Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost

I love this JRR Tolkien quote, and while this definitely is not a trek to Mordor, I want to talk about our little area path, which we call the Muffly Trail in honor of our friends, who discovered it and shared it with us. I love it because it's close, a bit of a challenge (258 feet elevation change, 3.5 miles), and I can reach it by walking out my front door instead of a 20-minute ride to a trail. It's all paved, (so I am getting concrete experience and not just cushy wood chips), and about 8 feet wide. Could be wider, could be narrower, not sure - I'm awful at measuring.

Dwight and I walk it together maybe once or twice a week, but more often than not we walk it alone since I'd rather walk in the morning and he is a late-afternoon kind of guy. In Nebraska??? 100 degrees with humidity to match??? He was cooling down after his walk this afternoon and when he got up from the porch, there was a literal puddle under his chair. If you know him, you know I'm not kidding. I'm debating on whether or not to rinse it in case animals in the 'hood need a salt lick.

We've seen some cool wildlife, for living in a city. Okay, the 'burbs. I've seen wild turkeys, deer, a fox, and these guys, along with assorted critters.

I saw this guy early this spring, and as I was getting closer, I thought, "Wow, that's a big bird".

Oh yeah. Red-tailed hawk. With dinner.

This bunny nest was just a few feet off the trail, and we only noticed it when the mama scampered away. It wasn't very hidden, and it was gone a few days later, so we're hoping it didn't win the Darwin Awards for Bunnies

But since we usually walk it separately, if we see something cool and want to tell the other about it, we've named the sections:

• Switchbacks. Self explanatory.
• Roundabout. Again, you know what this is.
• Ted Bundy Hill. Emmy and I named this; if you're going up it and Ted Bundy pulled up in his Volkswagon Beetle and asked you to help him find his dog, you might consider the ride. Going down it is fine, but up is a bitch. Several blocks long and steep.
• Hobo camp. This is a new path that the city built over the winter. I wandered it last year and it seriously looked like a hobo camp. Are there still hobos? Do they have camps? Clem Kadiddlehopper? It was a dirt trail that ran along the tracks, there was a fire pit, trash, underbrush, I don't know, maybe bodies... Anyway, it was scary and I hightailed it out of there. The city came and cleaned it up, paved it, and it makes the trail a bit shorter if I go that way. 
• Power boxes
• Bridge
• Field
• Big Park / splash pad. I can't tell you the number of times I wanted to shove all the toddlers aside and just get wet!
• Tunnel 
• Railroad tracks - the trail runs along some BNSF tracks, but there are woods and gardens between us and the tracks. And lots of pot. Or hemp. Whatever. 

this stuff grows so fast!

• Bataan Death March. This is the last part along the tracks - at least a quarter of a mile of long gradual never-ending uphill. And just when you think you're at the end, you turn the corner and there's the Hill of Death - only about half a block but straight uphill.
• 99th Street
• Little Park
• The Bench. It's a mile from the big park back to our house, and 3/4 of that is uphill. A few blocks from the traffic light, at the top of the hill, there is a sweet little bench along the trail. Last summer when I passed it there was a couple sitting on it, and I told them they had the right idea. And they said that's why they put it there! I have availed myself of it more than once. I want to bake cookies for them and leave them on their porch, I am so grateful.

Srsly. How inviting does this look???

And now time for a public service announcement. Remember that Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. commencement address floating around a few years ago titled "Wear Sunscreen"? Yeah. He was right.

I grew up in South Dakota, red hair, fair skin, freckles, and spent every day all day outside in the sun, usually at the pool. Since sunscreen hadn't even been invented, I had more blistering sunburns than I could count.

Last week I had my first visit to a dermatologist. I had self-diagnosed myself with rosacea, and since my nose was starting to look like W.C. Fields and since we were going out of town, I needed help. Vanity,  you know. Sure enough, I was having a rosacea flair, and thanks to antibiotics (oral and topical), my skin now looks as good as it ever has. But as long as I was there, she did a full body check. (I would have worn better underwear had I known.) She froze four suspicious spots (right forearm, left bicep, above my left eyebrow, and scalp), and took a biopsy of an even more suspicious one on my left cheek. Luckily it turned out to be actinic keratosis and not basal cell carcinoma, but I feel like a ticking time bomb. It's only a matter of when.

WEAR SUNSCREEN!!!