Adventure is what we make it

Tough Cookie in the nursery getting ready for her new adventure , being a big sister.

And just like that, we find ourselves celebrating the changing colors of the leaves. Tough Cookie and I have certainly come a long way, and now as the summer segues to autumn, and school work piles up, we find our roles and ambitions changing as well. The long days on the trail have made Janelle tougher and stronger. She’s joined her Cross Country Team at school, and has worked hard to fulfill her pronouncement to me earlier this year, that in 2014, she will run. Well, indeed she has.

This has meant less time on the mountains and more time for me, on the sidelines. Watching. Being proud. But, I’m ok with that.

This month will be the final round of presentations for Buffalo and Tough Cookie until 2015. And that’s been quite a journey for us as well. We’ll finish off the year with three big events, Pembroke, New Boston and Statham. Check the events listing above for your last chance to see us for a while. And don’t forget that we’ll appear on Windows to the Wild on NHPTV, next week, Wed., Oct. 8 at 7:30pm

But everything has a reason. And ours is simple. Janelle is working hard at school, and running. And I am getting ready for my own, next, enormous, challenging and wonderful, adventure. In December, we’ll welcome a new hiker into our odd, misfit family. And the twins have stepped up to the task of being older “siblings” to their coming “sister”

This journey has provided lessons too numerous to list at this point, but the one we all keep going back to is the most obvious, and the most difficult: Your family is the people who you love, and who love you back. So, this last weekend, we gathered with our family (they are our FAMILY, I don’t bother putting the word in quotes any more), to clean, paint and decorate the new nursery, and I could not have been any happier, or lost in wonder, then if I had stepped onto a mountain summit.

Aaron has already begun thinking about what instrument to teach the baby. And Janelle, well, I think it’s clear that it won’t be long before that little one is stepping up onto her own mountain summit, perhaps on Janelle’s back. We gather together. We learn and celebrate each other. Life itself is an adventure. Onward!

Date set for the Windows to the Wild broadcast!

Well friends, as you can see by the new picture in our header, we’re excited about the upcoming broadcast of the Windows to the Wild show featuring Buffalo and Tough Cookie! The air date is, drum roll please, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014 at 7:30pm on New Hampshire Public Television. We even already have a blurb on their site, check it out: An Unusual Hiking Duo

I’ll post more as the time draws near, but until then, here’s one of my favorite shots from the hike. Big thanks for the pics to Joe Klementovich. Our banner and the pic below is © Joe Klementovich for New Hampshire Public Television.

Guess who was the center of attention all day long?