Today, in an effort to get out of the house, we went for a hike. We have various family members coming and going so this morning’s hike consisted of Nathan, myself, my mom and brother and my cousin and uncle. Thinking it was more of a leisurely stroll I didn’t bother with shoes and slipped on my flip flops. A leisurely stroll was more of a 3+ mile hike which would have been better if I had tennis shoes on, maybe some water and oh- wasn’t carrying Nathan on my hip or back for the majority of the trip. 4 year olds are capable of many things, long (“long”) hikes aren’t one of them. I feel the effort I expended today more than makes up for all the workouts I’ve been missing.

My aunt and uncle have just about anything you could want at their cabin so we’re currently building a fire in the chiminea and getting ready to roast some of the good stuff. I think its worth mentioning that Nathan is *eating up* all these outdoorsy woodsy activities (3 mile hike notwithstanding) and was very excited to collect marshmallow sticks. In fact we started out said hike talking about all the plants, the bear poop my uncle pointed out, pointing out flowers, and collecting sticks. “I really like this hike….this is a great trail”, “I think I saw a bear in there” he would tell me. That lasted for about the first half mile but imagine my surprise tonight when we were dragging our firewood and sticks to the deck and he said, “Im going to start the fire,” proceeded to squat down as only little kids can and began to rub two sticks together like he’s some sort of freaking boy-scout-fire-starting-genius. Who the hell taught him that? Not me. The kid’s got survival skills, I guess thats a good thing.

Filed under: Nate the Great, Travel