Leah and I hiked yesterday in our home mountains, the Olympics.We hiked in sunshine, then in fog.
We traveled through close, green forest, then on open, barren, treeless ridges.
We walked a trail with long stretches of uphill that slowed and humbled us and made us feel old, then rewarded us with blasts of effortless downhill that we covered with the speed of world-class athletes.
The only constant in our day was Nature at her inconsistent best, playing with our heads by teasing us with a little of this, a bit of that. It was all good.
About halfway through the day, we crested a misty pass and encountered a big, healthy-looking mountain goat (we decided to call him Bill, after Leah’s dad.) Bill ambled in my direction and I shot a few photographs. I saw that Bill had big, sharp-looking horns, so as Bill ambled, I rambled--on down the trail.
We walked. We looked around. We did our best to take it all in.
Ohmygoodness, what a day we had.
