A Wonderful Surprise"
Gino and I have been hiking since before we were married, and have explored most of the trails near our house. Our sons started out in baby backpacks and have enjoyed being in the mountains ever since. They also enjoy "bouldering", finding their way up rocks using no equipment, gripping with fingers and feet on the tiny cracks and outcroppings of boulders. A fall is "broken" by a big, somewhat cushioned mattress called a "crash pad" -kind of self explanatory.
Many days when traveling a road near our house we have seen one or two autos parked on the shoulder. With woods on either side, we always wondered what the mysterious attraction was. One day I saw two slender college aged men coming out of the woods carrying a familiar looking crash pad. Ah hah! There must be ledges for climbing. I mentioned what I saw to our sons, which piqued their interest. One evening I was getting dinner ready, hurried and late as usual when the guys decided to check out the area. It was a nice evening and they weren't going to be gone long, so I invited myself to go with them. Gino had been to dialysis that day so was not feeling up to it. I threw partly prepared meal into the frig and ran out with the kids with the familiar, "We'll be right back".
We entered the woods and spread out, looking for the ledges. The guys started climbing but were having no luck when I noticed a huge erratic boulder just sitting in the woods, not far from the road. I walked around it to find telltale marks from chalk covered fingers clinging tenaciously to the side of the rock. When I yelled to the guys that I found it, they answered from a distance up the small mountain. Our youngest had veered from his original quest and was getting excited about a possible view. He yelled for me to follow them. It was a slippery steep climb and I started thinking about Gino and dinner and said I'd come back another time. By then our son had made it to a lookout and said we had to go up there then, "It's beautiful tonight and you don't want to miss it!" We scrambled toward his voice and were greeted with a wonderful panorama of mountains in deep shadows and a marshy stream. It was hard to believe this had been here all the time and we didn't know about it. We looked around and realized that we weren't the first ones to stand on that spot, there seemed to be a trail from the other direction. We followed it to some large unfriendly "keep out" signs but found a marked horse trail that turned to the left. We followed it to find a pleasant path through hardwoods that took us back to a road a distance from our car. I showed the guys the boulder, and except for a late dinner and worried dad we were excited about the new discovery.
Gino climbed to the lookout a couple days later, and today's painting is from a hike with some friends on a cool fall day. The overlook is lower than the top of the mountain and is protected from the wind. We were able to spend a long afternoon talking, enjoying the view and basking in the October sun, far from the worries of the world but at the same time close to home.
Many days when traveling a road near our house we have seen one or two autos parked on the shoulder. With woods on either side, we always wondered what the mysterious attraction was. One day I saw two slender college aged men coming out of the woods carrying a familiar looking crash pad. Ah hah! There must be ledges for climbing. I mentioned what I saw to our sons, which piqued their interest. One evening I was getting dinner ready, hurried and late as usual when the guys decided to check out the area. It was a nice evening and they weren't going to be gone long, so I invited myself to go with them. Gino had been to dialysis that day so was not feeling up to it. I threw partly prepared meal into the frig and ran out with the kids with the familiar, "We'll be right back".
We entered the woods and spread out, looking for the ledges. The guys started climbing but were having no luck when I noticed a huge erratic boulder just sitting in the woods, not far from the road. I walked around it to find telltale marks from chalk covered fingers clinging tenaciously to the side of the rock. When I yelled to the guys that I found it, they answered from a distance up the small mountain. Our youngest had veered from his original quest and was getting excited about a possible view. He yelled for me to follow them. It was a slippery steep climb and I started thinking about Gino and dinner and said I'd come back another time. By then our son had made it to a lookout and said we had to go up there then, "It's beautiful tonight and you don't want to miss it!" We scrambled toward his voice and were greeted with a wonderful panorama of mountains in deep shadows and a marshy stream. It was hard to believe this had been here all the time and we didn't know about it. We looked around and realized that we weren't the first ones to stand on that spot, there seemed to be a trail from the other direction. We followed it to some large unfriendly "keep out" signs but found a marked horse trail that turned to the left. We followed it to find a pleasant path through hardwoods that took us back to a road a distance from our car. I showed the guys the boulder, and except for a late dinner and worried dad we were excited about the new discovery.
Gino climbed to the lookout a couple days later, and today's painting is from a hike with some friends on a cool fall day. The overlook is lower than the top of the mountain and is protected from the wind. We were able to spend a long afternoon talking, enjoying the view and basking in the October sun, far from the worries of the world but at the same time close to home.
