The Cruel Process of Aging

It's almost, I say ALMOST, fall here. And when you live in New England,
you blog about the leaves and our superiority to everything
everywhere forever. OK, I might be mocking New Englandahs.

If you're over the age of 25, you probably know the feeling. It's more of a realization, really, that you are slowly turning into your parents.

I cannot pinpoint the exact moment this first occurred, nor regale you with a humorous tale of how this has come about. All we have is our lineage. My parents like eagles. Bald eagles, in particular. When they lived in Minnesota, they would drive a couple of hours south of the Twin Cities to the Mississippi river bluffs around La Crosse, Wisconsin. There, they would spend hours looking for bald eagles. Then they would come home.

We take our hiking extremely seriously here.

Now, they name the birds in their neighborhood and like to drive visitors to a tree about a mile from their home where a bald eagle lives. Or an owl. Or a hybrid of the two. I really don't know because I don't care much for birds.

Funny thing, age. We stop playing laser tag and Ghosts in the Graveyard. We stop drinking until we pass out, in most cases. We stop talking about awesome things. We start talking about how low mortgage rates are and what cities we think have the best mass transit. We're not sure when this exactly became a point of interest.

We get older, our tastes evolve, and we like different things. Things we used to make fun of people for talking about, even.

This is Oct. 8. It's 81 degrees. This is OK by me.

And so, with a deep sigh and a nod to a dying youth that we are here to talk about my newfound obsession with hiking. And tree leaves.

It's really a rekindling of a Utah-era obsession. A complaint about Portland, which has many great trails, is that its trails are too short. You can go for a half-hour or hour-long walk, but the epic cross-country adventures of the West aren't happening here.

Except they are. On Friday, Daisy and I headed west toward the mountains of Maine to find a spot to hike. We veered off the road about a half hour from home. We stumbled, swam and muck-raked for an hour Friday, two hours Saturday and another hour Sunday on different parts of that trail system. It turns out there are 13,000 miles of groomed snowmobile trails in Maine. We found part of that system which is virtually unused in the warm months. I've still got a couple of those left before we give way to the Polaris and Artic Cats.

What does this mean for you? God help us all, it means photo montages of pretty leaves. My name is Jim and I'm a male blogger. I swear to God. And I'm only 34, not 61 (Mom's age). Maybe I can get in a good drunken brawl on the trail with some swimsuit models to spice things up for you.

Yes, I brought Daisy to work. Judge me.