It’s Never Enough

The outdoors is my area of refuge. It doesn’t matter where I’m at, what I’m doing, or what’s going on around me – the outdoors fills my sails and keeps me going.

And this time of year is actually one of my favorites.

There’s not a lot going on out there in the winter. There aren’t any pretty leaves to look at; no flowers to faun over. Even the animals are scarce during these cold months – but there’s so much more to see, because everything is so empty.

As if everything that’s been hidden by leaves and flower and an abundance of color have final come into focus in the absence of the aforementioned.

Take yesterday for instance – it was foggy and raining, all day. Inside of that situation – in the middle of Stick Season – anything that has even a hint of color pops out in the grey. As we were heading into the woods to take the long way home, a beaver lodge popped up out of the fog. Something that’s usually ensconced and therefore hidden in the blossoms of spring, the bounty of summer, and the colors of fall found itself in the middle of a marsh, completely uncovered – a pyramid of sticks that was easy to see if you took a minute to slow down and see it.

I thought about that for hours after I first saw it, took the picture, and moved on. I’m thinking about it now, lounging around with my dog and one of my daughters who’s scrolling through YouTube videos – and it’s keeping me warm; it’s exciting me and making me want to get out there to see it again.

So a little later, on our way to pick up some celebratory New Year’s Day Chinese food, I will intentionally drive out of my way just to see that same lodge on a sunny day.

Hiking this time of year can be a chore. The ground is frozen and rough, ice can make things a little tricky, and – due to the weird warming and cooling trend we’re in this day – we’re getting a mini-mud season which is creating these weird pockets under the leaves that you think will provide a solid footing, but you generally step in and breakthrough which jams up your stride.

But it’s fantastic – all of it. It’s quiet and the woods still surround you and cover you with their coniferous canopy – but they’re more open. You can see farther, you can hear more, and it’s a totally different experience from hiking in the warmer months.

Take right now for example. I’m looking out the window into the backyard and I can see straight back to Hubbard Brook – which is only visible from this far away, this time of year.

And how about anything hanging on? Leftover berries that are starting to shrivel. Beech trees and their yellow leaves that never seem to really peek, but never seem to totally die off with all of the other leaves in Autumn.

There’s so much in a season generally associated with so little.

And for me, it’s never enough. I want to head out there and see everything I can see. I want to take bits and pieces home and leave them on the picnic table out front and study them each time I head out of the house for the day or while I’m making my way back in at the leading edge of night.

I want to take my 4Runner and drive through the same trails, in and out of the same ruts, to see if anything has changed since the last time I was out and about. I want to take the same pictures I took before so that one day I can look back and feel the fullness I feel when I’m out there in it.

Many moons ago, a handful of us went camping in New Year’s Eve on Bear Mountain. We started in Connecticut and ended up in New York and somewhere overnight it snowed. It snowed a lot.

It snowed so much that it changed the whole trip.

My girlfriend and I woke up with the top of our tent just inches from our faces, the trail was nowhere to be found, and in the middle of trying to regroup and reconfigure the next five miles, we realized that the keys for the car we were eventually walking to were left in the car we came from.

The whole trip – as we planned it – was over and in the minute it was a bit of a panic. But that situation provided us with so much more than we ever expected we would get from the outdoors.

We hiked back on a road we didn’t know existed. We told stories we may not have told otherwise. We experienced things we couldn’t conceive that we would experience. And now, twenty years later, on New Year’s Day I look back on it fondly because of everything it was to me then and will be to me forever.

And still, it’s never enough.