Walking

     On the spur of the moment last week, I decided to go camping. It's getting a little cold for tents, but there were no cabins available at the state parks. However, I found a camper that was being offered on AirBnB. Set up next to someone's house in rural Virginia, it was essentially a cabin plus en suite bathroom and kitchen.
     This was just the place for me to do a little refresher course based on the retreat I did last year. I walked, read books about philosophy, and took stock of the year. I checked in on my goals from last year (prognosis: some I had achieved and some I hadn't even remembered). It was a terrific break from life, and I might even try to do this every year.
     I decided to do some hiking while I was there, and found a five-mile trail rated "moderate" which ran along a tiny portion of the Applachian trail. Alas, the rating turned out to be inaccurate. Up and down mountains, climbing over boulders, on a track so studded with rocks that my foot hardly ever landed on a flat surface. The five miles ended up taking me five hours. Ooof. At the end, having already fallen a few times, I took extra care, as I was starting to worry that either the dog or I would come out of the trip with a sprained ankle (if dogs even have ankles). I haven't done a hike like that since Ben Nevis in Scottland twenty years ago, and I think I can wait another ten or twenty years to repeat the experience.
     I will say that the dog was a trooper. Mile one: lost of tail wagging and sniffing. Mile two: a bit more focused. Mile three and on: head down, still always ahead of me, but never a sideways sniff, as she seemed to figure out that we just needed to slog this out. The good attitude was in spite of her sad discovery that bees have stingers - for years, Ada has been snapping at bees. During the hike, she finally caught her first bee, but then immediately spit it out and pawed at her mouth for a couple of minutes. I felt bad, of course, but there's no other way for a creature with a one-ounce brain (that'd be the dog, not the bee) to learn. And this bigger-brained creature has learned her lesson: read the trail guides REALLY carefully.