Half an hour, here and there

For the past two days, we've run in what will be our local forest.   I will be describing it more in the future, but my first impression was reassuring: it smells nice.  This region has sandy soil and lots of long-leaf pines and I've been told that the pine pollen is horrible in the spring, but I like it for the time being.  Especially the smell!

When we left the Outer Banks a couple of days ago, a whole different world than the mainland, we'd also left the ocean and tidal marsh smells behind, which were replaced by chicken excrement and rotten fruit--the predominant smells at our two pitstops on the way here.  Not promising! But we'd come here in October, and I knew about the pines.   I'm still coming to grips with being plunked back in Dixie or whatever, and I'm trying not to count down yet (730ish days to go), and I'm pinning my hopes on these pines!  I hope they ward off the skank, horrible bugs, and stifling humidity that we lived with in Virginia.

We drove to the forest (it's just over a mile from our future home, and it has an "annex" just 0.13 of a mile away--actually, the whole neighbourhood is piney).  We stepped out of the car and I smelt pine.  The forest looks somewhat un-diverse and uniform, mainly pines and a thick layer of pine needles choking out most undergrowth, and it smells predictably light and uncomplicated.

I love the smell of pine.  When I first moved to Bucheon-Seoul, pine smelling soap was popular. I happily lathered up for many months, and then the smell fell out of favour, replaced by aloe or something like that.  Pine resurfaced about a year later, but as a yogurt flavour (!!! it was too reminiscent of cleanliness), subsequently replaced by pomegranate.  Occasionally, I find soap that has accents of pine, but tempered with other scents.  I'm sure the "pine" I smelled in this forest is also a complex goulash of different plants, but I obliviously and happily smelled simply "pine".

Today, we'd intended to run around a local reservoir--the path around it is flat, paved, and just over two miles.  This place has been recommended to us by several people.  Word is definitely out because, on this fine Sunday morning (sunny, 75F or so), it was packed.  The parking lot was close to full, and there were people all over.  It was like the Canal back home during the tulip festival.

We decided to dodge tree roots rather than people and so we returned to the forest.  I tripped only twice today.