“Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.”
– Albert Einstein
Hiking up to the remains of the Prizren Fortress in the city of Prizren, Kosovo, requires fortitude, imagination, and a few extra breaths. Our hike was steep and burdened by unreliable knees but lightened by the questions of young and curious minds. My hiking companions ranged in age from two and a half to thirty-five…
Is it the journey or the destination that matters? Last month, my husband and I walked the Sanders-Monticello trail outside Charlottesville with his parents. The four-mile round-trip walk through the forest on a well-constructed wooden pathway was lovely and relatively easy. Little did I know, it was inspired by Thomas Jefferson himself. “Of prospect I…
A few years ago, I visited Boulder, Colorado, and hiked the trails in Chautauqua Park. The evergreen trees that patchworked over those razor-sharp hills took my breath away (literally). I had almost reached the peak when I came upon this steep and rocky road. Winded and fatigued from the previous few hours of my frolic…
My mother-in-law and I share many of the same, quirky interests—not the least of which is her lovable son. But on a recent trip to Florida, we shared a walk through the Naples Botanical Garden. The walk turned out to be more like a fanciful daydream through Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax” with its puffy flowers…
It’s a new year. Each year we shed the gunk from the last twelve months, brush ourselves off, and prepare our attitudes for another go around the sun. We attempt to find better attitudes, more willpower, extra tenacity—a well-meaning, Auld Lang Syne tradition, I suppose. This year, it seemed, I had an extra layer of…
Back in June of this year, my husband and I hiked a small, overlooked park in our area—the Conway Robinson State Forest. We followed the straight and narrow path for at least a mile. I admired how nice it was to see straight ahead, to have clarity about the future of our hike, to bask…
