I Hate the Woods!!

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What a bizarro afternoon I had on Sunday. I had to get my 3 year old out of the house so Daddy could do some work. It was the first day with temps in the low 80's and nearly no humidity, so we went up to the Ruffner Mountain Nature Center, which has lots of hiking trails. We've been up there many times but usually just stuck to the easy, paved trails.

The easy, paved trails only took us 45 minutes so we tried the Mine Ruins trail, which goes in a loop off the Ridge/Valley trail, then we'd go back along the Ridge/Valley trail the way we came, rejoin the main trail and go home. The mine ruins were cool. If I'd found them as a kid, I could've had some serious Middle-Earth fun there.

But no--before I could get my bearings, my son "ran out of good" right as we were emerging from the Mine Ruins trail to where it intersects with the other one, and went crashing off into the brush. I caught him and wrestled him back onto the trail, but by then I'd gotten totally turned around and couldn't tell by looking at the trail signs which way to go to get back to the Nature Center.

So I guessed...wrong. We were almost all the way to the back entrance of the park. We had walked nearly the entire Ridge/Valley trail, which as its name implies is a lot of up-and-down. So basically, we wandered lost for about 2.5 hours. All told, we spent 5 hours hiking.

We saw a hawk in a tree, watched 2 woodpeckers fighting, saw lots of black/blue butterflies, found hundreds of huge green, yellow and brown acorns.

Bet those kids slept good that night!

I love the woods and think 5 miles is a nice easy hike.

I used to trail run and ran the 5-Mile trail in about an hour.

I'm not sure how long this trail was in miles, but it took 5 hours because my little guy got me so turned around from having to drag him kicking and screaming out of the underbrush, turn around and go back to get him when he stopped and took his clothes off, put his clothes back on, etc..

love is......
the woods

buy a cheap compass, and know your n,s,e,w

Not many people in such. By default, it can't be a bad place.

(I live in such.)

The woods is actually my favorite setting, and I am very fortunate to live in them now. But I have gotten lost in woods for hours before and know the frustrating feeling of being tired and following trails mile after mile to who-knows-what. I was lost off-trail once in Germany which was a bit weirder in that the atmosphere slowly shifted from relaxing to a little dark and sinister. After going up and down ridge after ridge my friend & I came upon a tree with a large swastika carved in it. It wasn't freshly carved but grown over like it had been there for a long time. You come upon such old grafitti in odd places, but here in the dark forest it conjurred up thoughts of some rogue band of Nazis who survived out in the wild, since the war, or perhaps some weird village with weird people, giving you weird looks, like in a Steven King novel. We both got 'The Willies' when we saw it and re-energized, made some fast tracks away from there.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BSuhNJfDtY&feature=relmfu[/youtube]dont let the Lorax know!!

Out of everything in the woods that I'd hate, it's being in sight of large predator animals. They will eat you and your kid, especially your kid because he's small and easy to catch! I live next to the woods and even the raccoons are crazy enough to try and take a bite out of ya!

I love the woods. I'd like to go camping again sometime, before I get too old to fully enjoy it.