At 9 nights, this was the longest outdoors trip I’ve ever done and the longest I’ve been away from home in at least 30 years.  I saw a lot of areas I’d been wanting to see, hiked parts of 3 sections of the Ozark Trail, kayaked and canoed for the first time, and met some new people along the way.  I was surprised at how little I thought about what might be happening back home or in the world in general.  I wasn’t so disconnected that I was able to forget what day it was, however.

With no rain, I was sure my gardens would be suffering and the 3 cone flowers I planted the week before I left would be dead but everything survived!  The bird feeders were probably empty the day after I left and the birds had mostly abandoned my yard but they’ve come back.

I had a pile of stuff to catch-up on, 524 photos to process, 200 emails to read, 3000 unread messages in my RSS feeds, a big Sierra Club project beginning the week I returned, and of course my employer expected me to spend some time on their projects.  🙂  Getting the blog updated took far longer than I expected.

I’ll sign-off with this haiku I was inspired to write during the trip:

f*cking whip-poor-will
calls shattering the night air
dreams interrupted