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Notes -
I spent much of this week touching grass.
Camped overnight at a national park, and the wife, the three old, and I did some short hikes to some waterfalls. Then we came back a few days later before our 7 day vehicle pass expired and did another short loop. The kid was an absolute champ, and made it probably about 80% through each hike before she got too hot and tired and needed to go up on my shoulders for the remainder.
Touching grass is great. I would highly recommend it.
Yeah.
I'm spending the next ~10 days at the family dacha that's also in a national park. We won't be doing too much hiking as we've been hiking in the are for at least 90 weeks over my lifetime, but we ll be doing some rather intimate grass-touching in the form of cutting down surplus firs in a leisurely manner, clearing the brush, chainsawing it into meter logs so there's something to burn during winter.
It's right next to a gorge, the tall forest starts right on our property, the place is shady, reasonably quiet and very pleasant to be at. Part of a small hamlet of maybe 40 permanent residents in a shady forest valley six miles from the nearest towns. Tourists drive here to go for a hike. There's a lot of them - you see 60-80 cars parked here daily, but they're generally well-behaved.
Everyone sleeps an hour longer here, and just sitting on the porch in the sun, drinking coffee while gazing at the tall conifers swaying in the wind is sublime. We all feel at peace here.
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