Leaf Peeping

It feels as though family-time has come at a premium of late.  My work always conspires to pull time away from us.  But lately, because my wife and daughter are cast in another Flagstaff Youth Theater production (Narnia), our weekends have been somewhat compromised by long rehearsals the past few weeks, too.

So today we ditched church, including our monthly obligation to lead singing, and went for donuts and then for a lovely long walk in the woods together, just the three of us and the dog, to peep some leaves up toward Brookbank's Tank.  

We were rewarded with a near-perfect morning: 47 degrees, bluebird skies, a light breeze, and a million aspens exploding in color!

Pink Car Hill

My fondness for wandering around in the woods looking at stuff has not diminished as I have aged, in fact it's probably grown more intense as I've found that, as an adult, I can wander farther afield without concern for having the right "permissions" to do so... my wife understands my propensity to sometimes wander a little off track now and again when I'm out riding in the woods... my mother did too, for the record, but I think she worried more actively about her overdue, errant 10-year-old son than my wife does about her overdue, errant 46-year-old husband.

As a kid, the Prescott National Forest near Walker, Arizona, where we had a summer cabin for about 40 years, was littered with rusty old hulks of broken-down and abandoned early-20th-century to depression-era cars.  As we rode our motorcycles around in the woods, my family and I identified each locale and every major turn in the road by naming the wrecked car or rusting tractor or yellow-tallus mine-tailings or dilapidated cabin found prominently nearby.