Thankfully, the weather cooperated very nicely yesterday!
When I arrived at Colonial Park around 8 o’clock in the morning, there were already plenty of other people there, walking their dogs, sitting and chatting with friends on benches, or exercising. (The latter is what I should have really been doing myself!)
I packed a bag with the map of the park, my camera, voice recorder, pen and paper, a novel, and some snacks. Because I had the map ahead of time, I had a general sense of where I was going. I parked my car near the entrance to the Lois Howe Nature Trail. Until recently, I have not been much of a hiker. My first true hiking experience was the nearly seven mile hike through the Cinque Terre in Italy earlier this summer (not a bad first hike, if I say so). The idea of intentionally setting out to explore a trail in the woods is still a new notion of mine, and so I carried a bit of trepidation with me as I started the trail. The ground was damp and increasingly growing hotter with the intense morning sun. It was a lot buggier than I had thought it might be. Normally bugs don’t bother with me. These did. So, it took me a few seconds to become accustomed to walking with them landing on me every now and then. I think one of them actually bit me above my right knee. Pretty soon though, none of that mattered. Continue reading