A Beautiful Day

A beautiful day, today.
A day to myself, free from work and school. I love Sundays.

Today  I went for a walk in Goddard Park with my boyfriend that turned into a hike.  I love the feeling of the breeze wrapping around my calves, stray fallen sticks and branches scraping against my ankles.  I even love the feeling of a trail's mulch embedding itself in my palms when I inevitably trip over a root and fall, typically due to my inappropriate hiking attire. I vowed that I need to start doing this again. Often, and in a dress. Maybe next time with a picnic! 

This is from quite a few years back, but this is how I love to hike.

Today we started at the harbor, being stupidly surprised to find that it smelled of saltwater, and was, indeed, the harbor and not a pond.  We falsely identified buildings across the harbor, then realized where we were geographically and how wrong we were.

We began to climb a steep trail along the coast to get a new view. Evan warned me that the trail was covered in horse poop.  I told him I didn't care, because poop is nature, and because I'm a disgusting person. As we climbed the trail we found a grouping of trees with no bark, some still standing, some cut down, and some fallen.  They were all studded with termite holes, but looking at the trees that still had some bark on them, decided the bark had been stripped from the wood due to a fungus. This is how we have fun. Nerds.

We were distracted from the bark-less trees when we heard a strange screeching from two birds chasing after one another above us. We weren't able to properly identify the birds, but their feathers looked like those of a hawk, but they flew and had the facial features of a nonpredetory species. So it goes.

After walking up to the horse farm in the park we decided to spend sometime on one of the fields.  We climbed up a 4 foot stone wall, and if you were wondering; like a BOSS in my dress and sandals. I'm sure someone saw my hiney, but I have a hard time caring about that. Atop the stone wall was really old tree, too wide to hug, with impressive branches spanning through the air. I found one elbow I think I might someday be able to climb onto, perhaps with some spandex under my dress, and a boost from my love. Beneath my intended entrance limb I found a cracked and broken egg. I probably shouldn't have touched it, but my curiosity for nature overwhelmed me, and, as I said, I am a disgusting human being. My mother probably would have scolded me if she were there, but I poked that egg like a champ and shared a moment of silence for the potential killed being.

At that moment I realized I should have brought my camera. Shame on me. And a picnic to share. Double shame. At any rate. I love hiking in dresses, nothing is quite so liberating.