Is this thing still on? I have a post coming soon about the 24 hours I spent in Rocky Mountain Park at the end of June, but before I share that I thought I’d share a brief update explaining my long blog hiatus.
A lot has happened since my last post in August 2021. A month before I got pregnant with our twins (Nolan and Conall, who are now two!), we backpacked the Northern Loop in Mount Rainier National Park with my brother Myles and his then-girlfriend-now-wife Hannah. We sold our house in NE Portland a month later, moved in with Lindsay’s parents, and just before we welcomed our twins we bought and moved into our current home in the lovely Hillsdale neighborhood of SW Portland.
Life has been a wild ride since our family grew from three to five! We haven’t backpacked since August 2021, I’ve only picked up my camera two or three times (luckily I remembered how to use it lol), and “hiking” has looked more like neighborhood walks or short urban forest hikes. I know we are in the thick of it right now with twin toddlers and an almost seven year-old and that someday we’ll have more time and energy to hike and backpack again (with our kids in tow!), but, for now, I’m just grateful for any amount of time in the woods.
Perhaps someday I’ll write about my postpartum experience exclusively pumping for twins for 13 months, but for now I’ll just say that it took about a year and a half after giving birth to feel like myself again (although I am not sure if my body will ever feel like it did before pregnancy/c-section). Last winter, I finally started riding our Peloton bike regularly thanks to the Power Zone training program which has helped me get my fitness back and see measurable progress in my strength and endurance. I’ve started walking our neighborhood trails in SW Portland more and my next goal now that my base fitness is solid is to return to trail running (I have had a major mental block around returning to running since I stopped during early pregnancy). We even hope to go backpacking once this summer - to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary!
Recently, we visited my parents and sister and her partner Mary in Colorado and my parents graciously, generously encouraged me and Lindsay to go away for a night. We visited Rocky Mountain National Park for the first time and just barely scratched the surface in the little over 24 hours we were there. I can’t promise I will write more often in the near future, but hopefully I won’t go another three years in between posts.
Thanks for following along,
Maura