Hiking

When I was young we spent a lot of times outdoors.  We regularly went camping and hiking and fishing and boating.  It was wonderful.  However, I was a bit of a wimp as a child.  And very clumsy.  But that has nothing to do with this story.  When we would hike, I would want to stop regularly and rest. 

Stopping and resting drove my dad crazy.  He insisted that stopping and resting made it harder to keep going.  I always rolled my eyes and sat down for a second.  He would insist that sitting and resting made it harder to get up and keep going.

I always vowed to not say that to my kids when we went hiking.  Sometimes a rest is a good thing.

Fast forward fifteen years:

The kids and I joined the Relief Society hiking group for a hike.  The plan was to hike one of the buttes in the area.  It was raining, and I considered not going, but I knew that we needed to get out of the house so we went.   I hadn’t been to the place that we hiked before, and it was beautiful.  A little butte in the middle of a city.  Amazing how peaceful it can be in the middle of a city.  So quiet.  And green. 

  

There was some blue too. Check out this blue-eyed boy:

In the group there were four little girls, three little boys and one of the cutest little baby boys ever born.  We started off strong.  Then we came to a fork in the trail.  We could take a path that lead downhill, a path that led uphill and one that was kind of mixed.  I convinced everyone that we should take the uphill so we could come down hill on the way back.

The problem was that it was rainy and in Oregon, the rain doesn’t bring out the worms.  It brings out the slugs.  And the snails.

And the little girls had to stop at each slug.

The boys stopped and examined the first couple. The girls stopped at every. Single. One. 

Then everyone was complaining about being tired, and how the hill was too hill and never-ending.  It was taking us forever.  I took some cool pictures during that time though.  And that’s when it happened.  I said the thing that my dad said to me 4,568,193 times during my youth.  I said:

“The less we stop, the easier it will be!  Let’s keep moving!”

I head it and I realized…

I’m turning into my dad.