I got this idea on Monday, when I took the dogs to the Sheepfold area of the Middlesex Fells, only a few miles from my house. It's kind of an unofficial dog park, and the dogs dig getting to run around off-leash and sniff things and be dogs. We hiked up one of the trails off the main field area, around a reservoir (marked "Keep Out," what with it being public drinking water). There's a brook off the reservoir, though, and the dogs played in the legal water for a while. I hadn't packed any water for myself, and I was wearing running shoes, so we only walked a couple of miles through the woods.

So yesterday, I decided that today I would actually get my shit together and go on a real hike. The Reservoir Trail is 5.2 miles (and listed as "a moderate to difficult hike" for reasons I can't quite figure out). Last night, I went to REI and got Rocky a backpack, so he could carry his own water in, and his poop out. I made a list of what I needed, and dug my daypack (which smells vaguely and disturbingly of stale cat piss) out of my closet.

We left about 10:30 this morning, and I locked my iPod in the car. It was just us and nature. Rocky looked rather dashing in his backpack:

Rusti is apparently too small for a backpack, at least according to the sizes on the ones at REI, but she was also pretty cute.

The day was absolutely beautiful.

There were fiddleheads growing in the wild. I buy them at Whole Foods this time of year, but I'd never seen them growing in the wild. I think these were a little past their edible-ness prime, and I wouldn't have picked them anyway since we were on state land.

I ran into a few hikers and a handful of mountain bikers. We also saw a chipmunk, a few squirrels, a couple of woodpeckers, a bunch of robins, a hawk, and a tiny little painted turtle.

We stopped for lunch at a scummy little marshy pond thing. It was bigger than a mud puddle, but not big enough to be anything else, really. Rocky, my dog who crosses the road when he sees a sprinkler ahead, had a blast walking through the water and leaping and splashing everything in sight.

We stopped at this fern-covered rock so I could change my sweaty socks for dry ones.

If I continue to do this hiking thing, I'm going to need breathable hiking boots. Still, we hiked for 5-ish miles, and though we're all tired (the dogs have slept, smelling faintly of muddy swamp-water, since we got home except to eat), I didn't get any blisters or ticks or, so far as I know, poison ivy. What I did get in the woods was peace for the first time since sometime in December. It was the first time I've felt like things might be okay.