Miles and Confidence: Windsor Castle Park Trail with My Girl
There is something about doing hard things with your daughter.
Not the kind of hard that involves tears or crisis or the particular drama that mothers and daughters are capable of generating together — we are very good at that kind too, trust me. I mean the quiet kind of hard. The kind where you lace up your shoes on a cold, windy March morning and just go do something, side by side, talking the whole way about nothing and everything.
That’s what March 29th was — a cold, windy Sunday morning on the Windsor Castle Park Trail in Smithfield, VA, with my daughter, putting in miles and not overthinking it.
The Plan (Such As It Was)
My daughter is 23 and not what you’d call an outdoors enthusiast. She tolerates nature. She appreciates it from a comfortable distance. She will absolutely go hiking with her mother if asked nicely, and she will chat and laugh the entire time and have a genuinely good time, and then she will go home and not suggest doing it again for a while. This is fine. This is her prerogative. I love her exactly as she is.
But I had an agenda.
I’ve been trying for years to pass certain things down to her — a love of the outdoors, a willingness to try things that feel unknown, the particular peace that comes from being somewhere without a screen demanding your attention. It’s hard to stare at your phone when you’re putting in miles. That’s not an accident on my part.
Windsor Castle Park Trail, Smithfield, VA
Windsor Castle Park in Smithfield, Virginia is not a dramatic trail. There are no 900-foot elevation gains, no boulder scrambles, no waterfalls requiring a three-hour trek to reach. What it is, is immaculately maintained, genuinely beautiful, and exactly the kind of trail that makes a person feel capable and happy without destroying them in the process.
We actually did Windsor Castle first that morning before heading back to Lone Star Lakes for another loop — which means we were out there in the cold and the wind before either of us had fully committed to being awake. The trail is 4.05 miles of well-groomed gravel path that winds through sparsely wooded areas, past water views of the creek and river, across a wooden boardwalk with marshland stretching out on either side, and briefly through a quiet neighborhood section before looping back. AllTrails lists it at 127 feet of elevation gain, which sounds modest until you factor in how relentlessly hilly it actually is. My legs noticed.
But the views made up for it. The blue sky that day was ridiculous — the kind of blue you only get in early spring before everything gets hazy. The water was glassy and wide. We stopped on the boardwalk and just stood there for a minute, looking out over the marsh, not saying anything. Those are the moments I’m trying to give her. The ones that don’t require any words.
The Only Crisis of the Day
About halfway through I had to use the bathroom.
For reasons I cannot explain, Windsor Castle Park Trail — a beautifully maintained, well-trafficked, clearly beloved community trail — has no bathrooms. No port-o-johns. Nothing. I spent the second half of the hike simultaneously power walking and scanning the tree line for a private spot, of which there were essentially none because the trail is not that wooded and there were entirely too many people having a lovely Sunday morning.
I survived. Barely. This is the unfiltered trail experience nobody puts in the brochure.
7.84 Miles Before Lunch
After Windsor Castle we drove back to Lone Star Lakes and did 3.79 miles of the Finger Lakes Trail — the trail that started all of this for me, the one I now know like a familiar conversation. By the time we finished, we had put in 7.84 miles between the two of us on a Sunday morning in March.
We were pretty proud of ourselves.
We should have been. That’s not nothing — especially for someone who four months earlier had never hiked a trail in her life, and for a 23-year-old who came along to humor her mother and ended up earning something she maybe didn’t expect to earn that day.
We rewarded ourselves with sushi. Obviously.
The Thing I’m Actually Trying to Pass Down
Here’s what I think about when I drag my daughter out on trails with me: I’m not really trying to make her a hiker. I’m trying to show her that her body can do things she doesn’t give it credit for. That discomfort is survivable and sometimes beautiful. That the world looks different when you’re moving through it instead of scrolling past it.
She knows all of this already, in the way that smart young women know things before they’ve fully lived them. But knowing it and feeling it in your legs on a cold March morning are two different things.
I hope she felt it that day. I think she did.
7.84 miles. Cold and windy. Together.
Better late than never — for both of us.
— Barbara
