After being laid out for the past three days with a whomper of a weird virus that didn’t cause many symptoms other than to knock me out, I was overjoyed this morning to wake up and not feel dizzy for the first time in three days. I was still a little slow, but by midday the fog in my head lifted, and I felt ready to do something. My dog, Bullet, gave me a pleading look indicating he was in agreement.
“Let’s go for a little hike,” I said, and without needing another word, he pranced off in the direction of my truck.
Whenever I get over a virus or sickness of some sort, and I’m sure this is the case with most people, my natural instinct is to get moving again and fast. It’s probably my body’s way of signaling it wants to make up for lost time. The trick is to make sure I don’t get moving too fast, too quickly, or I’ll end up right back on the couch with another day of recovery time needed.
Stretching my legs on a little nature hike with the dog seems to be the perfect antidote to my instinct to sprint. Just a twenty- or thirty-minute sashay to get the blood flowing again and breathe in some fresh air, helps me transition back into the land of the living without pushing the envelope. Something to signal to my body, hey, let’s put that behind us, without overdoing it.
Today’s trail selection was a good choice. It was a little muggy and buggy out there, with a healthy amount of vegetation crowding the trailhead—exactly not the kind of conditions one wants to go sprinting off in. So we took our time. Bullet stayed close. Up the Arnold Trail we headed towards a small hill known as Cricket Hill, where plant life receded and turned the landscape brown and rough. The dearth of green made it easy to spot some unripe nuts along the trail, their bulbous figures making them look like fruit from a foreign country; not some woodland nut you’d find in the forests of New Hampshire.
Black walnuts aren’t ready to eat until October, and if you were to pick one of these guys up now, in July, and try to eat it, legend has it that you’ll have a heck of a time trying to get their green coloring off your face and hands. That is, of course, if they are black walnuts. I kind of think they’re hickory nuts, but I’m no botanist. Whatever they are, for now, it’s enough just to observe them and acknowledge how unique they look, sitting along the trail. As if the local acorns have a big, beautiful cousin that stopped in for a visit and it won’t be long before everyone in the neighborhood comes by to check them out.
But what I liked best about seeing these unripe nuts is that even on a small hike, on a trail of humble appearances, there’s something beautiful to see. Something unique. There are varieties in the landscape at every turn. A trail just down the road is littered with ferns and bushes on just about every inch of the earth, but here, in the Betty Arnold Forest, despite a sizeable patch that was devoid of plants, there were still signs of things getting ready to sprint forward into life.
Here we go again.
