into its own post). We had no way of knowing what the dog would do should we stumble upon a bear or vice versa. Charrow scorned my paranoia, but we kept seeing the piles every 5 minutes and they were right in the middle of the damn trail. After awhile, she caught the fear, and we decided to sing ridiculous songs to supposedly scare away the phantom bears. We started with I'm Gonna Be (500 miles) by the Proclaimers, but that gets old really fast, so we moved on to the very catchy and adaptable call and answer Jewish bible song called Three Wandering Brothers (the internet wants me to call it Three Wandering Jews, but Charrow disagrees). I wish I could remember some of our made up verses, but they're long gone, much like the bears we never saw. I think Red picked up on the anxiety...

We finally turned off the densely wooded trail and onto a main thoroughfare, complete with a man driving a four wheeler. It wasn't technically any safer should we happen upon a bear, but there's nothing like logic to create a false sense of security. And now for the short version of that story:

lazy river hike
fresh berry scat underfoot
sing sing sing! now run

All pictures taken near Machias, ME with film (Portra 160)

haiku with poo

The first night we had Red, I cried in despair because the dog was too strong, too wild on leash, too insane about the cats, and just too much of everything (including too cute to give back to the rescue). In many ways, it was the wrong decision to keep him. Neither cats nor dog have adjusted to each other, as evidenced by the daily occurrence of dog yodeling and cat hissing. Given Red's propensity for trying to eat small furry things, we continue to keep them segregated, which is a huge drag. BUT, in many ways, keeping this silly dog has been one of the best decisions ever. We have made friends we never would have stumbled across in our pre-dog lives. We spend more time outside than ever because of our sometimes overzealous goal to make the dog tired. I can't think of any other reason that I would be walking through Prospect Park at 7:30 on a Wednesday morning, and I'm grateful for the chance to connect with something outside of my monkey brain. When we go hiking, he tears through the woods like he's never seen a chipmunk in his life. When he gets tired, he stops underfoot on the trail and looks up at you like you're the one being an oaf. When you scratch a certain part of his neck, his lips draw back in the goofiest dog smile. He farts while we eat dinner and he gets hiccups when the braver of the two cats confronts him at the edge of his crate. And when I come home, boyfriend is always wagging his tail, albeit sometimes from the comfort of his napping spot because he sees me every day, does he really need to get UP to greet me? Surely we would have more money and get more sleep without a dog, especially one prone to accidents, but we would have a lot less silliness, connection, and unfettered play in our lives. I meant for the last line of today's haiku to be warm and fuzzy, but this is what happened instead:

steaming winter poop
muddy feet after spring storms
stop stealing my seat

top pictures: hiking in upstate New York late this summer, cross-processed slide film; 
bottom picture: hiking in Shenandoah National Park in June, film 

bring me a shrubbery

I've always loved being outdoors more than in, but I've developed a serious hiking bug over the last two years. Symptoms include, but are not limited to: daydreaming about hiking while running, cooking, commuting, breathing, etc.; reading books by hikers; reading books about hikers; irritability when too many weeks have passed without a hike; compulsive checking of my instagram feed, which I have flooded with outdoor enthusiasts; and trying to convince my partner that we should hike the entire Appalachian Trail (i.e., delusions of grandeur). Thankfully, both partner and dog are willing to humor my insatiable need to be outdoors (and to stop for pictures).

Today's accompanying haiku (hikeu?):

leaves brush my ankles
quads burn up the mountainside
full lungs quiet mind

(picture taken sometime this summer, Housatonic River, on the AT north of Kent, CT, film)