Thanksgiving

 

Starting the Thanksgiving Day hike

If it seems our lives are full of magical hikes, you have deduced well. Grasshopper. Hmm. Don't know where that came from. 

Thanksgiving day was brilliant and cold. Not as cold as it should have been perhaps, but still cold and clear. Sanders Hill is becoming our go-to holiday hike. It's a little further away than our daily hikes (about a 25 minute drive), but close enough to feel like ours.

Thanksgiving is such a lovely uncomplicated holiday. I know it's not that way for everyone, but having family so far away, and not being anxious to travel this time of year makes ours pretty simple. Friends asked us to share their Thanksgiving dinner with two of their adult children. How wonderful. And uncomplicated.

Where the trail begins

And of course, pies had to be baked, and John's Famous Buns made for The Dinner. We're still eating the Pumpkin Chiffon pie, a recipe that a friend recently shared with me. Breakfast of champions.

This was where the morning started. We have been amazed at the change in trails since we vacationed here decades ago. We used to have to really hunt for a public trail to walk the dogs on. But while many things Maine have stood still in time, their trail system has flourished. And we keep discovering new ones.

Jasper

Jasper is a great excuse to spend time finding and hiking trails. And of course, he's the best looking of our motley pack. I was reflecting to the daughter of our friend that while body parts are falling off or defecting, we have this gift of time now. We can decide that we're going to drive an hour to explore a new hike. It's a strange point in our lives where we can see that we will run out of time in the long run, but in the short run, we can spend it as we chose. 

I'll close with a video of our stopover place on Thanksgiving. Water, woods, and creatures I love. "Grateful" only begins to describe my feelings.