This weekend, Hawk and I finally had some time together to do a hike while the weather was decent. My body was quite broken on Friday from work, but thankfully I mostly slept it off. Still, I used my judgement and suggested we keep the hike moderate. I found a couple interesting sounding trails in the Sebago Lake area, and Hawk agreed to explore them with me.
I recently discovered that this "new" Belknap Range trail is less than 10 minutes away from my college. Ever since then, I've kind of had it in my head that I should hike it after class some day. It's a new requirement on the redlining list, so I had to get it sooner or later, and I've seen a bunch of posts on the Belknap hiking group from people who did it and enjoyed it. Plus the semester is ending soon, so my window of "why not since I'm so close?" is closing, at least until fall. Till then I'll have to drive a half hour from home to reach this side of the Belks. So I had a lot of reasons to hike here now. More importantly, after a string of dreary weather, the skies cleared and it turned out to be a perfect afternoon for outdoor activities, and I really needed some nature therapy.
My graphic design professor is pretty great. This week our assignment was literally to take a hike! Man, is that the best kind of homework or what? Our actual instructions were to go outside, take a walk in nature, and make observations, which we will later be applying to a typography project. Part of the assignment included writing a journal entry, so what better way to multitask than to use that as a blog post? Which, honestly, I may never have written, because once again we "just" hiked our oft-visited favorite mountain, Shannon. Is there really much more to say about it? Well, apparently yes, there is plenty. Read on to learn more about this gem, by way of my mindfulness hike of sorts.
A while back, Hummingbird and I somehow came up with the idea of doing a night hike with glow jewelry. Because, yes, this is what normal women in their 40's do for fun. (I'll bet you that's actually true, and if someone thinks it's dumb, they're probably just jealous of our awesomeness. ;-)
Technically this was a moderate loop hike, and certainly not excessive mileage, but this was still our first time hitting over 1000 ft of elevation gain this year. We even got a couple miles more than any of our other hikes this past month and a half. So not a bad start to getting back in shape, working up to climbing more mountains.
It's been an extra busy week, and an equally slammed weekend. I had plans to ski with Hawk, but ended up stuck at home with an unexpected load of homework. (Yes, I'm now trying to balance work, life AND college. Yikes.) Meanwhile, Hummingbird was drowning in tax preparations (because she is an accountant who does more accounting on weekends just for fun. Right.) Understandably, we knew we'd both be in need of a computer break at some point in the day. So we planned a local quickie hike, and hoped to time it before all the snow melted off the trees. But even if it did, it'd still be exercise. That's our current motto. Good or bad conditions, it all counts. We both need to get back in shape. (I suppose those brownies I made tonight negate any benefit I got. But, well, rule #1* is in play. And I earned them, dammit!)
Ok, so first let me explain the title. We hit a very small, slightly tricky section on our descent, and I chose to just butt slide down a rock face, relying on my spikes for grip. I called out something to the effect of “butts and spikes; that’s what we have them for!” And then quipped that there we have the blog title. Well, Hummingbird loved it, and insisted that I better use it now. So this is her doing. 😉 (She will argue that I’m the one that came up with it, but I'm only using it to avoid immensely disappointing her. Though if you've been reading my blogs long, and definitely if you know me, well, you're familiar with my sense of humor, so probably used to such silliness.)
This afternoon, Hummingbird and I finally explored the trail that continues past where we usually hike Avery Hill. Gene from the conservation commission recommended it earlier in the year, and we've held it as a "unique" hike option for when we want something quick, easy, and local. We didn't have super high expectations, but we were told it was pretty. We kind of wish we'd gone sooner now. We definitely will go again!
So yeah, we just hiked over 8 miles and a thousand feet of elevation, and never even summited anything. #UnintentionallyOverambitious
AKA, we walked all this way, and all we got was this one lousy picture.
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| Ok, it's not lousy at all. But it's not a summit view. ;-) |
