Take a hike, Buddy!

o/`o/` When I was 10 years old,
                   It was a very good year
          It was a very good year for tall pine trees
                  Bumps on my knees
                  And 'do as I please'
          It was a very good year o/`o/` 

A verse I made up for "It was a Very Good Year" as sung by Frank "Old Blue Eyes" Sinatra

So I've spent a fair amount of time living in the South.  I lived in North Carolina from the ages of 9 - 11 while my step-father was stationed at Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station.  Then, when I was in the Air Force myself, I went through Basic Training for 8 weeks at Lackland Air Force Base right outside of San Antonio, Texas.  Next it was off to Biloxi, Mississippi for 36 weeks for my Electronic Warfare Systems Training and then I got sent back Biloxi (Keesler Air Force Base) for another 24 weeks on a Temporary Duty Assignment to be trained on a system that used the Original Intel Microprocessor - the 4004 as its "brain."  Later, after I got out of the Air Force I attended White's Ferry Road School of Preaching in West Monroe, Louisiana for 23 months from September 1975 - July 1977.  All told that means I've got a little over 5 years - 1/12 of my life in the South.  We'll just let that percolate for right now and come back to that in a totally different post.

I say all that to say that when I was 9 and 10 and lived in North Carolina I developed a L-O-V-E for walking in the woods.  There it was pine forests - acre after acre of loblolly pine, long leaf pine and short leaf pines.  Climbing a Loblolly was a chore and 2/3s since it was just the trunk with no branches for most of the way up.  Anyway, I NEVER worried about the things I'd worry about today - getting bitten by a snake; falling and breaking a bone, or even getting lost, etc.  I just ran and played and hiked and tried like heck to get up one of those loblollies (though I didn't know their name then - they were just "pine trees").

As I mentioned yesterday today was our last "off day."  We leave tomorrow after church.  So, today I went for a walk, which became a hike through part of the Ocala National Forest.  When I was walking the other day along the road I saw this sign:

Which had this bridge at its base beckoning me into the forest:

The other day I resisted yielding to the "Call of the Wild" and kept walking along the road.  Today, I didn't; today I couldn't; Today I didn't WANT to resist.

The trail was a great one for walking  as you can see from the sign below this part of it is blazed specifically for walker/hiker/runners:

It was a worn-in 2 foot wide path covered with pine needles which had fallen from the trees you can see in the picture above.  It was magnificent and very well up-kept.  Below you can see raised wooden footpaths they had over areas that were even the slightest bit boggy:

About 200 feet into the path I found a 6 ft. high hardwood sapling that had been cut down.  It was about 1" across at its base.  I stripped off the branches that were on it to use it as a "walking stick/snake prod."  Its been cold enough here (in the lower 30s and two nights in the upper 20s) that I'm pretty sure all the snakes (which are cold blooded animals and therefore have to hibernate in cold weather) are still tucked in their burrows for at least another month.  When I was 10, I NEVER thought about snakes and they had all the same ones in North Carolina that they do here - Cottonmouths, Copperheads and Coral Snakes - but with age comes wisdom (or at least FEAR), so I figure I'd better at least have something to scoot them away in case I rounded the corner and a particularly studly one was sunning themselves in the path.

I listen to music when I walk and I purposely make L-O-T-S of noise when I walk in the woods or wilderness areas - both with my traipsing and my singing the songs that I'm listening to.  This is to tell aurally sensitive fauna - deer, skunks, black bears (in this region) and the occasional hunter that I'm coming so they won't be frightened by seeing me.  Again, it seems the wise thing to do.

I also wear a Garmin Forerunner when I walk.  Its charge lasts for about 6 hours.  It plots out on a screen exactly where you are in relationship to the numerous GPS satellites that are in "Geo-synchronous" orbit.  With the Garmin if I mark my original location you can take me ANYWHERE in the world and drop me off and all I have to to is press "Return to Start" and it will show an arrow pointing in the direction of where I marked as my starting point.  I may have to swim oceans; climb mountains or traverse deserts to get there but if I just follow the arrow, I'll arrive back at the start (obviously I'd have to stop to recharge it every 6 hours or so).  They are wonderful tools.

I started walking in the trail and walked and went from the walking trail to walking on some bridal paths they have for horses as shown below:

Then back to the foot path again. And back and forth and back and forth and then I decided I'd better "wrap it up." and head back home to momma who was busy washing clothes and doing some other necessities at the rig.  So now I just looked at the Garmin and my iPhone and found a couple trails that would take me to a dirt road that went the highway with the beckoning hiking path sign.  Below is a copy of my "Walk in the Woods" from Saturday afternoon.  I uploaded the Forerunner to Garmin's on-line site and it shows it on the satellite map.  I just took a "picture" it by doing a "Shift-Command-4" copy on my MacBook Pro.

Time to help my beloved get ready to leave.  She's in full-blown "packin' and sortin' fool" mode already.

THE WALK IN THE WOODS: