Forests aren't really boring, but they make the distance feel longer because you can’t see the mountain you’re climbing ahead of you, or the valley pulling away below you, so it feels like you’re not getting anywhere at all.

Foiled me once…

Most people don't know this, but deer are actually very large birds related to chickens and turkeys. Poultry like deer can't fly very far, but they can fly over bushes without breaking stride.

You just had to be there.

The best trails play out like a story. Some trails are like chapter books with sections of different scenery that each tell a little tale. Other hikes center around one big feature, and follow a story arc up a mountain or around something impressive-looking. But in Arnold we hiked for miles through forests that went into too much detail without moving forward, like a story that you didn't realize was dull until you'd already started telling it. (Mom tells those kinds of stories all the time.)

Listerine George

When we looked down from above, we could see all of the rocks at the bottom of the river. Some were small and the river flowed over them peacefully like mouth wash, but in other places there were bigger rocks that swished the river until it was frothy like toothpaste spit.

White Christmas

We left the main trail and followed the footsteps and rock piles back to the secret passageway that would take us back down the cliff. The only problem was that the trail disappeared as if by magic. We found a pile of rocks wedged under an overhang like it was trying to tell us something, but we couldn't figure out what. We went back and forth over the same 1/10 of a mile of trail over and over, and couldn’t find anything trail-like anywhere; no packed-down snow, no shoe prints in the sand, no rock piles, not even a long stretch without things to climb over.

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