After last week’s one-year anniversary of the ’22 Comeback Special/’23 Soil The Woods Tour, I continued on as normal, lumbering through the increasingly fall-like woods of central Michigan.
Archive | September, 2023
The First Year
I still don’t know how or why it happened; perhaps it was the medicine, continued therapy with the O.G. Mindbender, or the unwavering support of B and Wifey. Or maybe the universe just randomly flipped a switch in my mind that made me get brutally honest about the person I was becoming and helped me realize that I am not the sort of person who walks a mile and calls it a hike, eats whole deli hoagies for dinner, washes it down with four double IPAs1, and then spends the next morning staring at the ceiling, regretting every life decision I’ve ever made and one major decision my future parents made in the late fall of 1970.
Woodsy Walks & Porch Frogs
This was a busy week of lumbering, living solo, and taking care of two fart-scented bulldogs while Wifey was off doing what she does while working in Baltimore most of the week.
What does that mean? Not much, other than an hour or so in the early evening, was spent cursing football’s international break, slacking, and goofing off rather than cooking Wifey one of my meatless white trash specialties.
A 5-Step Program for Winter
This week, due to some home improvement duties, I was thrown multiple C-blocks in my bid to get in a 25-mile hiking week, but I somehow managed to get it done again in just four days, even with a couple days being 90˚ and humid before things cooled off. Hazah!
And with Labor Day and Fat Guy Summer now behind me and the days (actually 7 months) of darkness, cold temps, winter slop, and snow, if we’re lucky, around the corner, I have set my eyes on mental survival. Yes, I know that sounds hyperbolic, but that’s how my mind rolls: in extreme waves of perceived and actual misery, 24 hours a day.
A Tale of Two Augusts
In August of 2022, I was just starting to feel more like my old self (the one who enjoys pushing himself physically outside, preferably in the mountains woods, and doing so without wanting to take a dirt nap), but still not there yet.