April was a strange month. Especially in regard to the weather, but that affected many things in my life.

Reading

In April, I’ve read two books from one series, and started with the next one. A bit over two books isn’t as good as I’d like, given the books are short, and I have space for improvement on this front. But then, it was somewhat affected by where a lot of my attention was recently.

Hiking

Before I get to hiking itself, early spring is when my hiking club starts putting together ideas and early plans for the next year. Especially for our spring and autumn weekend trips and the summer week-long trip, which need to be done well in advance as booking a place for 50-60 people isn’t easy. Thus, a lot of my time was spent pondering ideas, choosing those I was ready to present, and thinking about the ideas and suggestions the others presented to help us move forward.

As I hinted in the first line, April was a varied month when it comes to weather. Rainy and sunny, warm and cold times came and went, sometimes several times in one day. I managed four hikes with total length a bit over 100km, which is now keeping me at a similar level as the previous year.

And, as it tends to be, there was a lot of water involved. The first hike in the month had light rain showers, the second was a day after rain and the swelling streams had me improvise, and the last hike (yesterday) soaked me through.

I also spent one day volunteering at one of the mountain chalets, which was spent mostly sorting old planks to see which could be repurposed, then hammering and prying (often rusty) nails from them so that, in the future, they could be made into a simple shed for storing firewood. I wasn’t alone – we were around 20 people from our hiking club doing various tasks with men dealing with the large pile of planks and women mostly putting fresh paint on the fences, benches, and other wooden elements.

Writing

In the first part of the month, I continued with my light edits of book three. I’ve reached almost to the end, stopping at the last scene before the book moves the series to its grand finale. Shortly after, I received feedback on book two from one of my betas, and it gave me a lot to think about, so I decided to step back for a while and consider my next moves for the story before I delve into it again – which I hope to do in the second half of May.

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Well, that’s a quick summary of the last month. The hikes will get more detailed post soon, with plenty of photos. That said, the planning for the hiking club will keep me busy in the coming days. Hopefully not too much at the cost of other hobbies, but once this planning is done, things will ease off a bit and give me more time for other interests.

I hope April had seen you well – and did not pull so many weather pranks on you as it did on me. Have a nice May, and I hope to see you soon.