1000 hikes: Sometimes we just can't wrap our brains around reality

This morning we hiked the Pine-Strawberry trail for 3.5 miles.  It was challenging in comparison to how we had hiked this same trail last year.  

Both of us, especially me, are working our way back into shape because of my heart attack and because of how hard it has been for us to get outside due to all of my medicines.

After we completed the hike, I decided to calculate the number of hikes we had completed since the start of 2012.  

And came up with 1007 hikes for over 4900 miles in 12 1/2 years.  All in our 60s and 70s.

Can this really be true?   Nah.  How can it be?  It's impossible, right? 

As true as it is, it is mind-boggling for us.  Can't really believe it.  

It blows us away.  What a life together.  What a life!

12 1/2 years ago when we embarked on our first road trip we could never have imagined hiking 1000 times.  It could not have even have entered our minds as a possibility.  Isn't that kind of like life?  We could not have anticipated all of the joys of raising children when we first saw our babies popping out into the world.  We could never have even imagined 14 grandbabies that we love so much.  We could never have anticipated what we did in our jobs when we started our first day at them.  All of those things are only comprehensible after we have been immersed in them over a period of many years.

Same with our hiking. We never could have anticipated hiking 1000 times.  Never in a million years.  

We never had a goal to try to reach 1000 hikes, or any number.  We just put on our backpacks to go out into nature together.  

We have worked hard, had achy, tired muscles.  Many of hikes were off-trail....just the two of exploring to find out "what's over that next hill do you suppose?"  We have hiked all over our wonderful country.  

And, like for this morning, the vast majority of our hikes have just been the two of us---not seeing anyone else.  Just nature.  On our way home today, for example we saw a Javelina.  That's it!

We often think of Replicant Roy's speech in Blade Runner:

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die."

When it comes our time to die, we will die knowing that, together we have seen things most people wouldn't believe, including and mostly us.  

1000 hikes.  Together.  In just over a decade.

(one has to look closely in some of the photos, but one or both of us is in all of them)

  

 

 

Vicky being Forrest Gump in Monument Valley (not really a hike, but just HAD to include it):

 

 

 

 

Here we are in one of our Fields of Gold, up on the rim.  I have promised Vicky that we will walk in Fields of Gold.  We think about these fields whenever we dance to the Sting song...one of our very favorites.  Or when I play it for Vicky on the new piano she bought for me.

 

A favorite spot of ours.  An old homestead, long abandoned.  On the front stairs, when they laid the concrete, they wrote into the concrete:  "WELCOME."  We love just absorbing the vibes of the family that tried to eke out a living here.   (we walk through our fields of gold to get to this spot)

 

 

Photos from our 1000th hike...on Vicky's birthday weekend up on the Mogollon Rim: