dirt don't hurt

Ask most people if they are right or left handed and they’ll answer in a heartbeat.  Ask about their eye dominance, and marksmen will respond quickly.  Ask about their feet and most will stare blankly at you.  Continue reading this potentially important information, and you’ll never walk into a public restroom the same way again. I have been lucky enough to take a few mini courses in tracking.  I can identify a cat from a dog from a coyote and on a good day can tell you if the deer that walked through the mud was a male or female.  Animal tracking gives you a strong connection to the natural world.  You begin to walk with the animal, feel its thirst and quest for water, its attempt to eat or consequence of being eaten.  A good tracker will look at tracks and be able to piece together an entire story about that animal, because animals follow patterns and instincts. We have to remember, though, that when it comes down to it, we are animals, too....

A few words about aging, because as much as we’d like to not do it, it happens.  You could eat every health food in the book, spend your paycheck on vitamins, slather yourself in creams, and exercise like a fiend and still, at the end of the day, you’re still another day older. Gray hairs and wrinkles don’t lie. The good thing about aging is the part that we can control, and I’m not talking about coloring your hair.  I’m talking about the theory that you are only as old as you feel.  Or even, you’re only as old as you want to be.  (Today I packed a piece of plastic doggie doo in my son’s lunch.  By this rational, I am approximately eight years old.) So when faced with the ticking clock, I think it’s important to take time out of our busy adult lives and actually attempt to be youthful now and then, because if for no other reason, youthfulness feels wonderful. And there is nothing makes me feel more young than the prospect of a day of serious sledding....