I worked an overnight at Ashland for the first time in several months this past weekend, and it felt good to be walking the trails again. Somewhat regularly when I come home from working, I think it would be nice to take the kids out to Ashland on weekends I’m not working, for us to hike and enjoy the setting as a family, but it seems my free weekends always get consumed by other things - cleaning, shopping, good old-fashioned slacking off. But the reality is that this job is a big factor in getting me out at all. Still, I continue to think I’ll make it a priority, perhaps this spring when it will be easier to convince everyone to spend a few hours outside.
For this weekend, I learned some things and, most importantly, got my footing again, feeling comfortable speaking to a group. Saturday night we had a lesson on Astronomy, one of the programs that I have assisted with a number of times but still feel a bit nervous about presenting. In preparation, I reread The Firmament chapter of The Natural Navigator, so I had some interesting information about using the stars for direction in mind. And I did present part of the lesson, speaking about those constellations with some connection to wayfinding or orientation in the sky: the Big Dipper/Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Cassiopaea, Orion, Canis Major and Canis Minor.
