Filling Time: TwinLife Empty-Nesting

Despite the fact I’m East Coast bred, I was born on the West Coast. The six months that I spent there as a baby have somehow seeped into my soul, and perhaps this is why I love hot summer days and the sunshine on my face. I’ve always credited my blonde hair and blue eyes to the fact I was born in the proverbial California sun, and the fact I married a man whose family hails from the West Coast somehow seems metaphorically perfect. Even today, I have family that lives there, and so whenever I have the opportunity to cross into Pacific Time, I try to arrange my schedule for a visit. 

Of course, it can’t all be about work, so I forced my bro to get out of the house, and we did an urban hike on Sunday. The rest of this narrative documents our hike, from the perspective of two kids who have hiked Mount Washington several times and who have spent many miles on the trail with our father.

The fact we had no idea that we were embarking on what would become a ten mile hike is a glimpse into how the two of us can just go with only a concept of a plan and then get lost in a story. In this case, the story occurred on two levels. One was at a professional level as he and I shared our current work situations. Peppering that more serious storytelling was our narrative that transformed the urban, West Coast scenery into a wilderness hike along an East Coast trail of our past. To our credit, the side questing was beautifully woven into the professional arc.

Here is the story of Our Ten Mile Day.

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We started in the urban forest, where we quickly found the first blaze for the orange trail. Like on East Coast trails where you need to sometimes search for the blazes to keep you on track, this trail also made us work hard cognitively. It was actually pretty clearly marked as the orange trail, but the blaze markers changed depending on the section of trail we were on.

There were several water features along the trail, including a waterfall with local wildlife. Local wildlife was in abundance, though it does look a little different than the bears, snakes, and other living beings we have seen on our past hikes. For the most part, the wildlife was friendly – and colorful – and luckily the trail keepers made sure we were safe from the more aggressive beasts, which were in a migration pattern during our hike.

We refueled with some tea and coffee, exclaiming, as we always do, “Everything tastes better on the trail!” and then discovered that someone had not cinched their food bag tightly enough. What a mess! We were pretty sure the trail keepers were not going to be happy with those through hikers.

As we entered a particularly serene portion of the trail, we were greeted by the local trail keeper, who did not ask us to sign the hiker log. We did not think to bring our iodine tablets, so we decided not to refill our water bottle at the local watering hole nearby. Ultimately, the amount of water we had packed was just fine. Despite the hot weather, the terrain was relatively easy. Only in the last third of the hike did we encounter a steep grade that proved to be any kind of effort.

That being said, while we were traversing through the area dominated by the migrating wildlife, my hips started screaming at me. I asked my brother, “How many miles have we done?” 

Ultimately, we made it back to his place, both of us complaining about our middle-aged bodies and wondering how 6 or 7 miles of relatively flat terrain could hurt so much. After he looked up the actual route we had taken, he let out a yelp. “It was 10!” I knew it. My hips didn’t lie.

He went for a nap, and I went to the local swimming hole to rest.

Our ten mile urban hike was a good way to fill time. In fact, it made time go quickly. As we chatted about our present and future, we connected to our past. It was almost like we were in the mountains.