It definitely feels a lot more like a Sunday than a Monday. That said, it’s still a Monday which means it is an exercise day. Becky and I opted for a 20-ish mile bike ride instead of our typical run.
Talk about an exhilarating time! Getting out on my bike was totally the right call today. The sun was out and we hit the road when it was about 60 degrees out. The clouds where whispy and provided the right amount of shade. Birds were everywhere on the trail, flying and singing. At one point there were a couple of huge rabbits playing on the trail in front of us. The views from the bottom of the valley were as wonderful as they always are.
In addition to the views it was awesome to get back on the bike for a longer distance. This winter I’d been riding it in the living room on the bike trainer 2-3 times per week. Once the weather got a little nicer I switched gears to hiking with a pack on instead. I was a little nervous how my biking shape was going to be for this first ride but I was pleasantly surprised at how well it went. My legs are a little tired now, but they felt awesome during the ride itself. Pretty sure I had at least another 10 miles in me! Not too shabby for the first time of the season.
So much to be grateful for on the first ride today. Everything went smooth. The ride was awesomely peaceful. Becky and I got a mini date in on the bike trail. It doesn’t get much better than that!
Another first in the Kreiling house today – Gavin drove the boat for the first time since passing boater’s safety. It’s crazy to think he’s now old enough to take control of our boat. Seems like only a couple of years ago we picked up our boat and we would watch him sleep on the deck after a busy day on the sandbar. Now he can drive while I sleep on the boat after a long day of sitting in the sun. 😉
The boys keep getting older and older – each first reminds me of that fact. Dad always said time would keep going by faster and faster, each day it seems like he was even more right than the day before. I am grateful for these firsts as they remind me to pause and think about how much they’re growing and maturing.
Congrats on a successful first run on the boat Gavin, you did great!
Another first in the Kreiling house today – Gavin drove the boat for the first time since passing boater’s safety. It’s crazy to think he’s now old enough to take control of our boat. Seems like only a couple of years ago we picked up our boat and we would watch him sleep on the deck after a busy day on the sandbar. Now he can drive while I sleep on the boat after a long day of sitting in the sun. 😉
The boys keep getting older and older – each first reminds me of that fact. Dad always said time would keep going by faster and faster, each day it seems like he was even more right than the day before. I am grateful for these firsts as they remind me to pause and think about how much they’re growing and maturing.
Congrats on a successful first run on the boat Gavin, you did great!
One of the positives to come from the COVID era was family hiking. We put on way more miles as a family last year than we had in any year previous – probably more than the two or three previous years combined. One of the ways we found solace from everything being shut down was to get out on the trails as a family.
This weekend is a big one for us as there are many “firsts” for us since March of 2020. We’re all amazed at how weird things feel for a minute or two but when how regular and normal everything seems within a matter of minutes.
Late this morning, in the middle of getting back to normal, we opted to take a lesson from 2020’s normal and get out on the trails. It was awesome! Perfect hiking weather. Cool. Sunny. Quiet. Perfect.
While life gets back to more and more normal I’m grateful for pockets of new normal we created during COVID that we’ll continue into our new old normal 😉.
Another easy night of blogging for me tonight! there were a handful of serious things at work I am grateful for today, but two very simple things really take the cake today.
Gavin and Dominic each have a friend sleeping over tonight. This is the first time in well over 15 months that they’ve had friends over for the night. Hearing them talk and joke has me smiling as I type tonight. It’s nice hearing them having fun and getting back to get another piece of normalcy.
With the boys taking over the upstairs Becky and I have retreated to our bedroom so the boys have space. After our post dinner walk I laid on the bed with a book. Becky brought LuLu up on the bed and she snuggled right in. Within a short period of time I caught my eyes closing to match her sleepiness. After I’m done blogging I might just give in and sleep too. Laying on my back with LuLu snuggled up and using my leg as a pillow is about the perfect way to wrap up the night.
Tonight’s blog post is going to be a quick one in a very fitting way. I’m tired, it’s past my bedtime, and I’m smiling all the way. The reason I’m going to bed late is exactly what I’m grateful for today… I was hanging out with friends and gaming IRL (IN REAL LIFE)!!!
Spending time all hanging out in person and not in front of a Zoom screen was nothing short of awesome. For half a second it seemed surreal, but then it felt like it always used to. Another one of those crazy time warp feels created by COVID.
Yup, I stayed up too late and I’ll be a bit tired tomorrow. All good by me, it was worth every single yawn tomorrow to be back to normal.
There’s no real way to ease into this one tonight so I’m going to jump right in.
This morning while I was reading the news on the AP News website an article caught my attention. As I read it I became increasingly angry. My mind struggled to comprehend what had taken place almost 100 years ago. A minimum of 36 lives lost due to hateful violence (and possibly as many as 300). What I was reading about was The Tulsa Race Massacre:
If you aren’t willing to commit to the entire article, I can sum up the hateful activity in one short paragraph from the article:
“More than 35 city blocks were leveled, an estimated 191 businesses were destroyed, and roughly 10,000 Black residents were displaced from the neighborhood where they’d lived, learned, played, worked and prospered.”
Want your blood pressure to rise a little more? Just in case that paragraph doesn’t get you thinking “what the hell,” here’s another fun fact… No white person has ever been imprisoned for taking part in the massacre.
How this was never shared in history class blows my mind. When I brought it up with a couple of different groups of friends there were only a few who’d heard of this event, and they’d only heard about it recently.
Our country has made mistakes in the past, huge mistakes. We can’t go back in time to fix them, they’ve already happened. The least we can do is engage in honest dialogue and remember the mistakes that were made. In knowing and remembering we can work to prevent making them again. By erasing them we’re doomed to repeat them.
Today, while I’m seething with anger that this hasn’t been taught, I am thankful for finally learning about an event I should have known about decades ago. At least now I have more of the truth and can see more clearly the past as it was, not as others would portray it to be.
During my drive to work today I caught myself smiling. Here I was, first work day back from our backpacking trip with a huge pile of tasks to complete and I was smiling. How crazy is that? Quite often the first day back is a white knuckle drive with teeth grinding as I rapidly work through everything that has been piling up since I left. Today? I was smiling.
The entire drive consisted of viewing the bluffs and the river as a tourist, taking in the beauty of the colors of nature. I had a wonderful forest related song mix playing on my stereo. Each song brought back different memories from our recent trip. I occasionally thought of the work day ahead and smiled. I’d just spent a few days living out of a backpack, filtering water from lakes and streams, carrying my only earthly possessions at the time literally on my back, and the bathroom… you get the idea 😉. Work? That’s easy!
Over the past year and a half five really seen an interesting correlation. My state of chill is exponentially proportional to the amount of time I’ve recently spent in the wild. More forest, way more relaxed. More hiking in nature, way more chill. More fresh air in the woods, much lower blood pressure.
This past weekend brought about one of the most profound states of chill I’ve had in a very long time. It’s memory is so fresh in my head. The last hike seared into my brain and soul.
One of the parts of backpacking and camping I enjoy least is the clean up and packing up of gear after the trip. Cleaning the mud off everything, wiping things down, hanging up everything to dry, re-packing, and sorting through everything before sorting is not nearly as exciting as the trip itself. It’s so easy to put it off, let it ride, and decide to get back to it later. Relaxing and chilling sounds so much better, right?
Way back in the day my parents always reminded me of how important it was to put up the tent to dry immediately after camping in Scouts. Before I could do anything else I had to put up the tent in the garage or out in the yard to make sure it was dry. Once dry I’d then go out, roll I up, and pack it into the bag so it was ready for the next Scout meeting. Over my years of Scouting this became habit.
Today I started packing everything away, getting it ready for its next use, and making note of what to do differently next trip. It would have been nice to kick back and chill or work on a handful of other things, but that was what I needed to knock off my list before I moved on to anything else.
You know what’s weird? I really appreciated the process of doing that today. The sense of accomplishment was rewarding and it helped me get more excited for the next trip. With everything fresh in my head I was able to make a few adjustments in packing that I would have most likely forgotten in a day or two, only to remember after I’d already re-packed. I was able to listen to an audio book while doing it and the movement helped keep me fresh and loose.
Crazy how sometimes things in life seem like a chore while other times they are peaceful and relaxing. What’s the difference? My attitude. 100%. If I choose to see it as rewarding, the right thing to do, and remind myself of how important it is I’ll find it much more rewarding while I do it. Nice reminder of a great life lesson.
Shortly after writing my blog last night I drifted off into a peaceful sleep. I woke up once in a while, shifted a bit in my hammock, and let my eyes close. After one of these I re-positioned myself in my hammock just in time to hear…
KABOOM!!!
There was an intense blast of thunder that rumbled through the valleys. With little brush, much rock, and many valleys the thunder echoed impossibly loudly for an extended period of time. In an instant I was wide awake. The boys hadn’t made any noise and I didn’t hear anything else . I got up quick, heeded the call of nature and got back into my hammock…
…just in time to hear the wind pick up and start to howl. As with the thunder the wind literally echoed throughout the valleys and continued to pick up momentum. In short order the winds hit our camp and I could feel the temperature drop as the pressure increased.
Right behind the wind was the rain. It came down in a total deluge as the winds howled. The boys were up by then as we had to holler loudly to overhear each other over the forces of nature. As everything calmed down I was serenaded by one of the most peaceful sounds in the world… rain on a tent tarp.
What I’m thankful for the most is the feeling the sheer power of nature. In the instant of thunder blast I was quickly reminded of where I rank in the big picture of all that is. That instant humility and acceptance of something far greater than I is one of the biggest reasons I enjoy spending time in nature. As my parents each told me at an early age, the mountains remind us of just how small we are and how large The Big Dude Upstairs is. The echoing thunder was exactly what I was hoping to find on this trip.
Yesterday was my least favorite hike of all time in the UP. Today was right up there with the best of the best. The entire hike was an adventure through an enchanted landscape. From the start we had to cross a river to follow the trail. Where the hike yesterday was very bland the entire trail today seemed to exude a different vibe.
There were old growth pine forests with much open space. The old pine even made noise as we walked. Some older ones had fallen part way and they let out sounds of tension as they leaned against each other. How often is there such a state of peace and calm in which we can hear the trees talk?
We saw fields of large rocks. Some were obviously the result of erosion of the cliffs above while others seemed very out of place. Those held lines of smaller rocks held tight in the grips of sandstone fossils from thousands of years ago. There were some in large groups and other large rocks sitting alone as if they were an alter from a people long since gone.
This is only 8 minutes before the next pic…
We walked through a gate created by a fallen tree. Shortly after passing through it seemed as if we walked through a doorway into completely different world. Everything burst into a vibrant green that came from every direction. Before the doorway there were only large old pine and boulders. After it was only young green trees, bright green moss, and emerald green underbrush. The stark contrast in the two was staggering. In such a short period of time the change was wildly drastic.
As we continued through we slowly wound our way up the hill. Once atop the ridge we were at the edge of nothingness. The fog and clouds were so low that beyond the cliff’s edge there was nothingness. Only cloud and guesses and imaginations of what lay beyond. It felt as if we’d hit the end of the map and the end of the world. This feeling persisted and grew as we continued to hike the trail. While in some ways it would have been amazing to see the full view my mind can’t help but be grateful for having the reality of what lay beyond stay hidden away. The feeling of unknowing leaves me hungry to go back and let’s my mind imagine the possibility.
While walking through this seemingly enchanted landscape I couldn’t help but notice a profound sensation of being home, of being at peace will all in life. The UP of Michigan (Upper Peninsula) has always felt like home to me in ways in which mere words can’t even begin to provide depth to. Those feelings were stronger than ever as I walked the trail today. That path was exactly where I was meant to be at that exact moment, I was home. While I have no hopes or aspirations to move there I know my soul finds extreme peace, stillness, and curiosity in this place. It is a home in ways I cannot fully explain, I can only feel. That feeling of going home after a long trip away, when I walk through the front door and appreciate all I have and my home itself for all that it entails, much beyond its structure and belongings, is a profound feeling of peace, security, and joy. The way I felt on the trail today was similar to that but on a visceral level for my soul itself. Even as I re-read what I’ve written I realize it sounds a bit out there, but I mean it with 100% sincerity. I’m very grateful for the profound feeling of being at home today on the trail.
What makes today even more special is that it was shared with those I love. As a family we created new memories which we will ever forget, moments we’ll hold onto forever. Laughs, smiles, jokes, awe, and a few bits of suffering to keep it real. So many new amazing memories with Becky, Dominic, Gavin, and my buddy Steve. Creating memories together makes the journey so much more profound.
Thankful for Forty 