*If you’re just here for pretty pictures feel free to scroll to the gallery at the bottom, I took a lot!
You know we haven’t done all that much in Connecticut… so on this particular day that’s where we decided to poke around. Only thing is I don’t know squat about Connecticut so I had to conspire with Google. I asked for a town map because I didn’t want to drive much more than an hour. It’d already been a super packed week. On the border of Connecticut I saw Killingly and decided that sounded like a interesting town name and I asked what was there… Cat Hollow State Park was the answer. Even better it was supposed to be a park with the ruins of two old cotton mills in it.
I didn’t really know what to expect. Probably something swank, this is Connecticut after all. And the park was newly established – only running since 2003. What does a baby park look like? Wellllll….
Driving into town it was indeed a posh area filled with great big mansions behind thick brick walls and iron gates. And all the street names had hideously adorably animal names like Doghouse, Cockcrow, Cat Hollow, and my favorite Peeptoad. Did we fall into a fairy book? No, we most certainly did not, because when we drove up to the park it looked thoroughly abandoned. It was a gate across a road with one car parked in front of it, a big trail map bulletin board with NOTHING on it and I mean nothing, not so much as a scrap of paper or hint it ever said anything on it. There was a bench just beyond but it was looking at nothing except the blocked off road. What just happened?! How did we end up here??
Although not impressed by the state of this place we still decided to get out and look around. And in good spirit I decided to place one of my books on the bench to be found by some passerby as part of my book bombing campaign. Who knows, maybe someone will find it and love it.
We were a bit confused at what we saw from there. Beyond the gate it looked like a very new paved road big enough for cars but obviously not driven on by cars. Infact even though the road looked almost brand new it also looked like it’d been left over from some apocalyptic society collapse. It was odd. Not far up the path we found another bench, this one had its leg chained to a pole with no less than three locks but the pole was only 2 feet off the ground which means the chain loop could have easily been lifted over it if someone was insistent on bringing home this bench. Even funnier still the chained loop wasn’t even a loop. Upon further inspection it was just a chain placed on the ground to look like it looped around something. Very odd!
Then we started seeing the weird graffiti. Every big rock seemed to have the same image on it – that of a neon pink spraypainted figure with big X’s for eyes and a crazy hairdo that made it look either like Mom from Futurama or Nosferatu. If there’s anything I have learned in the past few years it’s that teenagers love abandoned places and things. Wherever you can find ruins in the woods you will also find great evidence of teenagers. The two for whatever reason are inseparable and these odd tags throughout the park only further proved this observation.
It wasn’t far in that we came by a fence – the most woeful fence I have ever seen in my life. Behind it there was some sort of wrought iron equipment sat on the river, maybe the remains of a water turbine or something similar. The fence did nothing to keep me away from it as just around the edge of the fence was a path where people were clearly going around to see it anyway. And beyond that there was a rough path into the wilderness which I honestly couldn’t tell if it was made by humans or deer but I figured what the hell might as well “bushwhack” our way through this as one internet guide suggested we might have to do in this park. And it wasn’t too far away that we found the first substantial set of ruins over this river.
This trail seemed to have ended at these ruins so after poking around we headed back up towards the road and continued on foot from there. Apparently, this road extended for half a mile. We wouldn’t get that far though before we found more trails jutting off the sides. We decided to take another one right around the edges of a fence that seemed to have a different set of ruins behind them. This one brought us into the woods to a very serene little spot where the river had more or less dried up so we could wander over it at will.
It was then we realized all the rocks at the bottom of this riverbed were blackened which seemed very weird. Was this some sort of pollution form the 1800’s? Probably not, after coming home I learned these mills all burned down, one as recently as 2001. You could see the charred line on some of the larger rocks a little downstream.
We walked along the river’s edge for quite a while until we came to the biggest feature of the park – a giant stone wall over the river that on a normal day is a beautiful waterfall. They must be suffering drought this year as there wasn’t so much as a trickle. There was however a young man meditating on a rock underneath it, weary of our presence. We wandered on.
I think we ended up doing the trails ass backwards because this is when we found the “picnic area” and the sign denoting the beginning of the trail being choked out by vines. This seemed fitting for this part. Here we also found more graffiti (with one rock literally looking like a kindergartner painted on it) and of course another trail that led under some bridges and out into a field on Main Street. It was cool under the bridges, and we loitered for a while digging the graffiti salamander looking down at us.
After returning from that dead end we found what looked like another trail on the high ground making jokes about bigfoot and starting to sweat from the oppressive heat and humidity. We took a few breaks and just mucked about before finding our way back from where we came. I’m told there’s a mile and a half of trails out there but every map shows something different and when we were on the ground there wasn’t any markers or guides or even any way to note when a trail had started soooo…. it was a fun place to wander but uh, poorly organized on the park’s side. That being said seeing the ruins were very cool and we both enjoyed just chilling out there in nature.
When we finally managed to find our way back to the car it was only then we found the signs saying what we could find here in the park and where to go. They were… in rough shape. Could have been used as the set of a post-apocalyptic horror movie. But hey, I guess it’s an E for Effort?
Sadly no one took my book in the two hours we spent puttering about.
About a week ago I was asked to do a group trip, which I am not adverse to, that would be somewhat local and appropriate to bring a four year old. So I thought the sculpture garden in Brookline might be the ticket. I had heard there were all sorts of large sculptures nestled in the woods on a series of hiking trails that ranged in severity, with most being “easy.” I had envisioned a college campus with a few winding trails around it.
Part of this group was my mother, whose alarm did not go off, and who spent $2 buying a muffin for breakfast that she first stepped on and then lost entirely. From here the GPS kept freezing and would not accept the address and we got lost from there. I was still pretty chill, just hanging in the back seat with the kiddo, which is something I very rarely do. Sadly the bickering had already started.
When we found the entrance to the sculpture garden it was a dirt road attached to the highway with the saddest little sign directing the way. The parking lot had a few gorgeous metal sculptures, some cars parked from other visitors, and a big old map. It said online I should print my own map so I did… not that it helped… because between the three of us no one could make sense of it. In fact the map I’d printed and the big one in the parking lot didn’t agree on much!
We started walking, ended up on what I think may have been a RV trail, climbing up, up, up and not seeing a damn thing. Everyone’s huffing and puffing and cranky. I’m at a complete loss as to what is going on. When we finally got to the top of the hill we found ourselves in a rat’s nest of insanely ill-marked trails that went off in all directions with colorful arrows pointing in every one of them. Most trails these days are color coded. These tried to be… but both the maps had different colors for the same trail and the trails themselves? Well! You’re walking on the purple, red, blue, green, yellow trail…. or is it white? No, I think it’s all of them. We’re on every trail at once. Absolute chaos. I felt like we might end up in Wonderland, or somewhere worse. Were Muppets changing the arrows every time we passed? Felt like it.
But then we started to see the sculptures. They were in fact littered everywhere and were for the most part marked on the map by color and number – not chronologically, or in any other order we could identify, and the colors seemed to mean absolutely nothing besides, but they were there! Look! Most of them were pretty abstract and not really my thing but a few were really cool like a big steam punk bank vault door just sitting in the woods all mysterious. I also adored two granite hugging couples, some Australian’s concept of a seed, a weird figure in a serpentine pose around a pole, and my favorite of all three beautifully whimsical werewolves made of scrap metal. And we did enjoy ourselves after the bickering settled down but seriously… this isn’t for everyone. If things like insanely poorly marked trails and unreadable maps bug you then perhaps you should make a pass on this. Even the “loop” trails were just big U’s that attached to other big U’s. Not a single complete loop. And the hiking was moderate – there were rocks and hills and slippery leaves. The four year old did great though so I still wouldn’t discount it completely as family fun…Â And hey, I did have a good time. Honestly. I think there’s something really cool about art in the woods, even more cool when you can go up to them and touch them, getting a real sense of the artist who made them.
Today was a gorgeous day for wandering! So I hopped in the car and started to drive randomly in a direction I decided upon earlier. I had no specific destination in mind and was just enjoying rambling down a bunch of rural country roads until I came across a trail head. It turned out being the Bic (or is it Big?) Dickerman Hollis Town Forest. There was enough parking for two cars and luckily I was the only one there so I cuddled up the Prius next to some trees (as Daisy is still in the shop) and off I went!
This trail looks like an old access road and probably was at some point. Now it’s a “multi-purpose” trail that forbids motorized vehicles but seems to be a lovely place to bring your dog or horse. The entire trail seems to be a slight incline which is nice for working up those muscles on your backside! I’m not complaining! I stopped here and there to take photos of the lady slippers that were sprouting up everywhere. This of course further inspired me to take a few whimsy shots – of the crystal ball, a chalice, and of course a random petrified salt shaker I just happened to have on me (because who doesn’t bring a salt shaker into the woods with them?)
I wish I had a map of the area because this one trail seemed to be the trunk line that a ton of other less road-like trails branched off of. This seems to have been a hiker’s dream. Just so many options! But it was later in the day, I was alone, I decided not to be too brazen and stuck to it without wandering off. And when I got to the end of it I had to start laughing. Someone how I ended up creeping into the back of the 
On my way back I rescued a dehydrated tree frog that was smushed to the trail doing a fantastic impression of a dead leaf. I walked him back to water and released him in a stagnant little tributary. He should be good now.. And my good deeds for the day continued when driving home I stopped the car to escort an insanely fast little turtle across the road. He wasn’t joking around, he even hissed at me, which is really weird considering it was a painted turtle and not a snapper. They’re usually quite docile! All and all a great day blundering about!
Today Mother Nature decided to bless us with 48 degree weather and a light drizzling rain which did a fantastic job of blanketing the town in dragon’s breath and washing a good deal of snow away. I figured it was the perfect time go out for a little walk, take a few spring snaps, and just enjoy myself. I’ve been cooped up in the house all winter, my health clubbing the crap out of me on the slightest whim, and cabin fever has made me more than a little anxious to return to the woods. So that’s what I did, I took my camera, slung it over my shoulder, and returned to a familiar haunt – The Old Woods Trail in the Betsy Foskett Wildlife Preserve in Rindge NH. Today I hoped to capture the strange and eerie feel it had to it since being clouded in mist.
I heard the water rushing by before I got that far. All this melting snow had added a liveliness to the pond’s tributaries. And the smell! There’s no fresher scent on this earth than the smell of freshly melting snow. It tickled all my senses and gave me such joy. It appears I was one of only two visitors in the recent past, unless I feel like counting all the dog tracks I found. I think it’s kind of sweet these dogs migrate to a path their owners probably walked them down whenever they escape their own confines. The wildlife was clearly used to their cold weather privacy as I seemed to have accidentally startled a gaggle of Canadian geese who honked loudly and upset a duck on the other side of the pond who quacked back just as angrily.
I made it maybe halfway down the path before my body decided to slam me. Just because mentally I am ready to be out running for the hills doesn’t mean the rest of me agrees. I begrudgingly headed back home before even reaching the stone wall I was so intent on visiting. Oh well, there will be other rainy days when I will return! For now I am at peace with what I could accomplish. It feels like going home to be back on the trails!
Today’s my birthday. It’s also the first day in weeks I have been well enough to leave the house for an excursion longer than grocery shopping. Being cooped up, and feeling myself age like a fine wine, I was desperate for some fresh air. Sadly it was raining… apparently everywhere. I wanted to go to the White Mountains, raining, hike up one of the local mountains, raining, go to Vermont for some foliage photos, raining. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer though, I NEEDED TO GET OUT. 
That’s how I ended up in Mason NH. I had this gut feeling that I’d just know when to turn off. And wow. Despite spending some of my childhood in Mason I know remarkably little about it. There are winding dirt roads everywhere with just stunning views of forest and trees, hills, pastures, farms, huge farm houses, tiny cabins, just such a wonderful diversity! Yep… this was working. This was feeding something in my soul that was starving. It fit in nicely with the music I have taken up listening to once again – a poignant and heady mix of 60’s folk and classic rock. I’m thirty-two years old today and I feel like I can almost see time passing me by. I don’t have a career, a home of my own, a relationship, or children, I blow effortlessly in the breeze like a leaf gliding to the earth. Perhaps that is why I had the ethereal tune of Can’t Find my Way Home whispering through my mind all day. “Well, I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time
I had looped around a great deal of dirt roads and kept coming back to the 143 so I drove that for a little while until I spotted a big green sign aside the road denoting a historical landmark. As it turns out I had driven to Uncle Sam’s childhood home. I didn’t even know he had any connections to New England. I parked aside the road, took a photo of the sign and the house which was obviously owned by someone who I was hoping wasn’t home and watching, and then meandered only about 50 or 100 feet down the road where I noticed a trail head. Yup, this is where I was supposed to be. I could feel it.
It was cold. And wet. And cloudy. My camera wasn’t happy with any of these conditions but I told it to buck up, we’re doing this thing. It actually turned out to be a sweet little trail! The rain made it all the more magical to me, the damp seemed to add a sense of whimsy. Moss covered rocks lined the path to either side, a few stone walls were scattered throughout likely marking property boundaries from a few hundred years ago, and since it was such a wet day there were salamanders everywhere. They were the bright orange kind you see so frequently here if you’re the kind of person who looks under damp logs which I am.
The salamanders weren’t the only critters out today. I also go to see a number of chipmunks. For being so common they sure are hard to photograph! I feel the aggravation of wildlife photographers as I set my eyes on these tiny fuzzy beasts. They chipped and alerted me to a spot a little off the path which had clearly been used as some dumping ground for spare metal and glass at some point. Pieces of cars and machinery I couldn’t identify scattered the ground next to a rusted out metal wash basin filled with broken glass bottles from God knows when. I inched up to it slowly, hoping it wasn’t an active campsite of someone who was just deranged. Luckily it wasn’t and I took a moment to look at the rust and decay. I smiled knowing nature was taking care of this mess.
Towards the end of the trail was I super happy to find a huge cluster of mushrooms which I think were Hens of the Woods, edible. I am not that ballsy to try my hypothesis but I did enjoy finding them! They smelled delicious – which probably means I’ve misidentified them and can kill a small village with them. That tends to be how these things go… In any event I took a photo of this find next to my shoes to compare them for size.
Today was everything I wanted last Friday to be – absolutely amazing. And all I had to do was wander off while trying to go to the feed store for bunny food. I hardly ever just go out to do errands anymore. Somehow I always manage to find myself falling down the proverbial rabbit hole again.
This place was swank as far as trails go! It had a memorial rock right at the entrance as well as a mailbox full of maps and a guestbook. Whoever left this place must have been loaded – as most of Sharon is. And wow! It was breath taking!
I had thought I was alone you see… I mean who else would be here, there were no cars… and that’s when, bitching vocally to the camera, “Focus damn you!” three people came striding by to see my sorry butt in the air, my slacks sagging (from loss of weight and lack of belt) and my drawers hanging out, standing on all fours on the ground trying to get just the right shot of an adorable mushroom I found. Who knows what they think I was doing, either way everyone avoided eye contact. And not long after that a woman came by with her young son. It was all rather sweet.
The trail went on quite a ways and ended at a little bridge where it connected to another trail that went… .who the hell knows! Another trail off the main one was labeled, “woodland trail” and that one was a loop trail. I didn’t get to explore it but this preserve had a sign saying it was still open in winter for hiking. I suddenly need snowshoes. I thought I’d be cooped up for these cold dark months but maybe not. All the women in my life keep yelling at me – for getting lost, for having too much “bravery” to go charging into strange woods alone, for just generally being adventurous, but you know what? If I get eaten by bears then so be it. At least I died doing something I loved. And besides I have yet to see any bears but now that I said that there will probably be a plague of them on my next little jaunt.
Anyway, this place was soooo pretty and relaxing I would suggest it to anyone. Truly delightful. I am calm once again! Even more so my mind is sparked and enthusiastic. I dream of someday owning a property much like this, hopefully with a river running through it, so I may also create a hiking trail for the public, winding through the woods, past fairy houses placed by local artists, and past my little educational farm and back again. I can see it so clearly and I know in my heart working towards this goal is what I am supposed to be doing with my life – giving back, being joyful, becoming the wild child I always knew I was. Anyway, if that is something you would like to know more about feel free to check out my future farm’s page where I work towards this goal, philosophize, and sell my art: 
Most days when I set out on an adventure I end up in Narnia, somewhere hidden and unexpected, somewhere full of whimsy and joy. I was expecting nothing short of this on Friday when I found myself once again crawling out of my own skin to get out. It’d been a week of bad insomnia and health issues so I didn’t get out until way later than I should have but I still had great hopes when I set off. I was going to go to Vermont, for what reason I wasn’t sure, and coming home from Vermont I was going to stop at a fabric store or two so I could purchase some cloth with which to start designing my own clothes. Little was I to know that day’s adventure would be more of a misadventure.
Somehow I came across Gifford Woods State Park as a destination. Another blogger had been around Kent Pond and took some lovely snaps when there was still snow on the ground. I figured this was a good starting place so ignoring the faintest pain behind my eye, a sure sign of a migraine to come, I hopped in the car, programmed the GPS, and set out on the two hour drive.
As usual the drive was gorgeous. I ended up winding down all sorts of country roads, through the mountains which where all starting to become flush with red, orange, and yellow. It made my heart beat just a little faster. I passed many places I wanted to check out but I knew I had to get to the trails soon because it gets dark in the woods several hours before it gets dark everywhere else and I was already trying to beat the clock.
I started entering the Killington area to find this was a community that seemed to be based on skiing. The mountains were striped with deforestation, the result of creating many ski paths down them, and the little businesses all seemed swanky and cute. I even passed a place called Cyco Bikes. Vermont has always been super fond of punderful business names.
I think the answer was no but I was soon inundated with about eighty different things at once. This super friendly woman handed me not one but two maps and proceeded to point out about fifty different trails and why each was great as well as directions to them because none of the ones she was pointing out attached to the parking lot (I think that was the one trail she didn’t mention!) Some had old hardwood trees which I am sure are nice but if I remember right most of the trees that turn color are soft wood. Some had waterfalls. Some were a three hour hike and attached to other trails, some were fifteen minutes. Eventually she got to the pond. I asked politely about that one. Again she gave me two different answers. I could go out of the parking lot, take a left, and take it from there for a two to three hour trail or I could go some other farther away destination down several roads and have a fifteen minute hike and some waterfalls. I did the first as her second set of directions completely baffled me.
I found a spot near where I parked the car that looked like it could be a trail, be it a horribly overgrown one. So I entered and found myself about five inches deep in mud. Whatever this was had all sorts of shoe prints going in two directions at a tiny fork. I went towards the lake and slogged through the muck about twenty feet before the foot prints dried up and I was hit with even deeper mud and a wall of forest. I tried the other side and came across the same issue. I left. Maybe it was on the other side of this little beach? There did seem to be some sort of path through the reeds behind the bulletin board… I was able to walk maybe thirty feet on that “path” where I could see a beaver lodge but unless I wanted to swim the rest of the way around the lake there was no way around that. Clearly based on the footprints I wasn’t the only one having this problem.
Annoyed I left. I figured I could find a trail, any trail, and find something good on it, so back to the car I went. The problem is I am still driving the borrowed Prius and this was not the area to be driving a Prius. It was a fifty mile an hour road where all the locals were going seventy and they were pissed if you wanted to stop at one of these trail heads or slow down in any way. I didn’t even have a chance because upon leaving the parking lot I was greeted with a steep hill and the Prius refused to pick up speed. I got to fourty, maybe forty five, and a pick up behind me was up my tail pipe from out of nowhere. He was driving so fast and aggressively I thought I’d be nice, pull over, and let him pass. That didn’t make him happy either as he blared his horn as he whooshed by. I don’t know what he expected me to do… I can only press the gas pedal so far. If the car refuses to go the car refuses to go and we are on a fucking mountain after all. This happened a couple times until I finally found another trailhead, the Sherbourne Trail. This time there was a huge sign aside the road and a very obvious parking lot. Granted I could not find this particular path on the map.
I got out. There were numerous people, all accompanied by mountain bikes. One look at the path and I knew that’s what it was for, not for hikers, even though it wasn’t marked as such with any signage. Fuck it. It was a little over a mile long, claiming to be a “mountain pass.” I thought why not, mountain passes have summits, and that would be perfect for some foliage photos. Up I went zigzagging and stepping aside whenever I heard a bike coming up behind me. The cyclists were all super sweet and some were even laughing, all of them thanked me for stepping aside.
There wasn’t much to see here… a number of mossy rocks but not much else. A few times I came across a smell that was wonderful and sweet and brought me right back to my childhood but I couldn’t tell you what it was. Since the trail zigzagged and branched a few times I was trying to keep focused on the orange trail markers…. but I think whoever was putting them up was colorblind because they’d inadvertently turn pink from time to time for no reason. Usually when this happens it means two trails are converging. I saw no evidence of this.
I ended up where there was some sort of construction. Two twenty something year old men were putting down a bridge. I hadn’t passed that before… did I? How the hell did I get here? And more importantly did I have the courage to fess up and admit I was lost? Not at first. I passed them, knowing immediately that was the wrong decision when my poor little converses sank in the mud. I hadn’t passed mud…. this was the wrong way… but I still had my pride. I walked a little ways but this time the sound of cars was so distant I could barely hear them at all. My back up plan was to find a road and hitchhike back to the car if, God forbid, I ended up truly and utterly lost. I headed back, sheepishly, and asked where the fuck I was. I had a nice little chat with these two very friendly guys, and one of them said, “Go out to the intersection and take a left. Keep taking lefts. You’ll end up back at the parking lot.” Thank God I knew which trail head I had come or they wouldn’t have known where to send me either. They sheepishly admitted this trail was brand new and as of yet poorly marked. I didn’t even see the intersection coming up… but I saw it going back and kept going, and going, and going, until as promised, about a mile and a half away, sat the Prius, also looking sheepish, it somehow found itself cuddled up to another Prius (with a bike rack??) and a horse trailer. The horse trailer made me laugh. Clearly someone else didn’t know this was a bike path so I’m not that numb after all.
By now I was overheated, dehydrated, exhausted, and my migraine was starting to kick in full force. That’s never a good thing when you’ve got nausea and have to navigate down curving mountain roads and psychotic 180 degree loop-de-loop styled New England exits. By now it was five in the evening. I’d been on that trail for more than two hours. There’d be no extra foliage shots on the way home for me and I wouldn’t be stopping at any fabric stores either with my head pounding like this. About fifty minutes from home I started getting super sick and started to look for places to pull off the road and take a nap but by then all the picnic areas and rest stops seemed to have disappeared. As I entered Keene, thirty five minutes from home, I debated stopping in the city somewhere but by then it was only thirty five minutes. I could handle it, couldn’t I? Driving by was a decision I soon regretted as I stared at the clock every five minutes, watching it tick down, desperately wanting to be home. By the time I pulled in the driveway it took all my strength not to open the car door and just barf all over the ground. I was crazy dizzy as I tottled back to the house and collapsed immediately into bed. Better luck next time? I sure hope so!
Yet again Keene beckoned me to come over and slog through some bureaucratic business, my least favorite thing to do in the world, so I made sure to give myself some time to reward this endeavor with a trip to the fabric store and then an excursion into the middle of nowhere… I guess my intention was to complete my covered bridge tour in the area but that didn’t really go as planned. Instead I found myself yelling at the GPS to shut up as I parked aside the road to explore something unusual I had found near a covered bridge I had already blogged. I wasn’t sure if it was a trailhead or someone’s private property. I was up on Sawyer’s Crossing Road in Swanzy and there was what looked like a turn around where parking was available and stickers in all the surrounding trees reading “Yale Forest.” A closed gate seemed to have a path going around it and another sign read something about no motor vehicles, camping, or fires. I parked Daisy and headed in.
This place was a neat little find! It looked like it had been a road at some point, a paved one, and then it was abandoned and forest took over. I love seeing these sites where civilization gets turned back into wilderness. We always think that progress is a one way street, forever marching forward, but I find time and history have a way of swinging like a pendulum. Clearly this road must have had farms and houses on it on at some point. What happened to them? Why were they now a forest? I had no answers.
Off the road path a little ways there was another turn off and what could have been considered another path. I was feeling a bit brazen and marched into the woods. Eventually I found two yellow dots on various trees, denoting I was in fact on someone’s path, though where it led I had no idea, and it was clear the only people using it were probably deer. It was so quiet and sweet! I walked for quite a ways but it was already getting late in the day and forests have a way of getting dark a lot quicker than the rest of the world, I decided if this were to happen I should at least have the brains to be on the road path – even in the dark I could find my way back to the car from there, so after munching on some delectable wild black berries I turned myself around and walked back to the old decaying pavement.
The forest was awash with life – ferns, mushrooms, trees, odd flowers, lined every side. I was delighted to spend time photographing a great deal of them. I walked and walked until the pavement stopped and then I wondered if I should continue on… I could hear cars so I must be near the end… I continued on and ended up on West Swanzey Road. Of course that was useless to me but it was interesting to see where it came out, just at the Cheshire Horse, a nice equestrian based feed store. I headed back, smiling, laughing, and enjoying the brisk new weather. I came across the first red and orange leaves of the year and noted to myself summer was over. Part of me already started mourning as I was just getting used to the heat and was still loving the sun, but another part of me recognized this summer was amazing and to wish for it to continue might be just a smidge greedy. So instead I opened my arms and yelled, “Welcome Autumn of 2017! Show me what you’ve got!” And I can’t wait. It’s going to be bonkers and so much fun as the world around me turns into a dazzling array of colors. It’s going to be even more amazing to be surrounded by such beauty and weather. I have found I have fallen head over heals in love with New England and cannot wait to make a proper home here some day. As I chase my passions like the wind chases me I have absolute faith good things are coming.
It’s in these small reflective moments I realize just how stagnated the rest of my life was. Now I am out and about, adventuring, mingling, talking to people, pursuing my art, I realize it’s taking more and more to keep me intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally satisfied. It’s been a rush and I wonder if anyone will ever be able to keep up with me now.
