Last Sunday I led a hike to the Selva Negra Nature Reserve near Ahuisculco.

“I want to take my grandchildren to a swimming hole this Saturday,” said my neighbor Richard. “Where can we go?”

While the word senderismo translates to “hiking” in English, I think it doesn’t come close to capturing the romanticism, idealism and emotionalism in the Spanish term.

Happy mothers and exuberant children gathered last Saturday at a DIF center near Guadalajara’s Auditorio Benito Juárez to celebrate the inauguration of a new playground, built for them thanks to the efforts of several expats from the United States.

One of the first places of natural beauty that I described in this newspaper – known in those days as the Colony Reporter – was La Campana, a small mountain located 130 kilometers southwest of Guadalajara on the road to Mascota.

In my closets are stacks of copybooks filled with stories I’ve penned for the Guadalajara Reporter going back 30 years, all of them written with a pencil and many while swinging in a hammock out in the woods, inspired by squirrels and woodpeckers.