Dolomites and Thereafter

The second week of Christmas break we drove to the Dolomites -- via Perugia, Florence, Verona, Venice, Bolzano -- to take the kids skiing.  At home, we take the kids skiing once per year, during my March break.  They've taken a few lessons, and they'll take advice from Daniel or friends or their grandfather.  They like to learn, and they love to ski, and they don't want to use their few days of skiing each year to take lessons.  So we left Viterbo on a Friday and reached Ortisei (which used to be part of Austria) on Wednesday morning.  Part of me wondered if all the hype -- this final destination that it took five days to reach -- would be worth it.  Would the kids actually enjoy it once we were there?  Would I actually get some daytime hours solo while Daniel skied with the kids?  (I stopped skiing a few years ago after a day of skiing with Sebastian and Mary and Daniel at Wachusett.  I was cold, nervous, and walking down a huge --for me -- hill; I had fallen, it was icy, and my knees and back were a bit nervous.  I like skiing, but I don't love it -- cross country would be more my style, and I really detest being cold and nervous and anxious that I'm about to throw out my back or hips or knees.  I was skiing because the kids love it, and it's nice to do together, and because I want to model doing rather than watching for them (perhaps most for my girls?).

Walking down that icy Wachusett mountain, I thought, "No more.  I don't have to do this.  I will run and walk and play tennis and soccer and basketball and swim and ice skate.  I will model active and will do lots with them.  But I will no longer ski with them."

Now they're all beyond the bunny hill and needing me beside them, so it's even easier for me to put the guilt aside.  So while they skied with Daniel, I hiked in the woods.  Hike might be an overstatement since I wasn't doing huge hills; rather, I was taking long walks that were beautiful and up high.  The mountains, the houses below that look so different from every other part of Italy, the blue sky, the peace.  At home I feel a bit nervous in the woods solo; here I didn't feel nervous at all.  I thought, This feels entirely necessary for my body and mind and spirit.  In one part there were rocks; in another moss.  A little ice in one spot; dirt in another.  Red and white markers helped me find my way, something I often don't follow because I'm with others who do this tracking the trail for me.  On my own, I had to rely on myself, and I was glad to do it, to feel independent and solo and relaxed, too.  No one's agenda: only mine.

My agenda: walk.

The air and the trees and the moss revived me in a way that I thought might last for weeks.

I told myself, "I will make more of an effort to get out to the mountains or just for nature-like walks when we're back in Viterbo."

It's so much easier to do my loop around the walls, but so good to get out into the woods.

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We're back in Viterbo.  It's Sunday.  When we wake up, I suggest to Daniel that we go on a small hike this morning.  We bribe the kids with no church if we go out to the woods instead.  We drive to Lago di Vico to find a trail for us adults and an open space for the kids to play.  A few false stops, i.e. over an hour later, and we are finally in the beech tree area.  The trees are bare, and it's not blooming, but it's still beautiful: moss and rocks and mud and trees upon trees, bare and all.

We plan to follow the red and white paint, a loop trail that should take about an hour.  Once we find a spot and a trail, and all the kids catch up, it's time for a croccante-nutella snack, and then we're on our way again, feeling like we're scaling rocks to make it to the top before we head back down towards the parking lot.  We slip going downhill, drag mud with us, run in a way that it's hard to stop (well, the kids do this -- I don't).

The morning outing ends up with a return home at 3pm, troppo tarde.  We've lost two soccer balls and one frisbee, and we've gotten our shoes so muddy that we're not bringing them into our apartment.  But it was worth it.

All week I'll have this thought of being out in the woods with me.

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Back at home, I am reserved about making (big) (any?) plans on a Sunday.  I want to end the weekend with a good family dinner, get down time before the busyness of the week, finish up a weekend list of things to do that I can never get to during the week, get adequate down time (which I often think I need more of than most people do).  Here it was me that suggested the hike, wrote in the afternoon rather than preparing for the week, served dinner after 8pm, went to bed way too late for a Sunday night.  I need more sleep, yes, but I also like this approach of not feeling that Monday morning brings a stop to all relaxing and productivity outside work.

I hope I take some of this back with me.