I try to take a 35-45 minute walk every day. There's lots of reasons for this besides health. I am blessed to live on a beautiful farm that's set on the edge of a forest, so my daily stroll is most regenerative for my vibe.
Seasonality has its place when it comes to my daily constitutional as well. In the late spring, summer, and early fall, I tend to walk several miles on the farm doing chores, but even so, I still manage to fit in my stroll most days, it's good for the mindset.
In the late fall, winter, and early spring, my stroll functions as part of my daily exercise routine as farm chores tend to be more inside in their nature, plus, I am in college and sitting a lot more than I like or am used too.
As Gollum said so delightfully, when it comes to sitting, "We hates it!"
I mean, I don't mind resting, but on Monday through Thursday, and sometimes Friday, I sit in my office chair reading text books, engaging in discussions, and writing all manner of papers and essays. For 4-6 hours straight.
Yep, the walk is necessary.
And it was today on my walk that I felt a swell of gratitude for the trees that inhabit my farm. I truly do adore all the trees here, but especially the stately Bull pine, AKA the Ponderosa Pine.
All of the Bull pines on our farm, are towering giants, and while they aren't as big as the Sitka Spruce or Doug fir of my coastal Alaska youth, they are pretty good size.
Speaking of my Alaska youth, I often find it humorous how much I love trees as my entire family were timber fallers of the most prolific sort.
Perhaps I exist as bit of Universe humor.
I mean, it's not as if I have a problem cutting down a tree. In fact, that was part of the reason for my swell of gratitude as I strolled today. You see, everything has a life cycle, even my giant trees, and they are coming to the end of theirs.
There was a massive fire in these parts in 1910, and judging by the size of my trees they probably germinated after that fire or near to it. So they are over 100 years old. Now, the interwebs say they can live up to 400 years, and that rightly excites me as that means they will outlive me by a fair bit, but since there are so many around here, death is starting to occur.
One of the beasts was hit by lightning a few years ago, and one of them in the barnyard just plain died, but here's the regenerative part, when death happens to a tree on our farm it gets used elsewhere!
This summer the hubs built the high house for the new skeet field and used the chainsaw mill to rip the first bull pine carcass into live edge siding. The scraps will be used to make charcuterie trays and other knick knacks.
And just look at those stairs! Those were made out of a tree that got massacred by laminated root rot.
So, not only do the living trees bring joy to my hobbit-esque soul, the death of the trees brings about projects for the still living as well!
And don't even get me started on just how much I love the sawdust!
All things live, all things expire, and trees, they even go into and create my nice cozy fire. They are just the most wonderful living things!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's still rather disgruntled because it fell out of her pocket because she decided to skip a bit on her daily walk like an unrepentant heathen iPhone.