Adventure blog with a real job
The weather for this weekend didn’t look particularly promising— there were showers and thunderstorms predicted starting on Saturday morning, but with contradictory forecasts and a promising radar map (and with rain gear) we set out under cloudy skies to take our chances with a hike over Blueberry Mountain.
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Crouched among the ferns
Humbler than its lofty host
No less beautiful
The scientific literature is pretty clear that spending time outside is good for health and wellbeing, and I’m happy to provide a testimonial in support! Work is intense this week, and most days my meetings extend well into the evening. When I was unexpectedly freed from my laptop at 5PM yesterday, what I thought I wanted to do was collapse, but what I did instead was go for a hike (and to paraphrase a local poet, that made all the difference).
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I’ve lost track of the weeks since the Covid-19 pandemic swooped in and changed my life. I could tally up the trips I’d expected to take, mark the weekends I’d planned to volunteer with an outdoor program, but that seems like an unhealthy direction to dwell. I could count the loaves of raisin bread I’ve baked and eaten, or look up the number of times I’ve used my yoga app, or the video selfies I’ve taken of my quarantine trapeze. I could add up all the hours I’ve spent on video conference, add in the number of people I’ve interviewed and hired without ever meeting face to face, and think back fondly to the time at the beginning of all this when connecting with friends by zoom still felt like a connection, and virtual happy hour still felt happy. Are you depressed yet? Me too.
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When I was a child, my mother taught me the names of the native plants and wildflowers growing in the neighborhood, and to this day my distinction between flowers and weeds is, at best, imprecise. I like knowing the names of the things growing around me, and greeting them by name and season. The blooming plumes of aster are for me a more poignant harbinger of Fall than the first red leaves of the maple.
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