IN PRAISE OF WALKING

Walking St. Augustine - The Oldest US City

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:06:00 +0000

The oldest city founded by Europeans, actually. Had a great walk up and down historic St. George, Marine, and Aviles Streets visiting the shops, historic buildings, and eateries, visiting Castillo San Marcos, eating at little out-of-the-way restaurants, and strolling beneath the Christmas light bespangled live oaks at the old slave market. It was a magical night, reminiscent of the Christkindlmarkt visits our family made in Europe years ago. The highlight of the evening walk...

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Yuletide - Winter Solstice

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:21:00 +0000

Happy Yuletide all. Winter Solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year. May the light of the season reside in your hearts all year. (Payette Lake, McCall, Idaho)This feed's content is protected by a creative commons license. You may copy items or quotes provided that a functional link back to the original content is included.

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Walking Stick Wisdom

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:57:00 +0000

Here's an original poem wood-burned into a walking stick that I made a few years back: Wander frequently near or far. Seek joy and beauty in each breath and step. Dear traveler obey your heart's wise behest And in life's journeys discover the soul's true rest.This feed's content is protected by a creative commons license. You may copy items or quotes provided that a functional link back to the original content is included.

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Florida Fall Color

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:08:00 +0000

Winter hasn't quite arrived in Florida. A cool snap during the last couple of weeks has brought out the colors of Fall. Hickories and elms have turned yellow. Sweet gums range from bronze to maroon to a decent orange color. In this photo of an upland tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) one sees a pleasing medley of hues. This is one of my favorite Florida trees.This feed's content is protected by a creative commons license. You may copy items or quotes provided that a...

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Sneaking Around Christmas Walk

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:05:00 +0000

I had a very enjoyable night-time walk with a dear friend last night along the limerock country road she lives on. Our task: sneaking a fresh pear dressed up in a bag with a bow-tied ribbon onto the porches, gates, and mailboxes of a dozen of her rural neighbors. Sneaking around whispering and giggling in the dark was great fun. It's the 12 Days of Christmas. Tonight's stealthiness involves Dove-brand soaps and 2 turtles candies for "2 turtle doves..". Hoping...

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Swan Falls Dam on the Snake River, Idaho

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:14:00 +0000

Just after Thanksgiving my father, youngest brother, and I walked across Swan Falls Dam on the Snake River southwest of Boise, Idaho and hiked for a few sunny hours along the river and the basalt cliffs that form the canyon walls. It was a wonderfully crisp day and the cold wind, sweet with the fragrance of big sagebrush tugging at one's clothes and washing over one's face, was a long-anticipated soul-cleansing. Cold-smudged by Nature in the dry desert of SW Idaho, as it...

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Get Walking!

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:33:00 +0000

I don't walk much lately, and I'm the poorer for it. Would like to find a new companion to get me out and moving. The cool weather has my feet itching to get out. For now, I'll need to go for long solo hikes.This feed's content is protected by a creative commons license. You may copy items or quotes provided that a functional link back to the original content is included.

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Hiking Big Shoals - Suwannee River FL

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:41:00 +0000

My wife and I took advantage of a sunny day after Christmas to hike some trails that we'd not been on before. We drove through White Springs, then east a mile or two to the Big Shoals entrance to the 3772-acre Big Shoals tract managed by the Suwannee River Water Management District. The upper Suwannee is a tannin-stained blackwater river in this area, gentle with the exception of the Big and Little Shoals, and for the most part flows lazily between high sandy banks. There are 28 miles of...

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Walking O'Leno in Early Summer

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:53:00 +0000

My wife and I visited O'Leno State Park on Fathers' Day. The week's weather was mostly rainy but on this day there were only patchy clouds. Although the temperature was below the 90's of the week or two before, the humidity was way up on account of all the rain on days previous. We walked sections of the River and Parener's Branch trails for a distance of about 3 miles. Highlights of the walk: We saw two 4-foot long alligator garfish holding in deeper pools south of the suspension...

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Cemetery Walks In Camellia Time

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 22:45:00 +0000

Every Sunday afternoon we walk our Corgis in the local cemetery. What passes for a Florida winter is ending and spring is on its way. Thus begins the loveliest time of year to stroll through the cemetery: Camellia Time. These slow-growing tea relatives are planted throughout the cemetery. The white-flowered individuals have all bloomed; the big pink and red ones now have the stage to themselves. It is a pleasure to walk among them and take in their dazzling beauty packaged in blooms as big...

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Evinston - Barr Hammock Walk

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:28:00 +0000

My wife and I spent an entire lovely Florida morning trekking the scenic ~8 miles of country backroads between historic Evinston and the home of some dear friends who live on 80 acres west of Micanopy next to Barr Hammock in Alachua County. We set out on our walk after a lengthy morning catching up (having lived there once) with Freddy Wood at the historic Wood and Swink store in Evinston, where we purchased a large bunch of Freddy's freshly (that morning) harvested carrots (to be sauteed...

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Henslow's Sparrow

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 01:13:00 +0000

During the walk in the grassy savannas of the 550+ acre farm property that was the subject of my previous post, my 3 friends and I flushed a small secretive bird that repeatedly flushed then dove into the grass and scurried into frozen seclusion like a quail or pheasant. It turns out the solitary bird was a wintering Henslow's Sparrow. The patient bird (image at left), who didn't stray more than 15 feet from us lead-footed humans, tarried long within camera shot and was photographed by my...

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Winter Ramble in a Florida Woodland

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:37:00 +0000

Today's lovely walk was a ~3-mile stroll in and around a 550+ acre complex of woodlands and abandoned pastures and farmlands NW of Gainesville, Alachua County, Florida. County development review staff is currently reviewing phases of a 999-unit subdivision to be built over the next decade or so. This is the second largest housing development to come to this area. [Click on images below for a larger view of same.] Protected gopher tortoises abound in open areas of the property. The developer...

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Sir Edmund Hillary Dead at 88

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 23:04:00 +0000

Legendary New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to scale Mt. Everest, is dead. His spirit will be missed. May we all encounter that spirit as we walk the hills, dales, and mountains of those places we frequent when we wish to be at one with the world. Edmund Hillary, Mount Everest, New Zealand, Everest, mountaineering, HillaryThis feed's content is protected by a creative commons license. You may copy items or quotes provided that a functional link back to the original content is...

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Another Walk at O'Leno

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 21:29:00 +0000

I hiked the ~4.0 mile Parener's Branch trail at O'Leno State Park with my daughters on December 27. The day was clear and warm, nearly 80 degrees. The miles rolled by really quickly since we were talking and bantering the whole way. We flushed a trio of whitetail deer not long after we hit the trail. About a mile or so later, far from the developed portion of the park, we found some very large tracks in the sugary sand. One of the tracks had a claw-print pressed into wet soil about the...

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Tallahassee-St. Marks State Trail

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:00:00 +0000

My wife and I decided to tour the Tallahassee- St. Marks State Trail that runs from Tallahassee FL straight south to St. Marks, at the confluence of the Wakulla and St. Marks rivers. We chose to bicycle the 16 miles rather than tackle it on foot. We decided to explore this nice paved trail upon the strong recommendation of a fellow traveler we met when we hiked and camped at Torreya State Park in September of this year. The day was lovely and cool, and overcast for the most part. We'd...

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Anastasia Island - St. Augustine FL

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 02:30:00 +0000

We traveled to St. Augustine, FL, our favorite day-trip when we want to mix city-doings with time on the beach. The morning was overcast and drizzly, so we spent a couple of hours visiting our favorite haunts in St. Augustine. We breakfasted and toured the Leitner Museum during the rainiest part of the day. The museum (a former hotel built by Rockefeller's Standard Oil partner Henry Flagler) has some fascinating but rather pedestrian personal luxuries of some of the wealthy northerners of...

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Hiking Torreya State Park

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 01:34:00 +0000

My wife and I journeyed to Torreya State Park for a weekend camping/hiking trip for my birthday. We left after a leisurely morning, bound for breakfast on the road and a previously reserved campground. I'm a professional botanist, and during the dozen or so years in Florida had yet to explore this botanically-rich park on the banks of the Apalachicola River. I'll say from the outset that we had a most remarkable and enjoyable weekend. For the weekend we packed a cooler full of frozen water,...

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Evinston-Micanopy Bob Cunningham Memorial Walk

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 23:10:00 +0000

Today was another in our series of Evinston to Micanopy round-trip walks. We call it our Bob Cunningham Memorial Walk, after a dear outsider artist friend who joined my wife and I on one of our Evinston-Micanopy-Evinston round trip walks one year, only to break off from us and the walk a quarter of the way through and relocate to Iowa the next day, never to be seen by us again. The walk from Evinston to Micanopy is 4 miles, making the round trip an even 8 miles. We began our outing with a...

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In Praise of Walking - 1911 Book

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 02:30:00 +0000

Note the permanent sidebar link to the Google-scanned text of a book that has been part of my library for a long time. "In Praise of Walking" contains delightful essays on that topic by Carman, Hazlitt, Stevenson, Thoreau, Burroughs, Symons, and Morris. Google Books has an on-line scanned copy of this lovely book of essays that every dedicated walker should read and ponder. walking, poetry, essays, nature, William Hazlitt, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bliss Carman, Henry David Thoreau, John...

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Workaday Walks

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 22:16:00 +0000

Monday, August 20, 2007. A long morning jaunt in the farmlands of northwest Alachua County, Florida began on a dirt road that passes between a tobacco field and a millet field on its way north to a cattle ranch on the Santa Fe River. The tobacco was all but harvested; now just bare stalks with a crown of small leaves and a few spikes of pale pink flowers stood naked in the field. The millet was a different story. It was vigorous, robust, and seemed to be loving the hot rainless weather...

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Exploring O'Leno State Park

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 17:00:00 +0000

I Hiked the Parener's Branch Trail at O'Leno State Park north of High Springs, Florida on a gloriously sunny Saturday this weekend. I started as early as I could to beat the 90+ degree heat predicted for the hottest part of the day. The 6000-acre park on the Santa Fe River is minutes from my home. I have walked the trail and explored the off-trail environs numerous times. Saturday's rewarding mid-summer ramble was 5-6 miles long. I spent a good while investigating a large upland sandhill...

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Dean - First 2007 Hurricane

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:54:00 +0000

Tropical Storm Dean has strengthened and so becomes the first hurricane of the 2007 season. Hurricane Dean is walking its way across the Atlantic at 18-20 mph and appears to be headed for the Yucatan. A National Weather Service posting indicates that an Air Force Reserve hurricane hunter aircraft will be dispatched this afternoon, and the NOAA will send its Gulfstream-IV on a surveillance mission. You might want to bookmark this Google Earth site to track the storm's progress. Hurricane...

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Walking Is Like Breathing

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:20:00 +0000

I've considered the long Summer Rambles along town-to-town rural roadways of north-central Florida that my wife and I enjoy. The essence of these extended day-long journeys can be seen as a dichotomy between movement and rest. So consider this movement-rest dichotomy, from the general to the specific. The Earth: The surface of the earth is not flat. It moves. It breathes. It heaves and falls, and it rests. For the most part, our rural walking paths follow a varied surface dictated...

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When Walking Wont Do

noreply@blogger.com (CALL) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 04:05:00 +0000

There are places you just can't walk to, especially in Florida, places where folks may still try to sell swampland like the Marx Brothers did in their movie debut The Cocoanuts. Kayaking (my boat, left) will get you to many of those places. Paddling solo or with companions affords many of walking's benefits: the quiet observance of nature's flow and rhythms, and periods of stillness that draw one's thoughts inward and that invite contemplation of one's place in the universe. With the...

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