Buckeye, Arizona.

This week, Cheri Lucas Rowlands asks us to consider our own path. “Consider the journey you’ve taken… it can also be a glimpse into your interests and passions…” You can read the entire challenge post here.  As we prepare to leave Fargo again after having spent time with friends and family during this holiday season, we are looking forward to spending the rest of the 2016-17 winter in our Arizona retreat. The paths we take will be literal and many. We are looking forward to hiking familiar trails and some trails that are new to us.

After five years of wintering in Arizona, we have racked up over 500 miles of documented hiking in our log. From the beginning, we took up a 100 mile hiking challenge in honor of the 100th anniversary of Arizona statehood. From that first year, we stepped it up to 100 miles in 100 days. We’ve met that challenge a couple of times in the last couple of seasons.

These days, however, we are beginning to slow down a bit. We no longer have the stamina to support the longer hikes needed to complete the 100-mile challenges unless we hike several days a week. In previous treks, a 6 to 7 mile hike for us was average. These days, our goal is a 4 to 5-mile trek. Don’t misunderstand, we are still active and planning to hike once or twice a week and will lead our hiking club members in a couple of hikes each month.

We plan to explore new areas this year, blaze a few new trails, some of those in motorized vehicles. We will continue our path down hiking trails for some time to come, but those trails will be shorter and we’ll have to be content with missing the views from some trails because it’s too long a hike to get to the trail head.

As this is written two days before Christmas, I wish you all seasons greetings, happy new year and for those who honor it, Merry Christmas!

John Steiner