Soothing Moment

Really? No posts since June??? OK, I guess I am not a good blogger and I will go to blogger hell when I die. But life has a way of happening sometimes and chronicling it just doesn’t always happen along with it. I am in Michigan this week camping at Hoffmaster State Park on lovely Lake Michigan. My project? The book Best Easy Day Hikes Grand Rapids. I took this project on thinking I’d have more time than it turned out I had. The result is some hardcore get ‘er done hiking. 20 hikes in 6 days. Climbing dunes and ridges and taking in some fall air. It sounds much better than it is. I’m taking on about 15 miles each day — with GPS, camera and digital recorder — though I have spent much of the last year or so sitting on my butt at a computer. The week or so of two-mile-a-day walks probably didn’t help so much. Whatever. You do what you have to do.

I highly recommend the state parks along Lake Michigan. The dunes are impressive with wide sweeping blowouts or grown in tree and grass cover. Lots of wildlife. Pounds of Chicken of the Woods which I wish I could cart off to home. But I rush through all this beauty because as I’ve said before, Work can ruin ANYTHING!

But I’ve focused on stopping to take a breath or flower photo whenever I am well ahead of my day’s schedule. On that note, here’s a short clip just of some babbling creek water. That was today’s meditative moment.

(I was dismayed to see that my camera had mysteriously set itself back to “standard” video quality rather than “high” — bummer.)