August 2020. Reflections on hiking

It's August 2.  It's been four and a half months since Covid became part of everyone's lives.  We're doing pretty well.  I still think about how it affects our own family and how it is on a community, national and global level.   Our "president" takes things to a new level of horrible in the shit show that is his presidency on a daily basis.  But let me talk about something different in this post.

Let me share....
the millions of photos I've taken while on walks with the kids
Lupe becoming an adolescent
Liam's interest in cooking and other things
The pride I feel that I get up 4 days a week and run a mile before work.
Pedro's tacos
(There is a lot of good stuff happening in our life)

Our after dinner "adventure" walk

My camera role has more photos in the last 4 months than the previous 6.   So many are of the landscape of our immediate surroundings.  I was about to say, "and we haven't even gone anywhere!", but we have, we have gone to more beaches, hiked more hills...
Pedro is working a couple of night shifts.  I don't find myself very motivated to make anything complicated for dinner on these nights, so sometimes it is something simple like quesadillas, or boxed macaroni.   Sometimes Liam wants to make tacos, and puts on his chef hat and apron (that's a blog post of it's own). Recently, after dinner, I have felt kind of...in a funk.  Not enough joy.  Unsure of what to do. Listless. Looking forward to some alone time, but missing Pedro at the same time.

Pandemic analogy:
out of the dry and withered plants
some new life will grow,
thorns and all, but green, and alive

So I realized that being outside with the kids would make me feel better.  Most often we cross the tracks and do the short walk that is my morning mile run.  Up a small hill and then back on the bike path.  I have pointed out to Liam often enough when we are on an "adventure", that now he brings it up on his own.   I just love his voice when he says it, a simple joy that is hard to mimic. "Oooh mama, we're on an adventure!"  My mom and Bryan know the voice.
Then it's home to shower, get on pajamas, and either read or watch Netflix.  With Liam it is Shaun the Sheep, and he sometimes asks for Someone Feed Phil or another cooking show. (I'll talk about Lupe later and all the things we now watch together)

After dinner is the perfect time.  Thy sky is changing.  The air is cooling off.   We work off our dinner a bit.  The ultimate frisbee players have left the hillside.  We walk. We breathe.  I take a lot of pictures.
  
Lupe has a phone now so she can also be a hiking photographer with me and just recently I remembered that the grandparents gave Liam a camera also at Christmas that we hadn't used in a while.  Here's the thing... this quieter life we are leading now has opened so much time and space to introduce Liam to things that he sees us doing and wants to do too.  There is so much joy in this.

I don't get tired of this view. At this time of day I love to look at the contour of those mountain tops.

Below are photos of South Hills, so close by, just across Broad St.  We can see these hills from our house and from a distance they just look barren, and kind of a boring walk.  Or so I thought.  On an after dinner adventure, it was already 20 to eight but I decided we should see where the start of the trail is and just scope it out.  We've been back 3 time since.
   
I love our hills when they are stunningly green from rain and I love them when they are golden and dry.  I feel appreciation for every type of plant I see, thinking about the native landscape and each plants purpose in this place. The subtle change in colors and the patterns on the rocks.
 
"Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy." Isaac Newton

The earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson
  

"Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience." Ralph Waldo Emerson

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery – air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy”. Sylvia Plath

I am reminded of why we have always written about the natural world.  Painted it.  Photographed it.  The air and the earth.  At certain times of day it speaks to your inner universe.  It heals.

"If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees." Rainer Maria Rilke