Enjoying the simple things

It's been a while since I posted in a new community which even though I knew about, I never took the time to actually write a post for it. But since most of my photography posts lately include a bit of rambling and sharing my thoughts and impressions about life in general, I thought that it's worth a try for the Reflections Community that seems like the perfect home for this kind of posts.

In fact, some pictures need no description at all as they do a pretty good job of sharing the feeling without needing words with that purpose, but there are also those who get closer to people's hearts when they understand the emotion and thoughts before tapping on the little screen to take a picture.

Quite a similar mood, filled with lots of thoughts and emotions I felt lately celebrating the first year together with Sky, my tom cat, which not only improved the quality of my life both mentally but also emotionally, but I like saying that he saved me a lot more times than someone will ever know, fighting with anxiety and dark thoughts for already a couple of years.

I was actually going to make my Wednesday weekly post about him and how we celebrated this moment last week, but I decided on the last moment to stay away from technology and from sharing this life update as I am sure not many would understand the emotion. And it's not like I give a damn because I really don't care about what others think or if I'm seen as a crazy cat lady, but for the sake of Sky, I wanted to stay away from sharing this moment especially since I was very emotional in that period and most likely I'd end up with a stupid post unwritten well instead of putting my thoughts in order and share what I actually feel.

Instead, I ended up taking advantage of the 1st of May which is well known as the International Workers' Day which is celebrated off-work in more parts of the globe. So with this occasion, both I and my boyfriend came to the thought of taking a long walk in town as we used to do a while ago.

Until last year, all these walks were not missing, either if they were happening in the middle of the week or in the weekend. But as life keeps going, there are many changes brought by the passage of life in someone's life.

Sadly, we only realized how badly we miss these walks when we figured out that except when we head to work or to the gym, there are some good weeks in between our walks. Which is crazy!

My trips also decreased a lot in numbers and that contributes pretty much to needing these walks even more than before, but happily, there are lots of memories stored safely on my external HDD which are waiting for me to write about until new ones are created. But until then, I'll share a few images from our last week's walk that extended on around 10 km.

We started the walk with a proper destination in our heads, namely, a place where my boyfriend was living and who was taking lots of breaks from his daily routines having the forest so close to him. There are actually lots of stories in this place as he used to have "his own" bench where to sit and speak with me when we were living apart, as well as have most of our bike rides in this area, so you can imagine how many memories are revived at every single step.

However, this time we discovered a new path which is in parallel with the one we were used with, and which represents an MTB trail that we should try one day.

Happily, there weren't a lot of bikers on the trail, making it a perfect spot closer to the heart of nature and away from crowded locations. More than that, we noticed many interesting panels naming the species of plants and trees living in the area, as well as interactive 3D puzzles, resting places made entirely of tree leftovers but also this tree stump that was 120 years old.

That made me realize how many tree stumps I've seen close to this size but which were unmarked so we obviously crossed like it was something normal. But when you get a new perspective of how much this one grew from one period to another, as well as how old it was when being taken down, makes you pay more attention to these aspects and how many years a tree needs in order to reach that size.

After reaching the end of the MTB track we ventured on a familiar path which we used to follow a lot during our bike rides as we had a special spot that was away from too many people and it also came with lots of trees where to hang our hammocks.

And based on the many thousands of steps we had registered on that day, we thought it was a pretty good excuse to stop by, read a book and enjoy the sounds of nature and all the birds living in the forest.

^{View from the inside of my hammock}

Relaxing can come in many forms. From the most basic activities to those that already involve technology or material stuff. But neither I nor my boyfriend were ever part of that category.

We both enjoy listening to music, playing video games, board games, and so on, but the feeling you get from minimalism and simple things will never be able to be properly compared with the others.

Hence why, I never considered material things a source of happiness. They do change your mood for a few moments when you get a new gadget or whatever, but at the end of the day, if you venture into the woods, that's where the proper silence and heart's peace come from. At least for us. And I really need more of this feeling in my life.

^{Gabriela Travels is the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences. At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe. Additionally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (260+ articles written on this field), but also abording other topics as well, like game reviews, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 550+ blog posts. Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, editing, cooking, and doing various sports activities.}

~ @GabrielaTravels ~

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