What a gloomy and gray day it has been. I took a long forest walk in a local park, noticing the stark colorless bareness of the vegetation around me, skinny gray tree trunks and dry leafless brown brambles curling along the earth, all silent except for the sound of thin brooks weaving through the wood. I visit this park more in the summer, when it is bursting with lush greenery and bird song, the whole of it enclosed in a canopy of bright leaves.

Here is a fun fact: while in Paris, Thomas Jefferson sent his friend Madison numerous gifts, one of which was a pedometer. Wait. There is an 18th century pedometer??! I told you people haven’t changed that much!