Some people sleep in until the afternoon. 

Some people bake cookies and eat them all in one sitting. 

Some people watch staggering amounts of Law and Order SVU. 

Some people do homework.........ok not that many people. 

Some people go sledding. 

That is, if theres actually enough snow on the ground during a snow day. 

And two out of the 6,973,738,433 people on this earth wander around the woods like lost fools.  

My friend who lives down the street interrupted my dog encyclopedia browsing with a text. She wanted to walk to the sledding hill. I said okay. 

Usually its perfect for sledding. The snow covered trees on either side muffle the sounds of surrounding cars, people, and dogs. Sometime the occasional snow- shoe fanatic trudges past, careful to avoid our painstakingly pristine sledding path, complete with a ramp that will launch anyone under 150 lbs approximately two feet into the air. But today, there wasn't enough snow for ramp. There wasn't even enough snow to consider sledding as an option. 

But if your best friend wants to walk to the sledding hill, just go. Trust me, it'll be awesome. 

So we met halfway between our houses and we started off in the direction we normally go, talking about the things we normally talk about. And then the most perfect little snowflakes decided to land all over us, initiating a frantic rush to take pictures of them before they melted. 

We both exclaimed how we had never seen snowflakes so intricate and detailed as those. 

As we walked up the hill, I asked if she wanted to walk down the path that branches off of our hill, into the woods. The one we had never been down before. She said okay. 

The path went on forever, it was like an adventure. Neither one of us is particularly inclined to hiking, so it was exciting and different. 

We came to a fork in the path, along with a large, open, wooden box- like structure, and a massive pile of slabs of concrete. We pondered the likelihood of finding a dead body somewhere back there. Then we decided that we should probably take a break from Law and Order SVU. 

First we turned right, and the path took us to a road. Then we backtracked and took the path on the left side of the fork, and went deeper into the woods until the path ended. We came to a stream, which apparently wasn't completely frozen over. Although it did have some pretty neat ice patterns. 

A few soggy steps later, we came upon a mini skating rink. 

Naturally, we both became professional figure skaters for about five minutes until we decided to head home because it was freezing. 

The thing about wandering in the woods is that any sense of direction is completely and hopelessly gone. Sure, we had a path, but we didn't know where it would lead. We didn't have a plan, we just started walking. And it was quite possibly the most entertaining snow day of my entire school career. Instead of sitting in my house accomplishing nothing, I went outside. I let go. I let go of my stress, I let go of the real world, for just a moment. I forgot about the upcoming tests I would have to take. I forgot about the pressure of getting into college. I forgot about the stress of my busy schedule. I let myself become enveloped in simple things like snowflakes and ice. I let myself get excited over the thought of an "adventure, even though I wasn't even a mile away from home. My friend and I had biked through the streets of our neighborhood countless times, oblivious to what could be found beyond our own backyards. Today, we saw things we hadn't noticed before. We discovered places we had never been. It may not appeal to everyone, but my friend and I had a blast. It was so fun to just amble around the woods and discover random things. All I had to do was let go, and start walking.