Sunday, October 4, 2009

The View Is Worth It

We went for a hike Friday afternoon with nine kids. A nice trail through Pt. Lobos state park, completely equipped with dust, fallen trees, and oh yes... poison oak. Between admonishing the kids not to touch ANYTHING and dealing with the dusty trail - we discovered a beautiful way to spend a day in the woods. At the top of the trail, where you can go left or right, we chose the left. It took us down a trail with steep steps that wrecked havoc on old bones. At the very end of the trail, there were wooden steps that were even steeper, but at the bottom? Ahhh, what lay at the bottom of those steps made the risk and the pain and the sweat worthwhile. There before us was a beautiful private beach... the water so clear you could see the fish swimming on the floor of the ocean. A blue heron was standing on a kelp bed, looking for all the world like he was St. Peter trying to walk on water. We played tag with the waves (why do I always lose that game?) and enjoyed the warmth of the autumn sun and the beauty of the Big Sur curves to the south. Soon, it was time to head back up those precarious steps, back up the hill, back over the dusty trail, through the poison oak (or is it ivy? I can never tell) and back to civilization.

As we passed a couple huffing and puffing up the trail, I said to them, "the view is worth it."

And I meant it....

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