A Walk in the Woods

Stress is only a new thing if you've had nine months with very low levels of it. That's my story. It turns out that when I'm not stressed, I'm really happy. I know, that's no big surprise. I don't know anybody who says stress makes them happy. The thing that really bugs me is that when I'm busy, I let go of the things that I know will make me happy far too quickly. I convince myself that it's more important to get my work done. I had a long talk with myself this weekend, and here's what I said, "you will not go into the office. You will take a day off.".

And so I did. On Sunday, I drove west along the river to Shawnee Lookout, one of the 21 parks in the Hamilton County Park system. In my hometown, a park was a stretch of grass, maybe the size of a city block, with a swing set and a basketball court. In Hamilton County, the parks are wonderful: acres and acres of wooded parks with lakes and rivers, hiking trails and bike trails. Shawnee lookout is over 1,500 acres of stress relieving green. I got there just as the rain clouds burst, so I spent my first twenty minutes in my car, but once it cleared, I hit the Blue Jacket trail.






It isn't a long trail--the signage told me it would take me an hour to walk, but I did it in about 40 minutes. The late summer wild flowers were in bloom: spotted touch-me-nots, Jerusalem artichokes, bindweed, and the last purple remains of ironweed.

















The trail was pretty, but strange. Every once in awhile, I'd wind by one of those enormous metal lattice towers with power lines stretched through it. And then it was back to the woods and wildflowers.






After my walk in the woods, I stopped at a two room, two story pioneer log cabin in the park. It was built in 1795 by the son of a revolutionary war soldier. A couple of old lady rangers were on site, and between their constant corrections of one another's historical knowledge, they managed to tell me that the cabin had been moved there from Elizabethtown, Ohio, that it had been inhabited by a family of eleven, that the family would have been considered wealthy (two floors+two fireplaces=pioneer wealth). The ladies didn't seem to want me to go--they didn't much seem to like each other--so they just kept making idle conversation with me. They asked them if I'd been walking in the rain, and I told them I'd been in the woods. That set off the arguing again. One ranger told me how dangerous it was to walk alone in the woods. Anything could happen. The other one snapped back that that was ridiculous; she would never be afraid to walk in the woods alone. I left them to their argument and headed to the car.







If you've read other entries in this blog, it won't surprise you to hear that I got lost on the way home. I drove for quite awhile before I figured out where I was, and I finally made it back home, surprisingly destressed after wandering aimlessly in the car. The next day, my friend Margaret lent me a GPS, my second new thing for the month.

Stress relieving new things: that's what I need during this work reentry.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad