Beware The Woods

The weather where I live has been mild this winter, but after a few cold days and our first snow of 2012, Mother Nature brought us a day of inverted weather, complete with a fog to rival that of San Francisco or London.

I adore the outdoors, and attribute it to my father's love of nature and spending my summers at our family's lake house in Lodi, New York. Long walks through the woods were always chaperoned, as black bears were known to reside there. We had a common love of the wild blackberries with those large beasts, and my mother was never keen on our excursions.

I think that my intense fear of Little Red Riding Hood came from my mother's constant worry over those woods.

It didn't stop me from wandering back then, and doesn't stop me now. Whenever I find myself alone in the woods, I know that my father's spirit is close by.

I believe that we inherit our love of certain things from our ancestry, and that my Armenian/Russian heritage is the source of my love of the mountains and snow.