I spend a lot of time outside—enough that I should probably worry more about skin cancer than I do.

I’d always figured my coloring kept me on the safer end of it: brown hair, hazel eyes, skin that browns before it burns.

Then someone close to me had a melanoma removed. It was caught early, before it had spread. The dermatologist removed it and expected everything to be fine. What stayed with me wasn’t the surgery. It was learning where melanoma goes when it isn’t caught early. Not across the skin where you can watch it.

Inward.

Quietly.

To places no mirror shows you.

If someone asked for volunteers to run laps around the high school track, I’d be the last hand up.

The reaction comes before the thought — flat, physical, immediate. Not fatigue. Something closer to boredom that has weight to it. The repetition, the grind, the constant counter-clockwise rotation, getting lapped by that one guy who appears to have been born wearing running shorts. I feel hives coming on just thinking about it. The myth of Sisyphus opens to my view: me, sans boulder, pushing toward what exactly?

My wife has asked why I repeat the same rides and hikes. It’s a fair question. If repetition is the point, the track is more efficient. Perfectly measurable. Consistent surface. No variables.

But the track doesn’t interest me. The trail does.

I spent late Tuesday afternoon hiking up Bunnells Fork.

It’s not a famous trail. Not particularly difficult. Just a good trail tucked away in a canyon that sees far fewer people than it deserves. Seventeen hundred vertical feet in two miles. I committed to that distance to see what I could see.

Not much beyond sheer quiet, some year-old bear scat, and a solo wild turkey.

What it did have was spiders.

Thousands of them.

Or more accurately, thousands of strands of silk stretched across the trail. No webs. Just lines.

While I slept well the last few nights from cold temperatures, I couldn’t help but think about the orchards.

That’s the trade this time of year.

We rest better when the air cools off—windows cracked, deeper sleep, a sense of reset. But nearby, those same temperatures tighten the margin. A few warm days can pull everything forward—buds swelling, blossoms opening—only to be tested by a single cold snap.

And it doesn’t take much.

Around 28 degrees, a short stretch of exposure can damage open blossoms. A few degrees lower, even less time is needed. Once a tree commits to bloom, it’s vulnerable.

Growth invites risk.

I haven’t written much the past few weeks.

Not because life has been full. More because it hasn’t. Just not in ways that resolve into something clear enough to name. It’s been a stretch of in-between—one of those seasons that doesn’t announce itself but quietly takes over.

They call it a shoulder season—the slope below the peaks.
Right now, it doesn’t feel like a slope. It feels like a pause.

Ski season is over. Not officially, maybe, but practically. What’s left is thin, patchy, or soft in a way that reminds you more of what was than what is. Even the corn snow has come and gone. At the same time, the trails aren’t ready. Too wet. Too fragile. Ride them now and you leave your mark in the worst way—deep ruts that last longer than your impatience. I don’t want to be that guy.