In the Heart of Sproul: Follow the Green Road Home

The morning started out with temperatures in the low 20s, with bright sunshine, and the afternoon was to warm up quite nicely, so my husband and I packed up a cooler and chairs and our daysacks, grabbed our hiking boots, and set out for the woods of Sproul State Forest.

We had talked about making it our first backpack trip of the year (and our first since late October), but even though it's daylight longer now than it had been, it's still a lot of darkness to sit through in the woods. And it would be quite cold again overnight. So in the end, we settled for a day trip instead.

We left the car in a parking area near a hill we sometimes go sledding on. But there is almost no snow there right now, just a skiff of white in the shadows, so it is apparently not sledding time just yet. And from there, we hiked down into a hollow we like that eventually leads to a great big spring deep in the woods of Sproul.

As soon as we left the top of the hill, though, we left the sunshine, and the hollow was rather dark and chilly. There were lots of lovely ice sculptures on the stream. We stopped and sat for a little while, and I took lots of ice pictures - you may see one in the extras - before we agreed to head back up the hill into the sunshine. In winter, we become sun seekers.

At one point in our adventure, we came across a little pond that had frozen over with ice. We often take our friends Alex the Alligator and Little Bear, and on this day, we also took Tiny Tiger along. He insisted on having a little adventure, sliding away on the ice in his little tiger-mobile.

Although he was a bit trepidatious at times, he was a brave little tiger, and toughed it out to have quite a bit of fun. You may see a photo of Tiny Tiger sliding on ice in the extras. After his adventures, Tiny Tiger came back to my chair and told Alex and Little Bear all about it. As he had caught a tiny chill on the ice, I put him in one of my gloves to warm up.

We had errands to run in town and we wanted to try to beat the darkness home, so we began taking our leave of the woods by about 3 pm. From there, it would be something under an hour's walk out, followed by about an hour to drive home. And after that, maybe an hour's errands in town.

My husband is often the lead hiker on our little adventures, and so the sight of him on the trail ahead of me is a familiar one. We were walking back up out of the hollow and past a little spring, when I rounded a corner and saw my husband standing there.

I couldn't resist stopping for a picture. There, covered in tree-shadows, was the mossy, green road that leads back to our car, and eventually, home. And in the midst of it, there was my husband, standing waiting for me, with his face tilted upward, enjoying some of the last rays of the afternoon sun.

The soundtrack is Eric Clapton and friends, with Sunshine of Your Love.