Taking A Walk : How Following My Intuition Lead Me To The Cows

It was one of the first dreary days of late September along the Colorado front range and, as on most mornings, it was time to walk the scotties. I wanted to try a new path and with a quick scan of google maps, I decided to take a short drive to Louisville CO and park just off South Boulder road. It looked like there was a path going to Harper lake, where I’d never walked, so a walk to and around the lake was the plan. The morning was gray and a bit chilly, but the dogs and I were feeling good as we set off walking. I was looking forward to what should be some spectacular views of the mountains and flatirons from the lake. The path was nice and after about 15 minutes we arrived close to the lake. As I approached the planned entrance path to the lake, I notice a “no dogs” sign, then another for a wildlife sanctuary. Huh… well dang, it looks like we aren’t going around the lake after all.

I felt disappointed at first but then remembered seeing a reservoir on the map not too far north of where I parked. I’ve been working on paying attention to my intuition more, starting in small ways, and it began to kick in. I felt drawn to the reservoir as a secondary destination and so we set off. Twenty or so minutes later we approached the reservoir. At first, I thought the large chain link fence was blocking off some buildings around the reservoir, but as we got closer it became evident that the fence went all the way around the reservoir. This was part of Louisville’s water supply and protected as such.

Scotties meeting the young cow

I knew the path didn’t go around the water by now, but it continued off in a somewhat promising direction so I decided to keep following the intuition and kept going. Shortly, we came to a small park close to the water, but still outside the fence. Off in the brush I noticed a crude swath cut through some of the brush, it wasn’t what I would call an apparent path by any means. Intuition still going strong, we check it out. It turned into a narrow dirt footpath following the reservoir fence. Following it a bit and crossing what looked like an open space fence with the provided step over, we soon arrived out onto a field on the plateau int west Louisville.

As we emerged from the brush I was rewarded with a small herd of cows nearby and some very nice views of the mountains and flatirons with clear views to the north. Wow! I was quite happy we had kept going. We traversed the field down the narrow path, passing close amongst the cows. We reached the end and came back on the same path. At this point, some of the cows had gathered right on the path and both cows and scotties were very curious about each other. We found a curious young bovine who seemed just as interested in the pups as they were in her. It was a hoot to see them interact and I was really uplifted and happy despite the dreary day.

Great view from the cow field

My small exercise in following my intuition in small ways paid off nicely. Not only did we get the great open views I was after, but we also got to have some scottie – cow fun. I look forward to paying more attention to that sometimes small voice inside and letting it guide me in larger ways in my life.