Once upon a time, there lived a young 20-something in the middle of a national forest.
(Spoiler alert: It was me.)
There were countless lakes, trails and split rocks to explore. I had the run of it all year-round, and it was nothing to hike 5 miles or more in a day just doing my job: telling the story of that place to prospective summer campers and supporters.
But, as young 20-somethings often are, I was in a hurry to meet the next phase of life. Marriage, getting back on my career path, one baby, then two, then three — and suddenly, 20 years later, that life bears little resemblance to the idyllic, peaceful one I’d so willfully left behind.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]On many accounts, it’s better. I have a beautiful family, a stable home life, fun friend groups, a quirky house and the job I’d always wanted, all in the most beautiful place in Indiana. On the surface, I have it all.
Most days, though, I barely move from my desk. When the school day is over, I leave to pick up the kids, marshal them through homework and make a dinner they probably won’t eat, then go sit behind another desk and listen to people discuss, argue and fret about what’s best for Brown County from one angle or another, and get up the next day and try to make sense of it all.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m proud of the work I still get to do.
Most of the time, though, I feel like I’m living under a cloud, a nonspecific smog of unease and worry and dissatisfaction that I can neither put my finger on, nor brush away.
There’s no logical reason it should be this way, and it embarrasses and frustrates me to admit it.
I turned 40 last month. As that date crept closer, I felt the need to make some kind of change.
I decided to go back to the one thing that’s consistently made me happy, that’s made me appreciate life: Getting out on a trail.
I had 30 days ‘til 40, and I was going to hike them all.
Jan. 1: We visited Trevlac Bluffs for the first time: all three kids, husband Derek, the dog and me. We started at the bottomlands, traversing mud crossings and finding birds with binoculars, then drove to the uplands trail to see the hemlock trees. 4 miles.
Jan. 2: Intended to walk the high school track, but by the time I got out of work it was starting to get dark. Derek offered to do the Salt Creek Trail with me after dinner while his mom, who was visiting, watched the kids. 1.5 miles.
Jan. 3: We had plans to go out with our neighbors to dinner and a movie. I figured we could all walk the trail after dinner at the Brown County Inn. But it was sprinkling and the drinks were flowing, so it didn’t happen that way. We watched the Mr. Rogers movie at the Playhouse, one of the most life-affirming, simultaneously uplifting and heavy films I’ve seen in a long time. Afterward, when I told them what I was up to, we all hit the trail, talking and thinking about the families we came from. 1.5 miles.
Jan. 4: Hung out at home feeling vaguely restless and unmotivated. The house was mostly clean and I didn’t have any goals for the day except knowing I needed to get a mile in. It wasn’t until it was almost time for our evening plans that I decided we all needed to take a hike and we were leaving in 30 minutes. Then it started sleeting. I told the kids we were going anyway. They whined and said hikes were boring, but we bought our annual park pass, raced to Ogle Lake about an hour and a half before sunset, and started booking it down the trail — well, as fast as one can book it with little chatterboxes flapping. The lake water was beautiful! The tree roots looked like pits of snakes! There were beavers working here! Look! We wound up the evening at a dinner with outdoorsy friends, I told them what I was doing, and all of them wanted in on a daily text string about where the hikes would be. 1.5 miles.
Jan. 5: Took five families, three dogs, seven kids under the age of 7 and a 12-year-old up Browning Mountain, a hike I have been wanting to do for years but never had a friend who knew the way. The kids jumped around and off the boulders at the top for almost two hours. I hiked around by myself for a bit. It was the first time in more than a decade I could remember having that much energy or interest in doing so. One of the dads told me about a view from a large, flat rock on the other side, and I checked it out. I felt a little of the perpetual weight lifting, a little break in the clouds. Watching the boys dashing down the trail, and all the kids skipping rocks in the creek at the bottom, I started to feel it: joy. This was the life I’d wanted. This is the life I have. 2 miles.
Jan. 6: First back-to-real-life day after the holidays. Met a friend after work at Hitz-Rhodehamel nature preserve off Freeman Ridge, another trail system I’d never visited. We talked the whole time about carving out a place in this community that’s peaceful for our families and useful to others. Then, we caravanned to pick up our kids who were all playing together at after-school care. The little boys were jealous I went on a hike without them, and my 5-year-old expressed interest in becoming a nocturnal animal when he grows up, so we made plans to do a night hike. 3 miles.
Jan. 7: Didn’t want to pay for after-school again, so I tossed the kids’ bikes in my car and took them to the Salt Creek Trail before evening meetings. While my 6-year-old sped ahead, my 12-year-old played bullfighter to the youngest on his Strider bike, who’d put his helmeted head down, rev up and blow past him. “Do it again!” the youngest would beg, and the oldest would always oblige — when he wasn’t doing imitations of me: “Hi, I’m Sara and I’m an editor and I’m serious. Don’t spell that word wrong.” 1.5 miles.
Jan. 8: Met two other moms on Trail 10 in the state park over lunch hour. 2.5 miles.
Jan. 9: Took the trail around Deer Run Park for the first time, despite the fact that I have been there 5,012 times to sit on sidelines or at the playground. I had all three kids with me, and there was major whining and moderate mud, but we made it. 1.25 miles.
Jan. 10: It rained all day. I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I put the little kids in after-school and took my 12-year-old to the Discovery Trail in the state park. He protested because he wasn’t wearing rain gear (yet, apparently it’s OK to never wear a winter coat), but midway in, he was bounding up the trail with umbrella in hand, looking like a chimney sweep from Mary Poppins. “Do you dare me?” he asked, standing at a swampy part. “Yeah, man, get your feet wet. Who cares?” I told him. He did, joyfully jumping in every puddle like he was 2 again. Hiked it one direction and then the other, 1 mile.
Jan. 11: Flood warnings were popping up all over. I was getting out anyway. I scanned a map for options on high ground and chose state park Trail 4. It did start on high ground, but as we walked, I remembered the descent, from the Rally Campground down to Ogle Lake. We picked up our pace, as it was still raining, and I could hear the rush of water below us. We made it across the bridge at the lakeside with dry feet and branched off into the valley. But the trail didn’t go up right away. Numerous other streams had appeared, and as we kept going and going — and my 6-year-old kept talking and talking, about waterfalls, about being a good citizen, about whether or not you can see God “in real life” — I realized we were going to have to cross this stream again that had become a small river. When the trail finally intersected it, it was too wide even for me to leap. “Hold on tight,” I told him, and we waded on in and across. “Mom, even though kids are weak, sometimes, they are strong,” he declared on the ascent. 2 miles.
Jan. 12: Family hike with our neighbors on Trail 10, 2.5 miles.
Jan. 13: While most of my household was at Scouts, I took the 5-year-old to Strahl Lake. I told him he could take a headlamp and our job was to “race the sun.” He wouldn’t even let me stop to show him things, though he did take interest in my lesson on lake succession and the trees that had fallen. He was convinced people had cut them down. “You can’t put nature back,” he scolded. We made it around the lake and back to the gushing waterfall in record time. “Mom, do you know that continent means happiness?” he asked as we descended to the car. “I think you mean content,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “Content means spreading happiness all around. But if you are spreading angerness all around, that would be bad.” 1 mile.
Jan. 14: Met a friend at Freeman Ridge. We only had 35 minutes, but we smoked the north loop. On the uphills, we talked about finding ourselves again aside from wife, mom and boss. I told her I thought everyone in our group had that figured out but me. She said she didn’t, and neither had the others. I wasn’t alone. 1.25 miles.
Jan. 15: My husband had planned to get home early. I had no night meetings. The temp was in the mid-50s. I wanted to take the whole family to Yellowwood. That was not what happened. One kid had a headache, one was crabby and one had tons of homework, then my husband got stuck in traffic coming back from Indy. I took off with only the dog as the sun set. We power-walked the Salt Creek Trail in silence. When I got back, the youngest made me a card that attempted to say “Mom, you’re the best.” The middle asked me to snuggle with him as he drifted off to sleep. The oldest was plowing through his homework because he wanted to go to youth group for once. And my husband cleaned the kitchen without a word. 1.5 miles.
Jan. 16: Deer Run Park trail on lunch, 1.25 miles.
Jan. 17: Met a friend in the state park, starting at the Tulip Tree shelter, dipping down toward Ogle and back up past Hesitation Point. This is one of my favorite loops, but from my usual starting point, the West Lookout, it’s a little too long for kids. It was perfect for two moms and a dog hustling in 32-degree weather. 2.5 miles.
Jan. 18: Got stuck inside with the kids all rainy day while one of them languished all sick-like on the couch and my husband worked. The sun was on its way down when I finally broke free, but I went out to Yellowwood anyway. The dog and I hiked the Jackson Creek Trail even though I knew it would probably be flooded. My feet were soaked within the first half-mile, but I didn’t care. The water rushing and winding through the valley reminded me of one of my favorite trails anywhere: in Marquette, Michigan, one of the few places I’ve been in recent years where I can hear myself think. I thought I had to go far away to get to a place like that, but here it was. I just hadn’t found it yet. 1.5 miles.
Jan. 19: Coldest day yet and the biggest test of my winter-hike mettle. It was 16 degrees when I set out for Yellowwood with my 12-year-old and the dog. Nobody complained. My son gleefully destroyed every ice-covered puddle on the Jackson Creek Trail and only took his phone out for a picture. 1.5 miles.
Jan. 20: Salt Creek Trail from my office and back during lunch, 1.75 miles.
Jan. 21: Tried to hit the park between school pick-up and meetings, but I always forget how much of a drive most trailheads are past the gates. Ended up pulling into the Friends Trail next to the park office and doing a bunch of laps with the big kid. 1 mile.
Jan. 22: Salt Creek Trail after sunset with the dog, 1.5 miles.
Jan. 23: Took a late lunch with a friend on the trails that start at the state park Saddle Barn. She said she does some of her best thinking for work while hiking. I don’t, I told her. This time is for me. 1.75 miles.
Jan. 24: Hauled three kids and two bikes to the Salt Creek Trail, which was basically a collection of puddles and thawing mud slicks. Ended with a bunch of muddy shoes, which we rinsed off in the puddles, and some epic tire-spattered pants. 1.5 miles.
Jan. 25: Took the little boys to Strahl Lake while the oldest and his dad were in Indy. I bribed them with gaming time if they’d come out in the cold without whining, but by the time we were done, they’d forgotten all about that and chose the playground instead. 1 mile.
Jan. 26: Met my neighbor on Trail 9 while the dads and kids fixed dinner and entertained each other. We get together often, but not like this, away from the chaos. She’s never had a sister, and mine are in two different states, so that’s sort of how we’ve become: honest, not judgy, always around when you need something, even when you don’t know what that “something” is. We ended up totally off the trail and following a streambed, but we figured it out together. 2 miles.
Jan. 27: Broke away while everybody was snarfing down dinner to jog to the mailbox and trudge back up again, then around the neighborhood. It wasn’t a park or a trail, but it’s woods and relative quiet, so it counted. 1 mile.
Jan. 28: Deer Run Park trail on lunch, 1.25 miles.
Jan. 29: Discovery Trail twice before my night meeting, 1 mile.
Jan. 30: Salt Creek Trail between a long meeting and a long night of work, 1.5 miles.
Jan. 31: Spent the entire day in a seminar about community development that sapped my energy, and still had hours more of work to make deadline. Happy birthday to me. I picked up my oldest and took him to the Freeman Ridge trails. We hiked the 1.25-mile loop while he talked nonstop about his favorite books and the characters he identifies with. The seminar had stirred so many conflicting emotions in me, I didn’t know where my head was. “Be human,” I had written in my notes for the day. “Be confident in who you are, not what other people tell you you ought to be.”
I had thought that what I’d missed from my previous life was the quiet and the solitude. Maybe that was part of it. But it was also the confidence of feeling physically strong and accomplished, and the space to breathe and be present in my own life.
On Feb. 1, I didn’t hike. I took a nap. Then, I spent the evening with the few people in Brown County whom I’ve allowed to know me apart from my byline, whomever that’s been.
At dinner, my husband shared the thoughts I hadn’t yet said, but had been forming these past 51+ miles, without me even telling him what they were:
Gratitude for the people around that table, the ones we’ve been hiking through the woods with, literally and figuratively.
Gratitude that we all found each other.
Gratitude for all of them being there to celebrate the fact that I was born, and that I’m still here — “over the hill,” yes, but still climbing.
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“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover I had not lived.”
— Henry David Thoreau
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