{"id":2469,"date":"2011-11-28T20:46:44","date_gmt":"2011-11-29T01:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2469"},"modified":"2011-11-28T20:49:38","modified_gmt":"2011-11-29T01:49:38","slug":"just-wandering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2469","title":{"rendered":"Just Wandering"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went up to Ringwood State Park on Saturday for my annual autumn hike. The weather was nice and I had a pretty good day, although my \u201ctrail sense\u201d is not what it used to be. I had trouble following one trail (it wasn’t really marked all that well in certain spots) and wound up reversing direction and unintentionally backtracking, more than once. In each instance, I eventually recognized something I had passed previously and knew enough to turn around.<\/p>\n

(I also brought a deer tick home, but managed to spot the little sucker before he could dig his way into my hide and transmit a nasty dose of Lyme Disease. Hope that none of his friends tagged along too.)<\/p>\n

Being a student of Zen, I would like to turn my hikes into highly spiritual experiences. But they almost never wind up that way. Instead, it’s mostly marching along to get in as much mileage as possible, wondering if there are snakes or bears in this neck of the woods (mostly not where I was), trying to get to an interesting location before turning back, and starting to feel my legs and feet ache and gritting my teeth to get up and over the next uphill climb. About the only moments of contentedness come after I stopped for lunch and rested a few moments before getting back on the trail. And, of course, after getting home safely!<\/p>\n

But I did have one little interaction that might qualify as a \u201cZen moment\u201d. I was stopped near a trail head looking at a map, when a bearded fellow ambled down off the trail from the other direction. He looked at me and asked \u201care you looking for the turkey roast?\u201d (an event that was probably held at the nearby picnic area). I looked at him and said \u201cno, I don’t know what I’m looking for\u201d. He took it completely in stride (bearded guys usually take such comments in stride), and said \u201cjust wandering, huh\u201d. \u201cYea, that’s about all.\u201d We then nodded and went our ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust wandering\u201d. Yes, that just about says it all!<\/p>\n

Here’s a pic from my wanderings that day, of a creek wandering its way into a lake:<\/p>\n

\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went up to Ringwood State Park on Saturday for my annual autumn hike. The weather was nice and I had a pretty good day, although my \u201ctrail sense\u201d is not what it used to be. I had trouble following one trail (it wasn’t really marked all that well in certain spots) and wound up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2469"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2471,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions\/2471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}