Tag Archives: pearly everlasting

Boys fish, hunt and climb.

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Kate and her family joined me at the cabin yesterday, and we’ve already packed in a lot of fun. This afternoon Kate and Tom introduced the boys, whom I nicknamed Raj and Rigo at their births, to fishing.

The boys also climbed around on the granite boulders near the shore, and after discovering tangled messes of used fishing line and candy wrappers, they began to enthusiastically hunt down every piece of trash they could find, crawling into crevices and scrambling up and down to score just one more item, to get the lake shore a tiny bit cleaner.

I identified a new buttercup I hadn’t met before, and saw again the lovely Pearly Everlasting, which in July has just opened the flowers that will continue to look nice for several more weeks.

Later after dinner, while they drank hot cocoa, I read to Raj and Rigo the story of Jack and the Fallen Giants, a recent retelling of the traditional tale by Jonathan Pageau. It has beautiful and evocative illustrations by Eloise Scherrer, and thought provoking elements such as riddles: “What has more weight, heaven or earth?”

In this telling, Jack is frequently famished and worn out, but he perseveres and climbs higher and higher every time, and receives bursts of strength that give him renewed zeal.

I think that whether they realized it or not, my grandboys could relate to Jack’s exertions because of all the tasks they’d accomplished for themselves this afternoon. In any case, in spite of a cliffhanger ending, we had a good time reading that story.

Boy adventures to be continued!

My view is deep.

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pearly everlasting

 

DAY 4: I set out walking alone before breakfast, for back therapy. Yarrow and pearly everlasting flowers line the road, which has recently been resurfaced in places with granite gravel in 2-4 inch chunks. Yesterday when Scout and Ivy walked back from the lake they stopped their father every few feet to exclaim about a new piece that they had picked up, with unique sparkles or shape.

On return, I fry a pound of bacon, because you always have to do that in the mountains when you’re in a cabin where the bears can’t get at you. Scout and Ivy grab a crispy slice in one hand and a pile of blueberries in the other, and go out on the deck to play, waiting interminably it seems for the adults to do something besides talk – like take them out in the boats.

While the other adults are still making plans I decide to walk again, and take Scout with me. We head down to the lake and on the way he schools me in conifers, showing me red firs and lodgepole pines (aka tamarack, his father tells me), the most numerous tree species in this area.

lodgepole pine with red fir behind

As we come up through the forest behind the cabin, I check on the puffball I saw last month — remember, it looked like this:

— and it has puffed itself and exploded into a pile of cocoa powder:

When the canoeing group finally embarks paddles in hand, two-year-old Jamie and I remain in the cabin. This is the first time I’ve ever taken care of him alone. We play with dominoes, and read Machines at Work a dozen times while eating nuts that he holds in little bowl on his lap.

Tonight Pippin, understanding how much star-gazing means to me, does most of the work to set up the chaise lounge on the deck. Mice have demolished the pad so she makes a sort of mattress with blankets and Thermarest pads. Soon all the lights in the cabin are extinguished, the family are in their beds, and I stretch out in the dark darkness, flat on my back staring up.

Black tops of the lodgepole pines ring the patch of sky like a wreath. My view of the heavens is not wide, but it is deep. The first thing that happens is that I feel the stars’ presence like angels hovering over me, and I almost begin to weep. I think about what my friend Art said, that the sky is not empty, but full of angels, and try to remember if that was a reason that C.S. Lewis wanted to call his trilogy not The Space Trilogy but Deep Heaven. Space sounds empty, but like all of Creation, it is filled with God’s presence.

The fullness is overwhelming, but soothing. Cool air blows on my face. I drink and am strengthened. After a long time I carry my sleeping bag into the cabin and soon am sailing into dreamland like Wynken, Blynken and Nod.

Next day’s entry is HERE.