A Lazy Day in Lost Maples (sort of)

My intentions for today (sometime in February 2020) was to just kick around and take it easy, letting my, not quite a teenager anymore, body rest, repair, and recover after a pair of back-to-back days of ambitious hiking.

It sorta worked out that way, but not completely.

Just off the corner of the overflow parking area in Lost Maples State Nature Area is a (sanctioned) bird-feeding station with a blind. (The park was obviously quite busy the day this aerial image was taken. Not so the day that  I was here this time.)  

Standing on the Sabinal River crossing looking downstream towards the campground

I started off this morning by limbering up the Quad-B, my bicycle.

Though, given the worn state of her already cheap bearings I don't think limber is in her vocabulary anymore. In fact she wouldn't coast down a hill even with a 400 pound bear chasing her!

But regardless, I got her down off the rack, taking care to be quiet given the early hour, checked her out, then pedaled over

The view from inside the blind

to the bird-blind.

February is hardly the optimal time for birding around here but- well, who cares?



Though maybe not a photog's paradise,

Dove butts

there was enough going on to keep me entertained for a couple hours of just "being". A state I equate to that of the "living in the now" goal of several eastern philosophies/practices. 

Even though I couldn't have put words to it at the time, this was a state I was familiar with as a kid, often lazily swimming back and forth off one or another of the beaches we spent so many summer days at, just "being" out there by myself with nothing but the flow of the water over my skin, the sound and rhythm of my breath, the stretch and flex of my muscles, for as long as Mom, the designated lifeguard, could stand it.

But as the birthdays began to stack up past the "I'm X and a half!" stage, the cacophony of life shoved "being" aside and demanded I pay attention to the "what's about to be" instead as I navigated the savage jungle of getting ahead, getting stuff, getting somewhere. The getting, getting, getting, demanded by modern society. (Many anthropologists agree that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had more leisure time, more me-time, than our post-agrarian kin, and definitely more than our post-industrial revolution grandparents.) It's only now, after decades of running the rat-race, that I'm learning that ahead isn't really all it's cracked up to be, that I don't need stuff to be happy, and that I'm already somewhere.

Now I'm relearning how to just be, and frankly it feels like I can breath again.

But eventually it was time to "be" somewhere else.

Back to the Ponds again.

When I got back to my campsite I was energized, so I traded the Quad-B for my pack and, on foot, retraced the route back to the blind, and beyond.



The result was a bit of an odd hike where I retraced some of my steps of a couple days ago on the West Trail, but left the "normal" trail up there at the very top of this image and climbed a steep service road



that comes out on top of the ridge



where Primitive Camp F lurks,



and where I found another solitary spot to hang out and just "be", and, of course, slip in a late alfresco lunch too.

Once I'd had enough of that I leisurely closed the loop by picking my way back down the other side of the ridge.




Like yesterday, this was another single-hump hike and since I had done much of the route just two days ago I'll spare you a repeat of the photos.



When I got back to camp this - well, let's call it a dog - was among the new arrivals.

It was windy and the really long fur was rippling like a Kansas wheat-field so it's hard to tell exactly how big it is under there, but look at the size of its feet!

To paraphrase any number of childhood westerns, "This Van ain't big enough for the two of us!"