Beauty and Kindness –
Beauty and kindness are all around us. I’m talking about the small, subtle things that bring lightness to our souls and make us pause long enough to notice them. For me, it can be wild violets blooming through cracks in a sidewalk, a well-tended garden, or an unexpected act of kindness—a flower left at my doorstep or a coffee paid for by the car ahead of me. These moments stay with me.
We began Segment 4 at Kenosha Pass on Thursday afternoon. Unable to arrange a shuttle, this pair of sixth-decade adventurers decided to try hitchhiking to Bailey and then up the dirt road to the trailhead. To our surprise, the very first vehicle stopped both times.
James told us he had often thought about stopping to help hikers, and that day he finally did. Later, Logan shifted equipment in the back of his truck and drove us the final miles to the trailhead. Their kindness became part of the journey.
It was early evening when we started hiking. Our goal was simply to make it a few miles up the trail so we’d be ready for a full day of hiking the next morning. We camped around mile five just before sunset. The following day, we finished segment 4 and hiked a few miles into Segment 5 – fifteen miles in total.
“The beauty of the natural world
-Natalie Angier
lies in the details.”
Segment 4 didn’t have any dramatic highlights, but it was full of subtle moments I carried with me: the kindness of strangers taking time from their day to help us, the beauty of the uniform rows of lodgepole pines surrounding our campsite, the winding trail cushioned with thick pine needles, seven miles of open meadows still dressed in winter browns, a few early flowers dotting the trail edges, and in the distance, a moose nibbling at willow bushes just beginning to bud.
~ Moose
6th Decade Adventures 