Weekly Wanderings

One of the things we have made a routine of as a family is each week finding adventure. While during school, this often involves picking the kids up and then heading to the hills. We are fortunate to have a place called Millerton lake within 30-45 minutes of our home, giving us the opportunity to find adventure as a family. When the weather is cool, we enjoy heading up a Pincushion Peak which is a small summit giving you 1000 feet of elevation gain over a 1 mile stretch. It really isn’t about the route, or the elevation gain, or even the exercise as much as it is about fostering a particular mindset for our kids. It’s a mindset which looks for beauty, is persistent in moving forward, is lighthearted, and open to learning lessons that sometimes only the mountains can teach. We enjoy heading up to the hills with our housemate Dave and our kids in tow. Our kids rarely complain anymore about “long drives” or exclaim, “we are going to the mountains again?!!” They have quite literally done this every week of their lives with brief exceptions. John Muir said, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” He was right....except he could have said “give strength to FAMILIES, to body and souls alike” — to that we’d say “amen”!

These are good days