“Everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’ve already seen; the world is nothing but change.”
Marcus Aurelius
I don’t have too much to report on this hike as it was a pretty uneventful 5ish miles. The trail runs basically across from Jackson Lake Lodge, and I started at the Grand View Trailhead which is the same place that I started for Two Ocean Lake. From there, the hike heads south in sight of the main Park road. The trail is mostly flat, but weirdly difficult for a few reasons: 1. It was in the direct sun, 2. the trail is silty with medium river rocks, so at times if felt like walking through soft but rocky sand, and 3. It is an apparently popular horse trail, so there were several horse manure piles to dodge.
The trail winds south toward a hill overlooking Oxbow Bend which offered an interesting perspective of an iconic view. It then turns back toward Emma Matilda Lake alternating between sporadic forests and clear meadows. It was only mildly interesting, but a pleasant enough walk. Eventually, the trail rejoined the Christian Pond trail and I made my way back to the trailhead the way I came.
I had listened to an interesting podcast on change on the way up to the hike, so I thought about that a little on the walk. Essentially, our lives are awash in a sea of change all the time, and the default setting for so many of us is that we don’t want things to change. We can spend most of our lives dreading change, fearing change, trying to combat change, and the only thing that we can be assured of is that everything has changed and will continue to change whether we want it to or not. So, the goal, should be to get good at dealing with change.
The first tactic is to recognize what change we have control of, and what change is beyond our control. Most of it, we don’t control, so we need accept that fact. The next strategy is to recognize that change is happening incrementally all the time. Even changes that seem huge and acute, in general, have been evolving over time. Thirdly, we need to ground ourselves in our identity, but remain flexible and adaptable to the changes coming our way. Change is not the exception, it’s the rule, so we need to try to embrace it, and grow along with it.
Mileage – 5.72 miles
Time –1 hour, 44 minutes
Animals – none, but I did see some coyote dens
People – a few