So Beautiful You Want To Cry

My room-mate and I hiked two of the trails around Mendenhall Glacier this morning.  When we arrived at the Visitor's Center it was cold - maybe 25 degrees and the sky was beautiful, still and clear.  I was as excited as a child to look out over the glacier and know that we would be spending a few hours outside, away from town, out on the trails.

In SE Alaska on a sunny day it doesn't take very long to see what you so desperately need - mountains, trails, streams, wooden bridges, pine trees, moss covered rocks, moss covered trees, wide open spaces, endless sky, lakes, more mountains that travel neverendingly into the distance.  I saw all of those things today.  In just a few hours.

We climbed maybe 1500-2000 feet over the course of a few miles before running into another trail that would take us back down to the trail head - damanding for my room-mate but happily not as demanding for myself.  The trails were mostly snow and ice covered, and without Yak-Trax the trails would have been impassable. 

Although we saw a number of people walking on the lake (as well as bicycling and ice skating) we did not run into anyone on the trails.  In this most beautiful of places, on this most beautiful of days, we had the trails to ourselves.  It was a magical hike.

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..........John Muir

As we were leaving Mendenhall Glacier I realized that I was not ready to go back to the condo, and that I still needed to be outside.  The day was too beautiful.  The sun was too bright.  The sky was too blue.  And I still had too much energy to be still.  I needed to keep moving a little longer.  I had my room-mate drop me off at the Harbor in Auke Bay so I could take more pictures and take my time walking the few miles back to the condo.

It was a quiet walk - drinking chocolate milk and eating a cranberry muffin, stopping to check out the university bookstore, checking on real estate properties along the road that had for sale signs in the windows, taking pictures at Auke Bay and other points along the route home.

By the time I arrived home I was cold, tired, and my right hip was hurting - an on-again off-again issue that first surfaced soon after I injured my left knee.  Although "real life" intruded many times during my hikes today, I worked hard to try and push those thoughts aside so I could decompress.  It was a good day.  A very good day.