Walking

My daughter runs. My other daughter does the elliptical. I walk. (I would be the oldest one here.) But I walk pretty doggoned fast, if I do say so myself--2.5 miles in about 42 minutes. I've walked for exercise for years and years and have decided that I simply love to walk. People say that runners become addicted to running and maybe I have the same affliction. If I don't walk, I don't feel out of sorts, but I definitely don't feel "in sorts." Walking makes me feel good. I know, I know, it's the endorphins. But I prefer to say that it makes me feel good.

These days I'm walking in "Adirondack fall foliage."


Saranac Lake, about 45 minutes into the mountains from me, was reporting that this past weekend was peak colors for leaf peepers. It's still fun to think that I'm living in a "destination" for downstaters who come up here just to drive around! And I'm sure that many of my readers (I believe I've added a few occasional peepers of my own--up from my 2 original readers, my daughters who read it occasionally out of obligation [But hey, that's what offspring are for, right? To be there for their addled elders.])--who live in equally beautiful parts of the world. But out here, New Yorkers, and even more so, New Englanders, make such a big deal out of it! So I try to appreciate the bejeezus out of it.

So go for a walk. It makes you feel good.

Top Ten

Starla's top 10 reasons not to surround your house and yard with 50-100-year-old oak trees:

10. Acorns


9. The size of the mulch pile that never seems to decrease because it's made up almost entirely of oak leaves, which take about 30 years to biodegrade, and acorns, which apparently never do.

8. Big acorns

7. The bunker mentality one enters when the sound of acorns pelting down from on high and hitting the metal roof on the house creates the sounds of an artillery target zone

6. Little pointy acorns

5. The tiny caterpillars that rappel down by the hundreds from the oaks in the summer--even the county extension people don't know what they are--and that probably feed on acorns

4. Chenilles, which is what my husband calls the lame-o "flowers" oak trees produce, precursors of acorns, which, if not raked (like one is some serious OCD patient) will mat in the rain and create a walking surface much like that of a greased cake pan.

3. The need, aside from one's normal OCD needs, to rake acorns because it becomes impossible to walk across the acorn-studded grass, which is akin to walking on marbles--even in shoes it's not fun.



2. Injuries caused by acorns rocketing down from 60-80 foot trees any time a breeze stronger than 2 mph blows

And the number one reason not to surround your house and yard with 50-100-year-old oak trees:

1. The insult of being hit by an acorn while raking said objects



I'm thinking maples.....