Two weeks ago Kristina and I went for a hike to celebrate Earth Day. Since we hadn’t had gone out on Easter Sunday the previous week – due to cold, stormy weather – we brought along our Easter baskets and boiled eggs and had a picnic. We hiked to one of our favorite places. It’s…
Tag: Hikes
A Miserable Hike that Makes You Feel A Lot Better
Fellow hikers, does this sound familiar? I have certainly been there. Usually I love hiking. Being outdoors, observing the plants and animals, pondering the geology and topography – these things just make me happy. But occasionally I find myself on a hike that I’m not really enjoying in the moment. Maybe the weather is miserable…
Hikes: Elliott State Forest, Oregon
Over the weekend we went hiking in the Elliott State Forest. Taking a break from normal life to get some exercise, look at some exceedingly tall trees, and marvel at the lush environment here did us both much good. We walked along an old overgrown road which made for a nice walk up along the…
A Natural Resolution
In her book the Nature Fix, author Florence Williams says that the Finnish recommend being in nature for 5 hours a month to reap health benefits. That seems like a pretty good thing to add to a New Year’s Resolution list – just an hour and fifteen minutes a week spending time outdoors in a…
The Resonance We Need
“How happy I am to be able to walk among the shrubs, the trees, the woods, the grass and the rocks! For the woods, the trees and the rocks give man the resonance he needs.” – Ludwig van Beethoven, 1808
Hikes: A Walk In A Wild Oregon Forest
This afternoon Chad and I found ourselves in a wild forest full of towering trees, a multitude of mushrooms, and glowing autumn leaves. And when I say we found ourselves there, I mean that we got back to some integral, essential part of who each of us are, and who we are as a couple. Not…
Harley hikes Sheep Creek Canyon
We spent a weekend in the Flaming Gorge area recently and took a drive to one of my favorite places in this part of the state, the Sheep Creek Canyon Geological Area, also known as Sheep Creek Canyon Loop. Chad took me here on one of my first visits to Utah and I was awed by the fascinating geology. So I was looking forward to returning – this time under a beautiful blue sky and bringing our dogs along with us…
Hikes: Ouray Badlands
I’ve been intrigued with badlands since learning about them at work, enchanted by aerial views of land forms I couldn’t quite figure out but was eager to get a closer look at. I finally got a much closer look when we went to Ouray National Wildlife Refuge, a place known for its wetlands and migratory birds, to hike on the badlandy hills there.
Hikes: Yellow Flower Desert Pinnacle
When Chad and I need a quick hike, this is our new favorite location, the place we call Yellow Flower Desert. We discovered this area, just off of one of our major highways, several months ago and were enchanted at how quickly we were able to get to fun hiking terrain. When we went this…
Hikes: Yellow Flower Desert
It’s really amazing how spending some time outside can make you feel so good. Spending time outside in an amazing new location is even more invigorating, refreshing and revitalizing. We decided to take a late afternoon hike the other day and couldn’t quite find the right place. One place we tried was surrounded by massive…
Hikes: Coyote Canyon
I’m so lucky to have found and married somebody who shares my love of hiking in wild desert places. I’d been wanting to take Kristina to a little canyon in the area I call “the land between” and we went there for our most recent hike. It’s a place I remembered fondly even though it…
Hikes: Desert Wash in the Land Between
Why would you want to go out hiking in a place where there are no trails, no other hikers, and probably no signs of civilization at all? I never asked myself that question before meeting Chad, because going out hiking on trails was a rare enough treat and reprieve from my place in the noise…
Hikes: Autumn Outing in the Ashley National Forest
Getting out of the house and into nature, I notice a letting go of anything I’m preoccupied with. I feel like it is a sort of mental and spiritual deep cleaning, pushing out the superfluous, reconnecting to the essential. Doing a yoga pose or two during these moments of re-connection is invigorating, somehow more special…
Mountain Yoga
It was time for another adventure, and since our previous hike had been in a desert location, I suggested we go to the mountains this time. On a previous trip we’d driven around Elk Horn Loop and I’d told Kristina that I wanted to come back to one particular part of the loop – the…
Bear Hike At Pole Creek Canyon
For our latest weekly adventure, Chad took me up to a place called Pole Creek Canyon. We started our hike off-trail through some lovely Aspen forest, Chad pointing out bear claw marks on trees, and rocks overturned by bears looking for ants. Being pretty new to this type of hiking, that is, hiking in territory…
Hikes: Desert Hike in the Uintah Basin
For labor day we decided to go for a hike in one of Chad’s favorite desert canyons. He’d been telling me about this place, but I’d been slightly put off from getting excited about it because of a big stretch of power lines that were near the entrance. His enthusiasm for the location, however, convinced…
Hikes: Larva Lake
One of the ways Chad and I like to keep our relationship strong and let ourselves relax is by going on some type of adventure once a week. Chad took me up to another of his favorite spots in the Uintah Mountains. We hiked through the Ashley National Forest on our way to a small…
Hearthwilde 