An In-Town Tourist Feature:
…because Adventure begins in the heart and Travel starts at the end of your own driveway.
Our dog Lily has had a touch of cabin fever. Begging to run out in the snow after every squirrel, deer and rabbit she thinks she might have spotted through one of the back windows (while pretending it’s an urgent call of another nature) and then scurrying back in after a rejuvenating roll in the snow. Over and over and over again. She’s bored. With the shorter days and colder weather, the ball tossing sessions in the yard have been less frequent. I readily admit that. And there’s not much in the way of smelly stuff to roll around in unless she were to trek into the laundry room -and to give her credit, she’s much smarter than that.
So we took her to a running/biking path this afternoon to burn off some doggy energy, enjoy the white wealth of winter -and coincidentally, to relive some memories.
The Olentangy Bike Trail is well known to Columbus area cyclists and runners. It hugs the Olentangy River stretching away only occasionally to access expansive fields graced by stately sycamores and dotted by the occasional soccer goal, neighborhood playground or exercise apparatus. I ran it daily for several years, the most memorable run being a plodding jog through thick snow the day before my first son was born. It’s a great bike route as well, passing through Antrim and Whetstone Parks before hitting the Ohio State University and then downtown Columbus.
Sunday afternoon, we walked as far as the athletic fields of my old high school, Thomas Worthington, turning back when we reached the boat launch site. The same river bank to which I had once solo paddled a two-man canoe after leaving a jealous high school boyfriend behind on a river island… I no longer remember the “why” of that escapade but am slightly impressed that my scrawny teen self could have piloted that canoe back upstream fueled only by righteous resolve.
Lily’s only resolve as we shivered our way back in fading sunlight was to roll herself into a chocolate (Labrador) snowball and to meet and greet every animal along the way.
Old trail, new memories, another cold winter day frozen in time as a treasure.
While burning off the doggy energy, Lily is also melting the snow along the jogging trek.
Rainfield: She rolled in enough of it to give herself a snow coat over all the fur! If only I could teach her to roll down my front sidewalk…