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My apartment complex is surrounded by public trails (more than 20 miles worth), but I haven't explored them much in the past few years. The Eowyn Challenge is giving me incentive to get outside and walk, however, and this afternoon I picked up my trusty walking stick and headed over to one of the closer trailheads, Eagle Trail.
Despite the inspirational sound of the name, it proved to be a flat track through a narrow greenbelt/wetland between housing developments. It was about as boring as an outside walk could be. Even I was wishing for some company. Of course I was thinking about my Eowyn Challenge, but even my vivid imagination was having a hard time conjuring images of Middle Earth in this nondescript area. I had to push myself to keep going -- not because I was tired, but because I was bored.
Then a petite, white-haired woman leading a bay horse came out of the foliage to my right, stepped carefully down the small hill, and joined me on the path. Robin and Pistol were out for a walk. Pistol is a show horse, and Robin likes to get him out of enclosed spaces and rings to liven up his day and accustom him to dogs, cars, kids, and etc. We started walking together and having a pleasant chat. When we stopped at a crosswalk, Pistol leaned toward me as if to get acquainted. I held up my hand and he snuffled it in a friendly manner and I got to pet him a bit.
The trail went on straight, but Robin's route led around the residential area: the high rent residential area. She invited me to come with her, promising our path would bring me back around to my trail. Much preferring her and Pistol's company to solitude, I agreed. It ended up being about twice as long a walk as I had set out on, but that was okay. And I had the opportunity to see a very little boy (maybe two years old?) get to see and touch a real live horse for the first time, which was charming.
When we finally got to Robin's neighborhood, she showed me where her part of the trail had started. "Go through there. It will lead you to a cul-de-sac on a street. Follow the street to the left. You'll see the lake on your right. Go to the lake, and go left. You'll see the place where the trail branches off to go down to where you were."
I stared at her, disbelieving. It sounded very complicated, and I have a very bad sense of direction and equally bad memory for verbal directions. She repeated it twice, and I repeated it back. We said goodbye, expressing mutual wishes to run into each other again, and I set off, ill-at-ease.
I feel a lot of stress about getting lost. Even in a perfectly safe neighborhood, in broad daylight, where even the trails almost never took me more than a shout from a home, I was worried. I finally told myself that worst case scenario was to find an intersection, call my folks on the cell phone, and ask them to rescue me.
As I set off down the first part of the path, I heard Lohain saying something to the effect of Well, you wanted a more interesting walk. He was amused. He also pointed out that since being lost was a major stress for me, the walk had turned out to be something of an "edge" experience. Then he took a certain amused satisfaction in using my spiritual director's naming me an "edge walker" and applying it to the situation. Thank-you, dear.
I was relieved to find that Robin's instructions remained clear in my mind, and the landmarks were fairly close together, so I got back to the main trail with a minimum of effort. Once I was there, I was reasonably certain I was headed in the correct direction, but I was grateful for the landmark posts (set up to guide emergency response teams). Lohain chided me for not having paid sufficient attention to the land itself to be able to tell whether I was going the right way or not, and I resolved to do better at observing and remembering on future walks. The only landmark I recognized today was the mangled wreckage of a car -- and I was very grateful to see it.
As I mentioned above, the area is wetlands, and it rained most of last week. There were several places where the path was submerged in water, and the ground was boggy for several yards on either side. I was most of the way back to the trail head when I had to jump through a large puddle that had a raised mostly-dry spot in the middle. But despite my care, my tennis shoes got muddied during one of my attempted detours and mud inexplicably splashed almost to my knee on one side when I was jumping the puddle. I didn't think I'd landed with enough force to splash that high -- but I heard Lohain chuckling. I'm sure he was pleased that I was getting a bit dirty, and I wouldn't put it past him to have done some of the splashing himself.
By the time I got back to the trailhead I could feel blisters coming up on both feet, and had found out that my old tennis shoes were not sufficient to a long walk. I have my hiking boots from my canyon adventure, but those are too much for gentle trails like this. Time to invest in some sturdy walking shoes. I'm hoping that the blisters aren't bad enough to prevent Wolfling and me from going up to Whidbey on Sunday as we had planned.
According to my pedometer, I logged 2.88 miles, putting me at 4.56 miles in Middle Earth. I'm almost to the point where Frodo and Sam enter Tookland.
Despite the inspirational sound of the name, it proved to be a flat track through a narrow greenbelt/wetland between housing developments. It was about as boring as an outside walk could be. Even I was wishing for some company. Of course I was thinking about my Eowyn Challenge, but even my vivid imagination was having a hard time conjuring images of Middle Earth in this nondescript area. I had to push myself to keep going -- not because I was tired, but because I was bored.
Then a petite, white-haired woman leading a bay horse came out of the foliage to my right, stepped carefully down the small hill, and joined me on the path. Robin and Pistol were out for a walk. Pistol is a show horse, and Robin likes to get him out of enclosed spaces and rings to liven up his day and accustom him to dogs, cars, kids, and etc. We started walking together and having a pleasant chat. When we stopped at a crosswalk, Pistol leaned toward me as if to get acquainted. I held up my hand and he snuffled it in a friendly manner and I got to pet him a bit.
The trail went on straight, but Robin's route led around the residential area: the high rent residential area. She invited me to come with her, promising our path would bring me back around to my trail. Much preferring her and Pistol's company to solitude, I agreed. It ended up being about twice as long a walk as I had set out on, but that was okay. And I had the opportunity to see a very little boy (maybe two years old?) get to see and touch a real live horse for the first time, which was charming.
When we finally got to Robin's neighborhood, she showed me where her part of the trail had started. "Go through there. It will lead you to a cul-de-sac on a street. Follow the street to the left. You'll see the lake on your right. Go to the lake, and go left. You'll see the place where the trail branches off to go down to where you were."
I stared at her, disbelieving. It sounded very complicated, and I have a very bad sense of direction and equally bad memory for verbal directions. She repeated it twice, and I repeated it back. We said goodbye, expressing mutual wishes to run into each other again, and I set off, ill-at-ease.
I feel a lot of stress about getting lost. Even in a perfectly safe neighborhood, in broad daylight, where even the trails almost never took me more than a shout from a home, I was worried. I finally told myself that worst case scenario was to find an intersection, call my folks on the cell phone, and ask them to rescue me.
As I set off down the first part of the path, I heard Lohain saying something to the effect of Well, you wanted a more interesting walk. He was amused. He also pointed out that since being lost was a major stress for me, the walk had turned out to be something of an "edge" experience. Then he took a certain amused satisfaction in using my spiritual director's naming me an "edge walker" and applying it to the situation. Thank-you, dear.
I was relieved to find that Robin's instructions remained clear in my mind, and the landmarks were fairly close together, so I got back to the main trail with a minimum of effort. Once I was there, I was reasonably certain I was headed in the correct direction, but I was grateful for the landmark posts (set up to guide emergency response teams). Lohain chided me for not having paid sufficient attention to the land itself to be able to tell whether I was going the right way or not, and I resolved to do better at observing and remembering on future walks. The only landmark I recognized today was the mangled wreckage of a car -- and I was very grateful to see it.
As I mentioned above, the area is wetlands, and it rained most of last week. There were several places where the path was submerged in water, and the ground was boggy for several yards on either side. I was most of the way back to the trail head when I had to jump through a large puddle that had a raised mostly-dry spot in the middle. But despite my care, my tennis shoes got muddied during one of my attempted detours and mud inexplicably splashed almost to my knee on one side when I was jumping the puddle. I didn't think I'd landed with enough force to splash that high -- but I heard Lohain chuckling. I'm sure he was pleased that I was getting a bit dirty, and I wouldn't put it past him to have done some of the splashing himself.
By the time I got back to the trailhead I could feel blisters coming up on both feet, and had found out that my old tennis shoes were not sufficient to a long walk. I have my hiking boots from my canyon adventure, but those are too much for gentle trails like this. Time to invest in some sturdy walking shoes. I'm hoping that the blisters aren't bad enough to prevent Wolfling and me from going up to Whidbey on Sunday as we had planned.
According to my pedometer, I logged 2.88 miles, putting me at 4.56 miles in Middle Earth. I'm almost to the point where Frodo and Sam enter Tookland.
