Walk Location: Rasmussen Woods (Mankato, MN)
Time of Walk: Early morning
Temperature: 54 degrees
Weather Conditions: Warmer and overcast
Steps: 5,900
It is warmer this morning, almost ten degrees warmer than yesterday, and I can tell the difference. By the time I am one-third the way into my walk I am perspiring. On autumn mornings like this is hard to know whether to wear shorts or pants, a t-shirt or a t-shirt plus heavier shirt. I opted for pants and t-shirt plus a heavier shirt, and it makes my hour less enjoyable.
Rasmussen Woodsis a heavily wooded, hilly series of trails that conjoin at a nature center. Once the walker enters the tree-canopied trails it feels as though the traffic and city activity are miles away. In fact, in just a few hundred yards there is a residential area and a major street. Time spent here is quiet, pleasant and calming, but the experience is more challenging than walking a sidewalk or typical paved trail. The footing is forest bottoms and there are many hills to traverse. Even though my walk is half the distance of yesterday's, it feels like it was more strenuous with the up's and down's of the trail and the softness underfoot.
Animal life in a forest is subdued and often muted. The occasional deer (we saw one on our way out this morning) and bird are exceptions to the quiet rule. Having grown up in the part of Minnesota that is heavily forested, I was never aware of how quiet a pine or hard wood forest is until my experiences, later in life, on the prairie, which seems to hum with nature's activity.
The weather is turning and the threat of rain hangs in the air. I remind myself to appreciate these fleetingly warm days of early autumn, since it will not be long before the crispness in the morning air becomes more permanent, the leaves begin to turn shades of red, yellow and orange, and eventually the first snowfall will come.
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