Blogging Bellingham: And I was only going for a little walk…

I'm lost, I'm lost, I'm Captain Kirk photo by Patricia Herlevi

With Halloween just around the corner, the local paper, Cascadia Weekly has been flouting the name “Hellingham” perhaps to bolster the college students’ collective enthusiasm or it just felt like the right pitch to Bellinghamsters during this darker time of the year.

leaving bread crumbs behind photo by Patricia Herlevi

First there’s Halloween, then the Day of the Dead when the ancestors return just in time for the upcoming election.

Light and Dark photo by Patricia Herlevi

With all of that and stress from my various projects, I decided to go for a little walk in the Sehome arboretum.

photo by Patricia Herlevi

I was just going to hike up the trail a short way and then turn around, go home and get back to work.  But similar to Dorothy and her Tin Man and Scarecrow, I felt so intoxicated by the beauty of the trees that I got turned around–okay I got lost.

And when you’re lost in the woods by yourself, even in broad daylight and you don’t see any other humans in sight, it’s kind of spooky.

rocks and ferns photo by Patricia Herlevi

So I kept walking and that song by the Canadian country musician Wendell Ferguson about rocks and trees popped in my head.  The only difference is he despises rocks and trees so someone like me, a tree hugger would have driven that man crazy.  Thankfully we never met.

And this shutter bug totally lost by this point, just kept taking pictures of you guessed it, rocks and trees.  I did run into a few stragglers, a jogger, and an older couple who gave me directions, but since I have no sense of direction (I take after my mother), I kept walking in circles until I found a main road and just kept walking until I reached the south side of the WWU campus.

Seeing the forest through the trees, photo by Patricia Herlevi

So my little walk (does anyone take a just a little walk in Bellingham?) turned out as a mid-day excursion.  That’s okay because I came home, ate chocolate and completed my work.

Actually I’m probably telling lies and really I was hanging out with hobbits in a Finnish forest in my backyard.  You never know.