Walking the Trail

I have some friends I meet in town for coffee every Friday morning. It's about a fifteen minute walk from my house, mostly along an old railroad track that's been turned into a walking/biking/snowmobiling trail. I live in the lake country of northern Wisconsin. Back in the day, passenger train service built the tourist industry here. There used to be two trains a day from Chicago. I often think about how nice that would be. I love it here, but I'd love it even more if I was only a train ride away from the city.

Still, the old railway trail is a beautiful way to get into town and I walk it whenever possible. This morning the temperature was -10 F, colder with the wind. Nevertheless, I bundled up and trudged over, grateful for the moon on the way to town and the sun on the way home. It's such a pretty walk that about half the time I take a picture to post on Facebook. I can't tell you how many versions of this scene I have, one even made it onto the cover of Whistle Blower. And yet, again this morning I stopped to record and share it. 

There's that old homily about falling into the same pothole along the same route until you finally decide to go a different way. Maybe there's something to be learned from the opposite experience of going the same route every day and marveling at the ordinary beauty. I hope so, because I doubt I'll stop taking and sharing this picture. It just gets me every single time.