Morning Coffee and Birds

I wouldn’t say I get cranky when it’s been a while since I’ve spent time in nature, but I do feel the weight of everything a little more. These days I find it a little harder to get out. Its actually not a bad thing, I just like running and building my web design and app business, and so it’s sometimes hard to push all of that ambition aside to take a weekend away. But generally once I’m out, I recognize how much it was needed.

My wife pretty much pushed me out of the house for this weekend’s nature time. She’s good at seeing the need for me to get out at least every-so-often, telling me to go get my morning coffee and listen to the birds for a bit. These days, that’s actually what I look forward to the most when getting out. I used
to be all about alpine lakes and dramatic views. These days I’m pretty happy just to get some morning songbirds with my coffee in a quiet place.

Small Wanderings

One of the greatest things about camping is just being able to wander about camp and around your immediate vicinity. I previously wrote about morning scampers, and I actually went on a great little scamper this morning — an old road bed that turned into a trail. And once that ended and I was about to turn back, I noticed another small footpath leading me further up into the hills. But even different from those are just the small little wanderings that happen in and around camp. I’ll walk the 25 yards to the end of my little pull-in spot, just to look at the view from that angle. Or I’ll just walk a short distance to get a closer look at a small grove of trees. There is a small rock outcrop maybe 35 or 40 yards away that looks interesting. Perhaps I’ll find myself up there at some point.