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A Recap & Staying “Ignernt”

On September 19th, 2022, I started what I jokingly called the 2022 Not Dead Yet Comeback Special. That was the day I climbed out of The Bed of Torment, laced up some hiking shoes, grabbed my camera, walked right past my garage of bikes, and into the woods to lumber on my own two feetz.

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Bullies, Jays, and Peckers

I took the weekend off from lumbering just ’cause I wanted to, but I wish I hadn’t.

The weather was dark, glum, and morose all weekend, the football sucked, and unsurprisingly Spurs blew another lead to draw 2-2 with Wolves. I hate them. My time would have been much better spent walking in the woods with my camera, but the ache of “new muscles” used whilst hiking three days on mushy snow and a tired mind from a week of grief, travel, and holiday “merriment” had me thinking differently.

The good part of the weekend was that 50˚ and an all-day rain melted any shred of snow, and the trails were completely bare come Monday morning.

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Looking For Success

With warmer temps, conditions in the woods have been getting progressively worse, so on Friday, I needed to adjust expectations of what I was going to get out of my morning lumber. I also needed to make further adjustments to my kit.

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Attempting Normalcy

While we were away in Pennsylvania, the central Michigan area picked up another few inches of wet snow on top of what we already had on the ground, and that made for some tricky hiking conditions on Christmas morning.

Wifey would be joining me for the early morning lumber, and we debated whether to take the snowshoes with us or not. We settled on sharing my trekking poles and using hikers, and that proved to be just fine, with only minor slipping here and there.

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Thanks To So Many

For this Christmas Day post, I am going to steer clear of writing about the emotions and grief that my family, near and far, and I have been going through over the past week due to the loss of my father last Thursday and our 13-year-old dog Jake the very next morning. I’m sure you can imagine what it was like; you don’t need me to shit on your holiday.

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Universal Grief

Sometimes, I can’t put my thoughts into words to explain how I feel, but I’m gonna really try with this one. I also can’t explain how the Universe works or why bad things happen. They just happen, and we’re left to figure it all out.

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Deer and Gutchies

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been a little late getting to the trails due to the late sunrise (8:07 AM Michigan Standard Time for your sunrise nerds who read this) and my want to fill a bathtub up with scolding hot coffee, climb my naked self in, and drink myself out instead of going out into the dank, wintry morning air.

Luckily, Wifey will not permit me to fill our tub up with coffee (“It’ll stain the tub!” she says), so I settled for a big-ass mug or two of the stuff and then got my shit together for another lumber in chilly woods.

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A Lumber With Lester

I returned to the woods on Tuesday and was greeted with MUCH better conditions.

I can’t go so far as to say it was a beautiful day; that would be a lie; it was dank AF, but all the ice was gone from the trails, and it made for a much easier lumber than on Monday.

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The Art of Dodging Wrenches

On a recent wintry lumber, I created a new course in my head that I was sure would easily get me over 5 miles and provide some new stimulation for my eyes. I was half right.

The new course just barely got me to my 5-mile goal, so that was a bit disappointing; however, it did provide the appropriate amount of visual stimulation for picture takin’, so I’ll take it.

I’ve been thinking more about the trails I lumber on lately, and it brought back some memories. I’ll explain.

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