It was the end of the second week of homeschool, in mid September. We'd been trying out our schedule for nearly two weeks and in my quest for balance I figured it was time to break out of it and do something fun because we could. The weather looked good Friday and I planned a little hike.
I didn't even mention it to W ahead of time, partly because suggestions of things like this are often met with whining. He gets super engaged once we're out and does a great job physically, whether hiking, biking, or cross-country skiing, but the motivation to go in the first place is usually lacking. I was attempting to let it be a "surprise" at the last minute to leave no time for debates. Because even if he didn't want to, I really did and this is my adventurous year too. So, after dropping his sister off at preschool that morning, I told him he'd been working hard and we were going to do a new little hike to take a break and celebrate. I was pleased that he just said, "Okay" and thought it might be because he was pretty focused on his book in the back seat. I had picked out Eagle's Bluff, overlooking Lake Morey, which involved a relatively short but intense hike to a ledge jutting out of the side of the mountain. I'd done it a couple of times long ago but not in his lifetime and I thought he might appreciate the spot (and the novelty of a new spot was also part of my strategy to get him into it). As we drove over there on that foggy morning, I found myself worrying a little that the fog better hurry up and clear off soon so we'd actually have a view.
The hike was immediately uphill right out of the parking lot. We hiked up and up, stopping a few times to test out newly learned map skills with the trail map I'd printed, to let W take pictures of moss, leaves, and fungi, to relocate a newt from the middle of the trail, and just to catch our breath. Even though it only took about an hour to get to the top, sections of it made it one of the steepest hikes I've done. We were bent over, needing to use our arms as well as legs to navigate some especially steep, washed out portions (which felt even hairier going down later). We had conversations about mushroom foragers and how they know what to gather. W stopped and hushed me in order to observe a chipmunk and then managed to get unnervingly close to it before it darted away.
Then we were at the top. A few steps down from the trail and we were on a boulder, nothing in front of us but a vertical tree-covered hillside and the lake. It's a lake we've swum in, ridden bikes around, and ice skated on, but from up there it seemed so much bigger and grander. There is a road around the lake and W commented on how quiet it was. We could see the unoccupied buildings of a couple of summer camps, but not many signs of life otherwise. We could see a bit of highway straight across the lake at about our eye level. I remembered a 4th of July years before driving home from somewhere north and stopping on the side of that exact section of highway to watch fireworks over the lake. The leaves were not yet starting to change, so they were still thick, but their greenness was starting to pale, so you knew they'd only be around a little longer. Now that were weren't sweating and climbing, we needed our sweatshirts back on.
The best part was that the fog had in fact not cleared, but was moving around in pretty fantastic ways. There were big swaths of it travelling up and to our left and W commented that it was like a big ghost the way it moved slowly. There were little wisps of it hovering low all over the lake below. There were patches of it straight ahead obscuring part of the hills across the lake, then allowing more of a view, then covering them up again. We'd never seen a view quite like that. I'm also usually not at high elevation looking across a valley first thing in the morning. W was appropriately impressed and kept commenting on how awesome the fog was.
In wanting this hike outing to feel like a good homeschool treat, I had tried to bring a good snack: crunchy apples, chocolate-covered pretzels, and a thermos of hot chocolate. We shared it and kept pouring it from as we sat there. It had been a very long time since I had been anywhere but a basement classroom on a beautiful fall weekday morning and it was exhilarating, surreal. It was barely 9:30 in the morning and we both felt energized up there, looking out. I imagined and hoped that W was noting that homeschool has some obvious pluses.
Eventually we drank most of the chocolate and made our way back down. It took noticeably less time than it took to go up. We drove back on the curvy road around the lake and back home and did our regular work for the rest of the day. But that hike was with us all day. W even raved about it to his dad when he got home later.
...And a week later we did it again. While I wasn't planning to go for a hike every week, it looked to be another nice day and we were only going to have so much longer to be able to get outside in these ways. I was eager to repeat the feeling of starting off our day with a relatively quick, rewarding hike. I had planned, though, to go a different place the second time, one we happened to be more familiar with, just for variety. But when I told W my plan, he lobbied and convinced me to instead return to Eagle's Bluff, comparing the views of the two options and saying that the lake and the fog were "just so cool." I couldn't argue with that. I of course had brought along hot chocolate and snacks again, and they were just as appreciated this time, even though it was a warmer morning on the rock and was much less foggy. It was neat how different the view felt just one week apart.
We went on a couple other novel, quiet weekday hikes in the fall and they were all great. But those couple of Friday mornings were majestic-- our own mini tradition of hot chocolate and a grand view to start the day.
First hike, fog changing by the minute:
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