How To Make A Hiking Trail (link)

A steep and stony bit from one of my favorite Escape from Black Friday trails, at Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden, CT. 

Well, if I'd spent as much time this week blogging as I spent debating the 2nd Amendment on Facebook (squeezed in between close week duties at work, of course), it would've been a magnificent week here at Frogma. Too bad Facebook debates are pretty much a sheer waste of time - has anybody ever changed their mind because of an eloquent response to a challenging post? Probably not, but I was just so aggravated by people who could look at something like the Vegas shooting and not want to do anything about it. Gave in to the urge to argue it out with a couple of people.

No minds changed of course - the main person I was debating with, his mind is set in stone, I knew that, he's actually family and I've got some idea of the strength of his convictions, so I can't really blame anyone but myself if that was wasted time - but I did do a fair amount of reading up on the issues, and I guess it was good to get my thoughts in order on the matter. And I guess it was interesting seeing the rationales offered by folks on the other side of the issue - didn't make sense to me but at least I took the time to read their arguments. Wasn't comforting, in fact quite the reverse, but maybe it's good to know a little more about where such folks are coming from. 

Anyways - I threw all of my writing that way this week, but fortunately I had another idea for a post anyways, courtesy of a Facebook group for middle-aged women bloggers that my friend Pia, who's been writing her Courting Destiny blog for I think even longer than I've been writing Frogma (well over a decade now, can you believe it?) introduced me to. I doubt I would've ever checked it out without her, even though I am a middle-aged woman blogger myself I would've assumed that I would be a bit too odd of a bird to fit in there, but since she's an adventurous, independent single type herself, I gave it a try and found it to be a really lovely group of women. We have daily posts where you can put up a post of your own or anything else you want to share, with the idea that you'll visit two or three yourself.

Yesterday, among the posts was one titled "Buckeye Trail Building In The Wayne". Loving a good hike myself, I had to go check it out, and it was really fascinating! I've hiked a lot of trails but you know, I don't think I ever really thought about what went in to getting those trails ready for hikers to use. Turns out to be really quite a process - next hike I'll be looking at the trail with a little more appreciation for what's been done to make it! I hope you enjoy this excellent post from Kim Today, Midlife Adventurer!  Thanks, Kim!