This past weekend we went for a family hike at the new Winnick Woods trail (note: by “new” I mean that Tim just told me about it, but for all I know it’s like three years old). It was a lovely morning and everyone was skipping along happily and Dave and I were actually having one sentence conversation bursts between interruptions. This all of course lasted about ten minutes — we were a quarter of the way through when Eli completely dissolved, saying he wanted to be carried, and then capped off his fit by hauling off and slapping Henry (why? why? the fit was bad enough without resorting to brotherhitting). Our hikey efforts always seem to end up this way. I knew Dave was desperate to keep moving, so he and Henry went on, and I walked back to the car with Eli.

After having a secondary fit about the fact that he wasn’t hiking with Henry and Dave (yeah, no one wants to hike with you when you’re slapping people, my little friend), he stopped a moment to enjoy the ride and throw some leaves into a stream.

Eli is wearing my hat in this photo. We traded hats for the hike, which means that I'm wearing a purple-striped elf hat while I'm taking this photo.

It’s nice that we live in suburbia but can drive for less than ten minutes and hike in deserted woods.

I love the way these birches were all swoopily leaning. I was thinking as I was looking at them that birches are my favorite tree. Though maple, maples are great also. And the pine, of course, especially the balsam pine. And then of course I realized that I am the biggest nature geek ever for ignoring my hiking child and spending valuable brain time coming up with an ordered mental list of my favorite trees. But hey, I take my meditative moments where I can get them.

One last photo: