February 1st, 2010    Hiking the Little-Traveled Places

            Cory hikes a steep incline during one of our hikes.
It pays to make friends at your local natural resources office. The other day we met with a ranger there, and after a bit of rapport-building, he disclosed to us a number of his favorite wild places in the area. These are places that aren't designated as parks or wilderness areas, but are open for hiking and exploring.

We're busy adventuring to all the areas he told us about, and one of the first was an area to the north of us where old-growth trees still stand. Our wanders took us over ridges and through woods where there were no human tracks, but we didn't succeed in finding the old trees. Rebecca, Jen, and Cory all wore snow-shoes, while stubborn Kenton sunk to his knees through the crust.

One thing that amazed us was the beauty of these ridges. Usually it's a park that delivers this kind of terrain, but it was just us and the criss-crossing coyote tracks that wandered mischievously over the rock outcroppings and along the ledges.

It was encouraging to find vast wild places where you can still get comfortably lost and wander without sign of the ever-present hominids. Places where you can sit in a silence that is broken only by birdsong and wind.