Autumn Woods, Unexpected Stashes

The backyard is looking pretty nice

For well over two years now, I haven't missed a single day of walking and/or running at least three miles, usually a good bit more than that. Fall is my favorite time to take long walks around the neighborhood (except maybe sometimes when it snows). This year, we don't seem to have as many varying colors of foliage as we sometimes do, but it's still pretty, and the temperature is pleasant. We have woods on three sides of our lot as well as on the far side of the street out front, so we're surrounded by nature.

 

Lake Lanier is a small lake just down the street from us, and I walk there frequently. There's a smaller, adjacent body of water that we locals have always called "The Little Lake," and beyond it, a stretch of woods between two roads about a mile long. When I was a kid, several friends and I frequently played among those woods (mostly as soldiers who fought against the giant monsters that lived out there), and in my teenage years, we rode minibikes and motorcycles on the trail that snaked through the woods.

 

There's still a trail back there, now used mostly by our sizable deer population. Once in a while, I take a walk back there, and today was just the day for it. The terrain has changed somewhat over the years; the trees are denser and taller, but there's far less undergrowth. Back in the old days, the ground was largely covered by tall reeds and flowering plants, which gave it a more jungle-like appearance. During my adolescence, when I was so smitten with the daikaiju movies of the day, like Destroy All Monsters and War of the Gargantuas, we always kept a sharp eye out for monsters, and our BB guns at the ready (yes, they were very powerful, anti-monster BB guns).

When I was 11 or 12 years old, what I didn't count on finding back there was a stash of the most grotesque porn magazines possible—mostly about bestiality. The graphic photos and stories of animals, mostly horses and dogs, having sex with young girls were pretty traumatic. I was with a couple of young friends at the time, and I think we ended up burning them. I never had any idea which neighbor had hidden the magazines in a plastic bag in a hollow tree, but whoever it was must have been pretty sick.

 

The memories of fighting monsters in those woods are far more pleasant. And nowadays, it's a tranquil and lovely place to engage with nature.

Despite All the Turmoil and Gloom...

It's a beautiful spring day, so I took a bunch of photos while I was on my morning walk (four and a half miles today). It was a bit breezy, and several little cyclones picked up piles of pollen and slapped me across the face, which resulted in a sneezing fit or two. It's a bit overcast, so the colors in the photos didn't come out as brilliant as they might had it been sunny, but I expect you get the picture.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled doom and gloom.

The Winter Storm Aftermath, Sort Of

For the past few days, the local forecast called for a potentially serious winter storm starting yesterday, and a winter storm we indeed got. Thankfully, for most of us in the area, it stopped short of being terribly serious. The severest issue in our area was vehicle accidents last night as the roads became slippery, and I've heard reports of a handful of power outages. We've kept ours, at least so far; around here, it's typical to weather the worst of a storm without problem, but when it's all over with, then the power goes out. The temperature dropped well below freezing early last night, but it's on the rise this morning, and right now, the snow and ice have become mostly slush.

I went out for my usual morning ramble and took a few pics around Lake Lanier, just down the street.

Misty Morning Ramble

Every day, usually early morning, I go on a several-mile walk, typically around our neighborhood, which offers plenty of nice scenery (especially around Lake Lanier) and (gasp) many serious hills. Since last January, I haven't missed a day of putting in at least two and a half miles, usually more like three to five miles. After forty years of working a desk job with only occasional bouts of serious exercise (usually while geocaching on weekends), since I retired, I've decided not to settle for a sedentary lifestyle and suffer the likely attendant health complications. The exercise has done wonders for my blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure (though this past election has hiked it back up higher than it oughta be), and all that good stuff.

It wasn't very cold this morning, but the misty precipitation made it a bit damp. Still, there was a nice atmosphere out there — almost eerie — which I augmented by playing some mellow, Hearts-of-Space-type music along the way. It's supposed to turn into real rain tomorrow, which may mean I'll be hoofing it around the house most of the day. It's nowhere near as enjoyable as the out of doors, but I've had to do it plenty of times. The biggest challenge is avoiding tripping over cats.

Happy trails.

The Everyday Walkies

One of the absolute highlights of having moved back to my original homeplace in Martinsville is that the neighborhood is so conducive to walking. There are lots of woods, beautiful homes, big hills (which I make a point not to shy away from), and some very nice people. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, Martinsville had a large industrial and commercial base — primarily furniture and textiles — which kept most of the townfolk employed, and with a remarkably high standard of living. During those days, there were more millionaires per square mile in Martinsville than anywhere in the United States. Sadly, those big employers are long gone, and for many years, Martinsville was damn near a ghost town. The place is still largely a shadow of what it once was, but there are enough entrepreneurs and creative individuals who are dedicated to bringing a new renaissance to town that have helped reverse the negative trend. And there's still some old money floating around that has provided a bulwark against the influx of too many ghosts.

So, back to my original point, I walk two to three miles every day, usually mid-morning, and apart from occasional weather-related cancelations, I have managed to keep to the schedule religiously. Combined with a couple of weeks of barely being able to eat, thanks to complications from having a tooth yanked (see Fun and Games with Tooth Extractions," December 14, 2023), I've lost several pounds. Whether I can keep them off is the eternal question, but it would be nice to remain shed of some of that extra weight that just plain exercise doesn't excise.

Sometimes I walk in the woods, as there are a few decent trails around, some official, some less so. I own a plethora of geocaches in the area, and I try to keep them well-maintained. I've found a few entertaining decorative items in nearby yards, clearly indicating some creative residents (see photos). And the long walks are great for listening to audiobooks, which have about become my primary means of "reading," since my eyes don't hold up for long spells of usage the way they used to. I've gotten through Ian Fleming's entire James Bond 007 series, Stephen King & Richard Chizmar's Gwendy series, John Scalzi's Daikaiju Preservation Society, Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Peter Benchley's Jaws, William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, Mark Frost's Secret History of Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, F. Paul Wilson's The Keep, and I'm currently listening to the second of four books in friend/fellow author Leverett Butt's Guns of the Waste Land series. Many of these are "re-reads," but they're books I've been looking to revisit for the longest time, and what an enjoyable opportunity to get back to them it's been.

Here's hoping a tolerable winter, walking-weather-wise.

About to embark on a chilly-weather excursion

A closer look, and you might see a few hundred turkey buzzards gathered around Lake Lanier, just down the street from home.

Another view of the lake