Saturday was a perfect day to walk the Pike-Marshall preserve in Ledyard… Except no one showed up. If you’d like to see what you missed you can check out an earlier hike that I recorded in AllTrails (R) (click here). Check the sidebar for walks coming up on New Year’s Day & a short Pancake Breakfast on Saturday the 4th of January 2020.
To put off the things you enjoy doing for the things that appear urgent, not necessarily important, and to be detoured by little things like the weather. After all why couldn’t, wouldn’t you hike in the rain. Well maybe not in 50º temps and 20 knot winds. But, you must get my drift. Yes, I’m talking about this blog and walks and hikes in and about Ledyard, SE Connecticut, and further afield.
So there’s a walk scheduled for December 7th. I hope to see you there.
While there may be rain overnight Friday into Saturday we’re still walking the trail at Poquetanuck Cove Preserve. This Nature Conservancy property offers an interesting variety of terrain, habitat, geology. The trail is an out and back with a terminal loop before the return.
You can preview the hike here: White Blaze Trail
Its an easy to moderate walk of just under 2 miles. We should be able to complete it at just about 1 hour. Wear sturdy shoes since this can be a rocky, root infested terrain at times. We’ll also have a fairly steep narrow trail around the mid-point of the walk, and this section of trail can prove slippery after a rain fall… Or, during a rain fall. So have your foul weather gear ready as well.
We’ll meet and leave from the Ledyard Congregational Church Pancake Breakfast at 9:30 sharp. There is limited parking at the preserve so we’ll be carpooling from the breakfast. It’s a free breakfast of more than just pancakes and coffee (NO Facilities on the hike!!) although a free will donation won’t be refused.
If this is your first walk with me please make sure you read and understand the guidelines and the assumption of responsibility and release of liability (Before We Hike, Safety Guidelines).
Beauty, I’ve been meaning to explain my frequent use of “beauty” as a category or tag in my posts. I knew I needed to do this almost as soon as I started posting more frequently. Why? you ask. Because I just as quickly began to have a number of young women view, like my posts and begin following me. I AM NOT complaining.
I just couldn’t figure out why. Until I would get a enough time to visit their blogs, many of which were focused on beauty as well. Except it was beauty in a different, certainly more common, sense. They were interested in, blogging about, beauty, cosmetics, fashion, etc.
Before I go any further I need to tell you that I am not Dineh (Navajo), I was not raised by the people, not have I been schooled or trained in their ways or customs. My understanding, what I am about to say, is solely my own interpretation of my readings in English about the Dineh concept and practice of walking in beauty. Any errors are mine and I would appreciate feedback/correction from those who wish to provide it.
Beauty, when I use it as a category or tag, is in the Dineh sense of hózhó náhásdlii (to walk in beauty). That sense, quite literally, that all around us and about us is in harmony. That nature, my person, my spirit, are all vibrating to the same harmonic. Let me give you an example.
It was a hike a few years ago. A day hike of about 10 or 12 miles along a blazed trail through one of the state forests where I live. I’d been on the trail about an hour, a little more maybe, working along one ridge line that was slightly lower than the one to the west which I was paralleling. The trail turned west and then back to the north and suddenly I was in a little glade, a stream burbling through it, the tempeture dropped 10 degrees, there was a massive yew streamside in the middle of the glade, and I cannot describe adequately the complete sense of peace, tranquility, rightness… My Irish self would probably call it a thin place, those secret spots where the barrier between worlds is nearly non-existent. I spent an hour in that place, in hózhó.
I’ve hiked that trail twice since. It’s not been the same in the glade. Me, or the universe, one of us was out of synch those days, not hózhó náhásdlii.
Haiku Journey 