He’s 14…it’s hard to get him to do anything. Dishes? HA. Shower? I did that yesterday (it’s always yesterday by the way). Read a book? Boring… But he loves kayaking—and he loves hiking. I don’t give many options; we can go here, or we can go there. Your choice. Staying home and watching more TV is not an option. He decides on Cole Pond and away we go. We have to lie to the dogs and tell them we’re going grocery shopping, and despite wearing my flipflops & hiding my sneakers, I don’t think they buy my story. They love to walk.
It’s a perfect night to hike. As always, despite cars in the lot, there is no one on the trail. It’s a quick 20 minutes up to the pond where we find the owners of the vehicles. There is a man fishing and he nods in slight annoyance at being disturbed. But we’re nothing compared to the screaming family somewhere off to the left. The children are screeching at the top of their lungs, the parents laughing and yelling back and forth. Voices carry. We never do see the family but we hear them the entire time we’re there. Tarzan yells and kids yelling “mom!” echoing off the otherwise blissful pond. I’m annoyed too…I like quiet.
We found another trail leading around the pond and strike out. It’s pretty clear for the first ¼ but then we become bushwackers the rest of the way. We don’t mind. It’s an adventure! HUGE blueberry bushes bent over from their almost-ripe fruit try to hinder our journey, but nothing doing! It’s a small pond, less than a mile circumference, and we make it around without too much issue. Sure, I had to pull a small chunk of wood out of my calf but it’s not bad.
The coolest part of all of this? When I tell my son thanks—it was a lot of fun…and he says, ‘yeah, it really was!’ He doesn’t rush back to the car when he emerge from the trail head. He goes across the street to check out what’s over there…he meanders around, telling me in his own way that he IS having a good time. No need to have it end already.
I love these times with my son. We rarely have much to talk about other than his TV shows or what he’ll do when he takes over the world, but these peaceful evenings bonding in nature the way only two Taurus’s can do…is a gift I’ll never forget.
Trekking The Soul 