Must have passed the entrance to this forest a hundred times without ever giving it a second thought. To be clear I’m not a forest person unless, of course, it’s enchanted then I’m all in. But on a cold early Saturday morning with the sun shining down like it was already spring we just couldn’t resist.

Well, I couldn’t resist, Toti Nonna wasn’t all that crazy about the idea…at first. The ground was still hard from the winter but it had a bit of give under our feet where the grasses were beginning to thaw. There were felled trees to climb over and the smell was earthy like when you first turn over a garden. Toti explored with her nose to the ground looking up only to find herself standing on a log. She figured out that leaping over logs was much more fun than standing on them.

The sun looked like fans cutting through the trees. It reminded me of driving home from visiting himself after his accident at that certain time each day when the rays of the sun spread out like a fan. I used to call that God coming to earth.

We came to a stream that cut across the path, Toti leaped over first and thankfully there was a rock I could use to get a bit closer to the other side before my “leap”. The distance to the other end of this tiny forest wasn’t more than three quarters of a mile and breaking out onto the grass of one of the large businesses was a little deflating. But for that grand total of twenty minutes we were two old girls exploring nature.