To trod

I have
a new
place
to hike.

I can’t even tell you how excited I am.

As per usual, I’m a little slow on the uptake, and I’m embarrassed that it took me this long to discover this gem, but hey, better late than never.

It’s not that we don’t have good hiking in the area. We do. It’s just that there is a bit of a dearth of good hiking in the immediate area, and as I am a homebody from the word go, the revelation of this trail, this close to my personal abode is very exciting indeed.

The closest decent trail, prior to this new trail, was Hoffman Hills, a State Rec Area and a favorite of the Ottinger Clan. We’ve been wandering around those hills for as long as we’ve been a unit; in fact, the wandering began before the marriage of our two disparate halves, before plans were even laid for unity. I remember visiting Scott here on his side of the state way back in the beginning and finding myself in those hills while he was at work, exploring with my three very small girls and just one of his very small ones, robbed from his daycare and taken on what he acted like was a forced march in the woods. There was work to be done. We’ve come a long way, people.

We indeed spent a lot of time at Hoffman, as a large family, as a small family, as a wild and raucous bunch of feral homeschoolers on the lamb. With so many different sets of feet have I hiked those hills that I don’t know that I could recall them all. These three, however, have been with me all along, my ever-faithful companions.

Sigh.

Good times, people.

Just for fun, here are a few more of the family large and small, young and old, coming up in the Hills:

Those are some seriously cute kids, am I right? And then they done grewed up. Sigh.

But our Hoffman Hills, dear as it is, is more than fifteen minutes’ drive from our house, and, well, you can imagine what an obstacle this has been. It’s like a whole township away. Diagonally.

And so. I don’t get there as often as I would like. Because of, you know, the gargantuan distance.

But what have we here?

The relatively newly created Red Cedar Preserve and Rec Area, right here, a mere five minutes from my doorstep?

It’s practically a bit of my own yard.

Golll-ly.

It’s been there forever, of course–the land–but it wasn’t always a preserve. From what I understand, it has historically been known as the Ferry Pit, a gravel pit that eventually rested in the hands of the county, for the creation of roads and such. But in 2019, the county turned over the deed and a few enterprising citizens turned those 153 acres into my new hiking ground. I don’t rightly know how long it took them to get to this point, to blaze the trails and plop in the picnic tables and hoist the sign and what have you, but I am certain that I have been overlooking it for at least a couple of years. Honestly, I didn’t think there was much there that warranted a stop-in.

I am
chagrined.

This isn’t Hoffman Hills, nor even close. Hoffman boasts miles and miles of trails, options galore, hills and woods and prairies and ponds and towers and picnic areas. This new haunt is more modest, boasting only a two-mile loop and a handful of do-it-yourself treks through the interior. These gentler acres offer less in magnitude, sure, but they also offer something more in respect to potential intimacy with the land; I’m OK with that trade-off. Also, there is a pond, and more importantly, there is the river. Which means not only water, but moving water, and this is where at least half of my giddiness lies. With the proximity and the moving water.

The rest comes directly from my feet.

You see, for the past four months, I’ve been in a bit of a manic state about taking care of the ol’ bod, most of which is decaying at a rate that far exceeds its chronological trip through time. It’s just a thing that is and always has been. But this fall, looking forward from 46 with a squint and a sigh, from a body convinced that it was pushing 70, I finally decided it was time to pay some attention where attention was due. You see how better late than never could be a sort of mantra for me.

I upped my yoga game. I introduced my body to a thing called exercise, leading it through strength and agility routines like a show dog (think English Bulldog confronts hurdles). And I issued the harsh verdict that my walking regimen needed something of an overhaul. Everyday walks needed to actually happen every day; not a couple of times a week. Distance needed to be covered; the trek to the mailbox was not going to be enough.

So I set a soft goal for myself of getting in 10 miles a week. I know this doesn’t seem very ambitions, but that’s the thing… it was ambitious. 10 miles a week meant a mile or two a day, and that is actually a pretty damned long way, not so much for me as a whole, but for my very cranky feet. They’re kind of princesses, my feet. Princesses with a plethora of peas.

Now, the peas that pester my princesses are probably not the peas that pester your princesses.

Where most people prefer flat, even tracks to trek, steering clear of rocks and roots and rip-rap of all ranks, flat and even are the very enemies that make my feet cry. I need natural surfaces, preferably peppered with pebbles and undulating in topography. I am the person who hops from one glorious rock to the next, rather than stepping around them like the sensible hiking hordes. And roots! Oh, Lord, I do love roots. All in all, the more my feet need to flex to traverse the terrain, the happier my princesses are, and it follows, the happier am I.

Living where I do, on a hill in the sticks, asphalt connecting me to everywhere, much of my 10 miles necessarily happens there upon the asphalt, hard and featureless and furthermore crowned with a 2-12% grade, depending on the whims and personal equilibrium of the guy who crafted the road, lending to either a sort of wonky walk or a risky centerline cavorting. The smooth surface is brutal. The hard of that hard surface is just one further assault to the princesses.

I do wander our woods some, but our acreage is humble, and the aforementioned hill atop which sets our house necessitates that 95% of our wooded circuit is steep sidehill, much more so than the worst of the asphalt crowning, and I already have one leg longer than the other. These wooded walks are more of a gentle meander and discussion with the land than a hike that keeps me moving. And if I am out and about–you know, on the town–for literally any reason, I do detour to whatever trails or parks I can find, to put on some blissful dirt track miles, but I can’t convince myself that putting 30-60+ miles on the van, gas pouring out the tailpipe the whole way, is an acceptable cost for a mile or two of happier hiking. You know, on a daily basis, without any other excuse for the excursion. Feels somehow too cosmologically irresponsible.

So I multitask, inserting my wanders with errands and visitations of all kinds (yes, once even a real visitation, of the funereal sort), or I walk the road, my princesses protesting, ice often in the wings. The ten mile goal, I am thrilled to report, has been a successful venture, asphalt or no, but when you can hike double as far with half the pain on friendlier surfaces, you can’t help but long for greener pastures.

Scott and I finally got out there, to the Preserve, last week. I’ve been there almost every day since.

You can see why this beautiful new spot, sandy and dirty and full of rocks and roots and rivers, a mere four miles from my doorstep was exciting, and why I’m kicking myself for not checking it out sooner.

Four miles I can justify. Four miles is acceptable. Heck, I can get gas or make my library run or hit the post office if I really feel I need to multitask, but mostly, that drive is one I’m just willing to make for some happy feet. My princesses… are pleased.

We’ve done an awful lot of hiking in the past few years. Monster hikes. Crazy hikes. Life-threatening hikes. Glorious hikes. (Not that you, dear reader would know about those thanks to my inadvertent blog fasts 😬… I promise I’ll catch you up.)

Many more hikes–more monstrous, more glorious, and decidedly less life-threatening–are on the agenda in the years to come (bucket lists have been filling). Thrillingly, these grumpy feet of mine are finally getting the regular romps they need to be in shape for those hikes. Possibly I won’t be hammock-bound for the day (or four) after those monstrous monsters. What would that be like?

Thanks to my new haunts and old, these princesses will be ready.

If you need me, I think you know where to find me,
KJ