Refreshed

It's a rainy Monday and I'm back in North Carolina after a long weekend in St. Louis, visiting my parents and my brother and his budding family.

My last post was full of pictures; this one, I'm going to attempt to put down some words. My lack of sleep may make it muddled, but I will try nonetheless.

As seems to be the trend in my life of 2012, the weather in St. Louis this past weekend was completely out of season, with it feeling more like early fall than early winter.

The benefit to this was the ease with which I visited my park every day I was there.

Friday, I had the pleasure of running with my brother Pat and the even greater pleasure of realizing that I was actually in better running shape than he! (Something that won't last long, for sure.) It was a hazy grey late afternoon when we went out for a loop on the Hawk Ridge Trail. We were both a little winded (me by the hills, he by the distance) but it didn't stop us from talking. In a lot of ways, I felt like we closed a big gap in the forty-five minutes we spent trodding the gravel.

Saturday, my mother and I went for a "hill-tackling walk" - I wish I had brought my watch, just to see what crazy path we blazed through the park, past red-headed woodpeckers and kindly boot-clad, dog-toting equestrians.

Sunday morning, I planned to do two laps around the Hawk Ridge Trail, but my failure to bring my hydration pack and the park's decision to shut off the water fountains for the winter put a stop to that plan.  I enjoyed the first three miles in silence at sunrise - not another soul about but me - and the second two passing kindred spirits in the early morning light. 

With all of the moving that I've done in my life, it's sometimes hard for me to believe that I've been able to enjoy this park for more than fifteen years. In so many ways, it's been a touchstone, one that I can return to after months away and still find solace beneath its trees, along its paths. A place that is like an old friend, one that is aging but ever recognizable.

Maybe someday I'll take my nephew there and teach him how to stop when he hears the shrill hoarse call of a woodpecker and wait in silence for the drumming of its beak. To crane his neck and look for the scuttling bird. To delight in finding it. To wonder at and to love this world we live in.