Prologue
I already considered skipping today. Ultimately makes no difference to anyone but me and the half a dozen or so (and that might be overestimating) of readers that regularly ome to the page. But, integrity is what happens when nobody is watching, right? So, I write. However, I probably only write the bare minimum today. We might have to get used to the bare minumum during the week until summer. Maybe, some days, when I admire the landscape, I will see the forest for the trees.
Today’s Adventure (Ashuelot Trail Landscape)
In yesterday’s entry, I recapped my adventure from the end of March where I spooked a low level drug dealer near one of the local ponds. Since I said this entry will be short, I don’t have the space to recount another long adventure, so I will use the weekly entries to recap the daily. This may or may not work to catch us up. But, like I say at school, this is the only plan I have and I’m not afraid to fail if I learn from it.
Today, I needed to find some quick geocaches because Quinn had little league practice tonight. And, so, I went back to the Ashuelot Trail that runs through several towns in New Hampsire and roughly follows the Ashuelot River. One of my students, when I first told him about it, thought I might be through hiking. I, sadly, had to convey that it was only a multipurpose rail trail. Hmm, maybe I will use that as inspiration to do some through hiking this summer.
For now, back to the trail. Someone took the geocaching guidelines to heart back when geocaching first started and hid a geocache every 1/10 of a mile. As far as I know, there are at least 100 geocaches hidden just along this one trail. I used it to find 15 caches and break my daily record. Today, I just found 6 to keep current with my personal yearly goal of finding 1000 caches in the calendar year. In actuality, I’m remaining 60 caches off the pace. But, during summer, I’ll pick that up within a week.
The Prompt: Landscape
I mentioned in the last entry that I used a prompt of the day to keep myself honest and keep posting every day. I used that same document this year. I recognized some of the prompts. Oh well, I will mix up my responses to keep things fresh. I don’t remember if I used this one last year. Maybe, just maybe, I took the day off. Well, I’m going to use it this year.
The Prompt: When you gaze out your window — real or figurative — do you see the forest first, or the trees?
Generally speaking, I see the big picture first. I wrote earlier that maybe I will see the forest for the trees here on the web page. That could be said for much of my life. I just never concern myelf with the details. It gets me into trouble more often than not, but who has the time or energy?
I think people might tend to gravitate to “stop and smell the roses” as they get older. Perhaps, even I might learn. I remember quoting Ferris Bueller a couple of years ago in a Facebook post. “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Only recently have I taken that advice to heart. I feel like life is finally where I want it to be.
Epilogue
I said again, when confronted with the issue, “For me, my 20s were about making mistakes. Then, 30s were about amending for those mistakes, and finally in my 40s, I’m able to really start to figure out and enjoy things.” I mean, that’s all I can offer. When anyone asks for advice, I just say, enjoy the landscape of life as much as you can. Forest? Trees? It’s all the same to me.