Carving Out Joy: Frolicking In The Snow

A photo-essay on finding time for fleeting moments.

I really appreciate the response I’ve received about these posts. You all put up with the challenging words and it’s even helped me get closer to folks by explaining myself more than I ever have before. This feels good.

Compelled to write more now, it’s clear that one of the best things I can do is be a little dose of joy instead of another harbinger of dread and sadness—we have plenty of that in the world.

Today, I thought I’d bring you on our last little hike.

Kristy and I are pretty good about devoting time for what matters intensely to us: spending time with each other and doing the things that bring us joy. It takes a lot of intention and balance-that-feels-odd to pull this off.

Often, our adventures aren’t big endeavors. Yesterday, it just meant leaving town an hour before a wintertime sunset to take a slippery drive to Poverty Creek, head down a fire road, and park at a gate we’ve been to hundreds of times before now.

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We did the “Mayapple loop”, a flat-ish two mile loop that takes us through pine forest, beaver-dammed marshland, and across a couple creek crossings.

I love having access to nature so close here. There’s very few places I’ve been to that let you find a dozen hikes 20 minutes from home. The only similar places I’ve been to are on the front range in Colorado and the Adirondacks in upstate New York.

A tangent but stay with me: while there wasn’t much wildlife out in the sleet yesterday, this is a great loop for nature spotting. A Barred Owl resides in the marshy stretch and has followed us around like a sentinel in the past. Owls do that to us—more than I think is normal. I like to think it means something.

Samwise, our new puppy, is doing great. As effortless as off-leash training felt with Maggie, he’s learning just the same—from her this time.

I’m looking forward to Samwise’s graduation from puppyhood but trying to remember that I’ll earnestly miss these moments too. If we don’t give time to things like this, we’ll only look back on missed memories.

Taking a couple hours to escape to the woods with our dogs is more important to me than most things.

A simple hike and time feeling reasonably present in the woods is one of things that brings me the most joy. Yesterday, I was skipping around, knocking wet snow off pine branches, and smiling much more than usual.

We stay so busy that it’s easy to just let life go by on the way to appointments, meetings, or all the rest we’re told is important. To me, those aren’t going to matter later on. Endless hours in the woods will feel good, though.