2025 is my 77th year on this planet. I feel amazing and energetic and truly blessed to be still alive, let alone to be able to get out in nature and walk. I'm astounded to see that nearly half of the men my age in the US have already kicked the bucket by this age (Social Security Actuarial Life Tables for 2024). I'm beating the odds. What did I do to deserve that???
Maybe part of the answer is the walking itself. Honestly, I'd like to get up on a soapbox and preach the amazing benefits of walking and getting out in the peace and serenity of nature. But all these things are pretty well known, and writers much more talented than me have expounded and pontificated and proselytized on these subjects at length. I don't need to add to their wisdom.
My walks are the most important part and the best part of every day for me. I'll even feel a sense of withdrawal and regret if I have to miss a day of hiking, and so when I got up this morning, it seemed natural to consider a New Year's resolution to help me avoid those few days when I just don't feel like going out because the weather is bad, or because I'm tangled up in some indoor sit-down project. "Sitting is the new Smoking", right. The chair is going to kill us all!
I already have good habits regarding the walking lifestyle. When I wake up in the morning, one of the first things on my mind is "where do I want to hike today." I like to vary my walks, both in the actual route, and also in the reason, theme, or goal of the day's outing. Some days I'll walk to a store, buy what I can carry back home in my daypack, and save the planet a little by leaving my car parked at home. Some days I'm looking for a particular feature of nature, such as which flowers are in bloom, how the seasons are changing the woods.
I love sharing my photographs, so that becomes part of the motivation for creating this blog post. It will serve to make me accountable for my resolution and to give me the excuse to do a 'show and tell' with one or a few photos from the day's hike.
![]() |
Bonus pic: January 12: The snowdrops seem content enough after 9 inches of snow and ten days of continuous below freezing weather. |
And so, without further ado. Here we go. The resolution is basic and simple. Here are the rules:
- Walk Ten Thousand Steps. That's nominally five miles, and since I use a GPS and not a Pedometer, I'm measuring distance, not actually counting steps. My goal is to hike at least five miles each day in 2025, and probably for the rest of my days - as long as I can haul my carcass out of bed in the morning and strap on a belt pack and get out the door.
- Always walk outdoors in a natural setting. No tread mills. No gyms.
- Rain or Shine. No excuses, no exceptions.
- Take at least one photo of an interesting sight and feature it here on this blog post
- Do a little trail work along the way - pick up litter or cut back some brush (I always carry a hand pruning shear in my beltpack).
The creation of this post was my main motivation for the inaugural New Year's Day hike. I intend to update this post every day, adding a new photo up top and describing the day's hike and distance covered. The Chronological List of 2025 hikes begins below:
- Jan 1: Destination: Sewell's Orchard Pond, Columbia, MD. 5.212 miles.
- Jan 2: Sweet Hours Park, Eden Brook Rd., Kings Contrivance Trails, 6.51 miles.
- Jan 3: Destination: Walmart! 5.374 miles.
- Jan 4: Big Loop around Owen Brown Community. "Track 11" - a specially designed Loop to be 5 miles: 5.073 as measured today.
- Jan 5: Wincopin Trails - Red, White, Yellow, Orange, and Purple. 5.139 miles.
- Jan 6: Destination: daughter's house in 6 inches of snow, 8.223 miles.
- Jan 7: Patuxent Branch Trail and Lake Elkhorn. 5.362 miles.
- ... and on we go. Because of very low view-counts on this post, I'm not updating this daily. I'll report monthly, probably, and surely when I get to the magical 'virtual round-the-world hike' mark, at 25,000 miles.
January 2025 total: 171.224 miles.
February 2025 total: 146.785 miles.
March 2025 total: 173.620 miles.
April 14th, 2025 was the big day: I surpassed the 25,000-mile mark. I've 'resolutely' kept to the resolution, having hiked at least 5 miles every day this year so far, and have no intention to stop now.
* * *
I hope 2025 finds you, dear readers, healthy and full of joy, and getting the chance to get outdoors as often as possible and take a walk. Cheers!
* * *
PHOTO ARCHIVE
![]() |
Pond on a winter morning - January 2. I'm showing this photo upside down because I think it looks better that way. What do you think? |
![]() |
January 5th: Frazil ice flowing with the current. Early morning on the Middle Patuxent River beneath I-95. |
![]() |
January 10: Canada Geese hunkering down in an aeration opening in the ice. Sewell's Orchard Park Pond. |
![]() |
January 15 (at right). The historic Pratt Truss Bridge built in 1902, now the signature feature of the Patuxent Branch Trail. At left is my photo from November 28, 2011, the first time I hiked here. |
![]() |
Jan 21: Bird on a tree-top twig. Can you spot it? The clouds are pointing to it. |
![]() |
Jan 22: View from a hayfield of the peak called 'Three Ridges'. The treetops there reach well above 4000 feet elevation, though the actual ground doesn't quite exceed that magic threshold. |
![]() |
January 24: Three Ridges framed by a badly invasive Paulownia Tree, native to China. |
![]() |
Jan 26: Three pics for the price of one. Rainbow Ice falls along the closed Blue Ridge Parkway. |
![]() |
Jan 27: Ice covered "Stairstep falls". The trail to get there was almost as treacherous. |
![]() |
February 18: Icicles on a log at Flat Rock Creek in the grounds of the Cloister. Winter is holding on. Snow is in the forecast for tomorrow. |
![]() |
Feb. 21: Ice mushrooms? Puzzle this one out! |
No comments:
Post a Comment