Day of the Stop Gap

Again, not to brag, but twice today deer revealed themselves to me. 

Trying to stretch my legs and my every-other-day walking hike/hiking walk a little bit further, I walked the full 6-mile loop of the Cochran Shoals Trail today. I've walked along near it for years, nay, decades, now, but ignored the loop trail as a mountain-bike route not fit for joggers or walkers. It's certainly not a jogging trail, but it's fine for hiking, although you need to hop out of the way from speeding mountain bikes from time to time, although it wasn't particularly busy on this weekday afternoon. 

At one point during my walk, I saw a pair of deer on the open trail ahead of me. We both stopped and looked at each other for a minute, and once the deer realized I wasn't a speeding biker or otherwise an enemy, it ignored me and casually walked off into the woods. Pics or it didn't happen:

About a half hour later and obviously further on down the trail, I saw another deer, not on the trail but off in the woods. Could have been one of the pair I saw earlier, but I don't know.

I feel like deer presenting themselves to me is an omen of good karma, a sign that I'm doing something right. I think that these are my third and fourth sightings this month.

Now that the dog days of August are past, I'm finding an urge to do more hiking again. I might head up to the Chattahoochee National Forest and the lower stretches of the Appalachian Trail soon, but my next step, at least at the local level, is probably to combine the Cochran Shoals Trail with the Sope Creek Trail for an eight-mile, figure-8 loop hike.