MoJo's "traditional" Christmas Hike · Dec 25, 11:21 PM
We have always claimed that it is our tradition to go on a hike by ourselves on Christmas Day. It’s a wonderful tradition, but one that has a way of not quite happening. The first few years we were together, when we lived in Oberlin, we went for hikes in a wonderful forest not far from town, and every year a dog from one of the neighboring houses would join us. It was fun borrowing a dog for the day, and make the hike much more enjoyable.
In New York, the stress of renting a car and getting in and out of the city was always more than we wanted to handle on Christmas, so we usually just wandered around Central Park, which was eerily, blissfully empty on Christmas Day. Except for our last Christmas in NYC, which we spent in the hospital because Morgan broke her jaw.
Last year, our Christmas hike was scaled down because we had a ton of snow and Seattle’s roads were impassable, even with good 4-wheel drive. We walked around Green Lake instead.
So this year, we were really determined to have a proper Christmas hike. We were going to go up into the mountains and find some snow.
And then we had to deal with Bainne’s illness and death. We had her put to sleep around midnight on Christmas Eve, in the magical first hour of Christmas night when legend has it animals can speak. She seemed ready to go, although we weren’t ready to say goodbye. This morning, instead of going for a hike, we buried her in our back yard. She has a nice spot in the sun.
We did have time for a short hike nearby, at our favorite Anti-Aircraft Peak. It was late afternoon, and the sun was bright and the air crisp and cool. Archibald was so excited to be at Anti-Aircraft Peak – we haven’t been there in a while. He had a blast running up and down the trails. It reminded us of our first Christmas hikes with our borrowed dog in Oberlin – at the time, we looked forward to the day when we would have our own dog on our Christmas hike, so it was fun to watch Archibald fulfill that dream today. And it was hard to be too sad about Bainne while watching his unbridled enthusiasm. So it might have been less of a hike than we had hoped, but it ultimately fulfilled some of our past dreams, and gave us an opportunity to begin to recover from our grief.
Unbridled Optimism Dog:
A beautiful day for a hike
If somewhat rather coldish (but really, not too bad)
— MoJo
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