My honey Mark and I love to hike. I call him my Mountain Man. But in Texas, mountains are hard to find. Last year I decided to stop bemoaning all the natural beauty that wasn’t in Texas (I’m thinking of the Oregon Coast here), and start searching for the beauty that IS here. So I went looking for mountains, and I found them a quick 3-hour drive to Oklahoma.
I wanted to have a special retreat time together before I started my next semester of nursing school. For the first 8 years of our life together, we both worked from home. Now we both work outside the home, and I’m going to school, so we are always looking for ways to create more time together. One night I told my honey I was abducting him for a few days, and off we went to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge!
It was windy and cold, but we spent 3 days hiking and enjoying being outside, and it was a lot of fun.
I know this photo is a little grainy, but I just had to include this photo of my honey’s tree antlers 🙂 He is the cutest patutie ever.
While we were there we saw wild longhorns, prairie dogs, and even bison!!! I really loved the bison. I felt like I was back in time…you know, before we slaughtered all the Indians.
We brought our inflatable kayaks (my new favorite thing), but the lakes were frozen! I am a Texas girl, and lakes don’t freeze in Texas. I stared at each frozen lake we came across, jaw dropped, stunned. I just stood there. I think part of me hoped that if I stared long enough, the screen would refresh and the water would be flowing again 🙂
There was a storm in the forecast, so we were watching the weather radar every 10 minutes to figure out how much longer we could hike before we had to go back to our B&B. I kept telling Mark, “With all this rock, if it starts raining, we’re going to have a flash flood really fast.” I didn’t want to be a party pooper, but I did want us to stay alive, so…
There is something so reviving about being outside. So much lately I find myself indoors – school, work, studying, doing readings – and my spirit screams at me to go outside and play. I’m so glad we made this time together to get away from everything, spend time in nature, and see the beauty around us.
With Love,
