{"id":568,"date":"2013-03-09T05:02:48","date_gmt":"2013-03-09T05:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/?p=568"},"modified":"2013-06-26T18:26:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T18:26:46","slug":"walking-in-a-winter-wonderland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/2013\/03\/walking-in-a-winter-wonderland\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking in a Winter Wonderland"},"content":{"rendered":"

I used to go walking in the Gatineau Hills National Park almost every day, in the summer and fall. Since the snow fell, and since I was raised to full-time at the college again, I haven’t been in it much. But it’s March Break, so I took an afternoon off my writing and my course prep to follow my “traditional” hiking path. It’s about 12 kilometers in all, perhaps more: and it takes me to Pink Lake and back. In the winter it’s much more difficult, as some of it has snow up to my waist and I don’t have snowshoes to stop me from sinking into it. I got my cardiovascular workout today!<\/p>\n

Back when I was walking it more regularly, I gave names to some of the landmarks on the way: “the First Hill”, “the Shining Ridge”, “the Black Water”, “the Rock of Ages”, “the Three Brothers and the Motherstone”, and “Cyrodill” – the latter is actually named for a fictitious landscape in a video game which resembles an area which I regularly pass through. I also like to give myself “missions” of a sort, as if I’m one of those Celtic heroes on an eachtra<\/em> (adventure, exploration). Sometimes the mission is to climb one of the rock formations. Sometimes it’s to leave an apple as an offering to Herself somewhere. Sometimes it’s to go a little further than I went before, or explore a new side-path. Sometimes it’s to shoot a photo of a certain landmark. And sometimes it’s to hike the route while avoiding people as much as possible. Thus does a landscape become one’s own. Some might say I’m too old to be making up names and stories for such places, but my pet dragon says those people are idiots anyway.<\/p>\n

I thought you might like to see some before-and-after photos of a few spots on the trail.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0731\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_0853\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_0763\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_0859\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_0786\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_0861\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Finally, the place on the shore of Pink Lake where I shot the front cover of Hallowstone<\/a>…<\/p>\n

\"Hallowstone<\/a><\/p>\n

…now looks like this!<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0855\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Happy springtime everyone!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to go walking in the Gatineau Hills National Park almost every day, in the summer and fall. Since the snow fell, and since I was raised to full-time at the college again, I haven’t been in it much. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[29,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brendanmyers.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}