Living out of a suitcase

I’ve been doing that this summer. While it’s true that we do try and go somewhere every summer, that’s usually just for a week. Since the middle of June I’ve spent a week in the Dominican Republic with Baby Girl, a week in the mountains at Jesus camp with Wubby and Baby Girl, and 35+ teenagers I know, and another 750 I don’t know, and a week at Hatteras with Alecto and her girls, plus 1.

So, the DR: we built a concrete block wall, one of the kids was attacked by ants, it was hot. But it was Cielo and that’s just fine.

Jesus camp: For the first time in my 5 trips to camp, I hiked Rec Hill every day at least once, most days more than once. The weather was perfect, like early fall in the NC mountains instead of mid-July.

Hatteras: Alecto spoiled me rotten. It’s amazing that people who’ve only “met” in cyberspace can actually spend a week together in the real world and not feel awkward, but I think we managed. I think I may have been on one “all girl” trip to the beach, but we were all related. This was just us girls. We put up a screen house by ourselves. It’s in my back yard now, waiting for me to put it back up and see how it weathered the storms. The screen house had adventures too. The only time we ate out all week was when we had dinner w/ Alecto’s dad at their beach house.  The last time I was on the Outer Banks was 27 years ago and that was Nags Head. Until last week I had never been to any place on the Outer Banks south of Manteo. I have been to other barrier islands in NC; we have bunches. Just not Hatteras. On the way home I stopped by the lighthouse and took some pictures. Also caught a doe and her fawn having breakfast.

There will probably be one more week of suitcase living before school starts back, a week in Todd, NC at the butterfly house.

Where did summer go?

 

Lost in the mountains

We’re hiding in the mountains this week, somewhere on the Ashe / Wautauga County line. There’s a creek that runs next to the house. We’re surrounded by wildflowers, butterfly bushes, and…BUTTERFLIES! Hundreds of them. We’ve used sugar water to make friends with them; then they go back to the bushes. At night they hide in the trees so that, the next morning, they can float down to the flowers to spread their wings and dry out before beginning another day sipping from the blossoms.

Interesting thing about the butterflies: when you see hundreds of them from a distance of just a few feet, they all look the same, and they all look perfect and beautiful. When you look closer though, you see the evidence of their daily struggles: ragged wings, missing tails. They live a hard life, these butterflies. But, from a distance or at close range, they’re still beautiful despite their imperfections.

Kinda like people.

Today we tried to locate Elk Knob State Park. We were not successful. It’s a new park, somewhere off of Meat Camp Road. Don’t you love it?? Actually we did locate what is supposed to be the entrance to the park but it was roped off, for some reason. Anyway, we passed it by and continued on Meat Camp until it dead-ended on some other road, where we took a right. Seemed like a good idea, and it was because we eventually came back into NC194 that leads right back to where we’re staying, sort of. We kept going until we found Lansing. Interesting place….drive faster, I hear banjo music.

Of course, we didn’t bring a map. We don’t need no stinkin’ map! Continued following NC194 North, thinking we were headed for Jefferson. Lots of Christmas tree farms, cows, horses, goats, but no Jefferson. Then we hit a place called Sturgills and I recognized where we were, sort of. A couple of miles later we crossed over into Virginia and I knew exactly where we were…..about 25 miles north of Jefferson. Should have gone south back at Lansing. Oh, well. It was fun anyway. We listened to redneck country music on the iPod, told stupid jokes and laughed until it hurt.

We found Jefferson, too. And found our way back home to the mountain hideout.

Now it’s dinner time, ham sammiches for the lot of us. The butterflies are all still busy with their all-day feasting. I caught a little toad and Wubby and I played with it before we let it go. There’s tea steeping in the teapot I found for $8 in an antique shop in Boone on Sunday. The ruby-throated hummingbird that lives here should be making his evening appearance soon. I plan to have the camera ready, but if I don’t catch him that’s ok. We haven’t had any hard-core plans for this week, other than a scheduled trip to the Fresco churches tomorrow to meet Wubby’s beloved, who will be spending the rest of the week here with us.

Just wandering in the mountains, lost and at the same time, found.

 

Flickr pix

I’m really lazy and it’s been really hot around here, so today I finally took the time to put some pix from our trip on Flickr. Then came in here and added the little widget that, for some reason, only shows my very informative photo title (img_xxx), but will show other photos in the pop-up thingy.

Technology is great when it works like it says it will. Flickr widget, heal thyself.

The pictures turned out ok. We purchased a real digital camera before we left and are so glad we did. Of course, any bad digital picture can be prettied up. Like I said, technology is great when it works like it says it will.

 

home again

Grand Canyon sunset, taken from Yaki Point, 6/26/08

 

I’m still trying to process everything we experienced on our trip to Grand Canyon. It’s hard to know where to start. I suppose if you’ve been there then you know what I’m saying, and if you haven’t then there’s no way I can explain it to you.

Things that will need to be internalized and then discussed in detail:

tears…seeing the canyon, hearing the wind in the Ponderosa pines, watching native Americans sharing their culture with the tourists who took time to stop and watch the dancing and listen to the songs, watching my husband’s tears as he watched the dances and listened to the singing, watching my daughter hug a stuffed animal (a mule, of course) as we flew through some turbulence on the way home and realizing that this trip was as much about her growing up as it was about her brother doing likewise.

solitude…how it can be so quiet 100 feet below the canyon rim when you know there are tons of tourists up there, finding Shoshone Point and being the only people there as sunset approached, riding a horse through the pine forest with my daughter and our guide.

perspective…how hard it is to find when seven miles down and fifty miles away look the same, when you feel so small and insignificant next to an agave plant with a 30 foot bloom that wasn’t there a week earlier, or when you stand next to a Ponderosa that was growing before Europeans “discovered” the canyon 400 years ago, or witness the growth of the forest that only comes after the fire.

awe…words are not sufficient, perhaps not even appropriate.