Last day of camp--already!

My adventure camp will be over after tomorrow. Where is the summer going?  To me it feels as though I should only be on week 2 or 3, not week 8 of camp.  Already the first of the poison ivy leaves are turning red, and now the famers are baling hay, too.  Before I know it, pumpkins will be for sale at the local farm markets.

Today, I am glad simply that the humidity of midsummer is gone and is not returning on even the longest of the long range forecasts I can find.  To me, this means even if that dreaded weather does return, it can’t settle in and stay for months because the season is too far along for that to happen.  Hazy, hot and humid weather starting in early June is dreadful because I know it may stay that way until the end of August and that’s just too horrible a thing to even bear to contemplate.

These less humid days and cooler nights with more of the same ahead are far more to my liking.  The only downside—and it’s a small one—is that it is now time to wear my headlamp again during my morning walks with my now 10-year-old Baby Dog.  By the time I start a walk with the puppies, the headlamp can be put away for the day.

purple blooms

Camp is over for another year.  My last session was yesterday, and a nicer day simply wasn’t possible. The weather was super, and camp had fewer kids than it had for most of the summer, so I was better able to interact with them one-on-one.  The kids were well-behaved and had a great time catching lots of crayfish, water striders (truly, I don’t know what the attraction is with them) and several minnows.

A yellow longtail salamander provided a lot of excitement, but the kids never could catch it.  That’s just as well, as I’m sure it survived the escaped, and who knows what might have happened to it if it had been caught.

So camp is over—another sign of the impending fall.  Also, the thistle is starting to bloom, another late-summer event.  Notice the bee in the center of the one photo.  The bee was still alive, though certainly wasn’t very lively.  I’d like to think it was the cool morning that was keeping it drowsy and not some soon-to-be fatal event.

Dreary August

Who ever thought the words "dreary" and "August" would go together?

I find it hard to believe, but I only have one more session of camp this year.  That means the summer is nearly over, at least the unofficial summer that most in the U.S. define as Memorial Day to Labor Day.  The equinox, which marks the actual end of summer, is still six weeks away.

The recent rains means the creek where the kids from adventure camp get to catch crayfish and minnows is flowing decently again, if not at full bank.  Yesterday, the kids caught more than three dozen crayfish, three or four minnows, a nice mud puppy perhaps four inches long and saw the small water snake again.  The snake took one look at the kids and disappeared into a hole for the rest of the day.

I was glad the weather was no hotter than it was, which was about 80 degrees. It was so humid yesterday down at the creek that if it had been any warmer, it would have been unbearable.  As it was, it was nearly unbearable. I came home as soaked in sweat as if it had been 95 degrees.

Friday camp roundup

Rain stopped mid-morning yesterday, so the kids from Adventure camp were able to enjoy an afternoon of catching crayfish and minnows down at Beaver Creek.  I worried that the rain would have the creek so muddy that the kids wouldn’t be able to see anything, but that turned out not to be the case. They caught many minnows and crayfish, found a water penny, saw a water snake (to much screaming) and generally had a good time.

The water penny was a tiny one, more like a water pea or perhaps a water lentil.  It was so small I don’t even know how the girl saw it but she did.  Water pennies are quite sensitive to pollution of any kind and can’t live where rocks are covered with algae, fungi or other inorganic stuff.  Finding one in this little creek is a sign of its good water quality. 

The snake was an ordinary, though quite small,l water snake.  It poked its head above the water during a time when the biggest group of the day was at the creek, prompting a lot of screaming.  I tried to get the kids to calm down, but by the time that was accomplished, the little snake was in hiding, where it remained through the rest of the day. 

The last group found a large millipede and that proved to be a huge hit with them.  I never know what’s going to strike their fancy.  Some groups get fixated on the crayfish, others don’t think their time is a success unless they’ve landed one of the lightning fast minnows.  This group liked the millipede.  The group before them liked the ebony dragonflies—some groups totally ignore dragonflies.  I’m just happy when the kids find something to catch and have a good time. 

Glorious



Where the field meets the forest and the sky

What a difference a week made! This week’s camp was glorious—cool, with a slight breeze and lots of stream denizens for the kids to catch. 70 degrees and low humidity versus 100 degrees and humid—it’s a no-brainer. I thoroughly enjoyed being in the woods and the hike to and from Beaver Creek.



The kids did well, too. They caught three frogs—two pickerel frogs and a green frog—several minnows and more crayfish than I had room in the buckets for. The two different species of frogs made it easy to show them that a “frog” is not just a frog but that this area has different species of them. I had tiny crayfish and crayfish monsters that would have been of a reasonable size for eating. The kids also liked the many ebony jewelwing damselflies that obligingly perched on knees and arms. They didn’t catch any salamanders this week, but they found helgramites and assorted other larvae and grubs, not all of which I could identify. In other words, they had a good time.

The little creek is still shallower than I like to see it, but I believe there was a slight improvement in water flow over the previous week. It still got muddy pretty fast, and I still tried to keep the kids’ feet out of the deeper pool—and they still forgot that about a hundred times—but I do think the mud they churned up cleared a bit faster than it did last week.

I hoped the rain helped

Fog rising from the mountains - July 24, 2013

Now that the weather has moderated and returned to normal, I’m looking forward to camp again. Tomorrow is another session, and I’m hoping the rains from the various storms will have boosted the depth of the stream and the little pool where kids catch crayfish, frogs and salamanders.

Last week the pool was looking pretty sad, and worse, the stream’s flow was so slow that mud kicked up by kid feet took forever to clear. I tried to keep the kids out of the pool because, as I told them, if you can’t see anything, you can’t catch anything. Well, remembering those words is hard for a kid, and I felt like the mud police trying to keep them from wading in the stream. I didn’t really want to keep them out of the stream, either, but waiting for 15 minutes for mud to clear out of the pool before the kids could see anything wasn’t much fun either.

In a good year, one that’s had decent snow cover and good spring rains, I let the kids wade as much as they want. Oh, the pool still gets muddy, but then it only takes a minute or so to clear. This year had minimal snow cover and not much in the way of spring rains, and that didn’t help the stream flow.

June was rainy here, but even that seemed to have only a minor impact on the stream flow. I don’t expect the rain from last week to turn the stream into a torrent, but I do hope the flow has improved enough so that the kids can get their toes wet.

Hottest time of the year

It’s not quite three weeks past the summer solstice, and already I can tell that the mornings are darker. The difference isn’t much yet, but it is noticeable. The sky at 5:30 a.m. is verging on the color of pre-dawn rather than dawn. By the time Baby Dog and I are taking our morning walk a few minutes later, the sky has brightened.

Three weeks past solstice is typically the hottest time of year here, and this year is determined not to be an exception. I am in the middle of a heat wave that won’t end before Sunday. The end of the heat wave always seems to be forecast to extend for another morning longer than it was the day before.

Three weeks past the winter solstice is also typically the coldest time of the winter. In this region, it’s called “farm show weather,” and those of you who are local readers will know what that means. The Pennsylvania Farm Show is a long-standing and huge event, and it is held during that coldest point of the winter. Weather then is nearly always bad, in addition to being cold. There seems to be a long-standing tradition of people who are intending to attend the farm show, only to be deterred by terrible weather that keeps people at home. But that’s a topic for 180 days from now.

At the moment I am suffering through temperatures in the mid ‘90’s, trying to take some minor comfort in the idea that this may well be the hottest point of the year, and I can expect relief before long. That’s more theoretically satisfying than it is satisfying in reality.

Tomorrow will be another camp day for me, and with a forecast of 96 degrees, I can’t say I’m looking forward to it with my usual enthusiasm. I also continue to worry with the depth of the little stream where the kids catch crayfish, frogs and salamanders. It’s been low all year, and a heat wave isn’t going to help that one bit. The stream was so slow-moving last week that virtually anything the kids did created mud that took forever to clear again. Normally I can let the kids wade in the stream, knowing the mud they kick up will clear within moments. Not this year. I keep telling them to stay out of the main pool because if you can’t see anything, you can’t catch anything. That falls on deaf ears. Sigh.

Farmer lilies on parade!

Long time readers of Roundtop Ruminations know that I love farmer lilies, and this year is an especially good year for them. They line the two-lane rural roads, often in groups of several hundred blooms. Travel another 100 feet and there’s another group of them that’s just as large, perhaps this time on the opposite side of the road. I easily pass thousands of them every day. I enjoy them no less because they are so common. Those huge, intense blooms are simply show-stoppers.

Yesterday was another day at adventure camp for me. We managed to get all the sessions in, though the last one was shortened a bit by an impending storm. The kids caught two green frogs, a minnow nearly large enough to qualify as a fish, a long-tailed salamander, water striders, assorted bugs - mostly helgramites - and the usual couple dozen crayfish that ranged in size from nearly microscopic to big enough to eat (we didn’t). The kids enjoy themselves and the activity and that’s what’s important.

That said, I was surprised by the low level of water in the little creek. True, it’s been a bit dry, but Roundtop has had its share of thunderstorms over the past few weeks that drop a quick inch or even two onto the ground. Right now the creek is as low as I would expect to be in August. I had another 1.5 inches of rain yesterday. I hope that helped. If not, the stream is going to be looking really bad when August actually does get here.

A day at camp

Weather cooperated and even produced a gorgeous day on Thursday, so I got to spend the day down at a little stream letting kids catch crayfish, frogs, salamanders and minnows. The kids had a blast and caught quite a haul. Dozens of crayfish were caught, most small to medium-sized, including the smallest crayfish I’d ever seen. The tiny thing was only a shy half an inch long. The biggest was about 3.5 inches.

A pickerel frog was caught (pictured), as was a helgramite, two minnows and a small long-tailed salamander, the most common species the kids find. We have more nets this year, so nearly every kid gets to use a net and they didn’t as often have to work in pairs as in previous years. That might have contributed to the high count of crayfish that were caught. I do release some of the prisoners between each session of camp, so likely some of those caught were repeats.

The kids also found a huge spider sunning on a boulder in the center of that stream that served to keep the kids from venturing too far upstream. I believe it was one of the many species of wolf spiders. I am hobbling with my bad knee at the moment, so I wasn’t able to get close enough for a more positive ID. It was big, I know that. Usually I have trouble keeping the kids to the section of the stream where I can keep an eye on them, so the spider served as a good boundary guard for the afternoon.

I have given up trying to get the kids to be quiet as they walk the .75 mile from their base camp to the stream. They are too wound up, and even if they were quiet a group of 10-12 kids is probably in and of itself too many for them to see much wildlife as they walk. I can hear them coming for at least 100 yards before they arrive. To them, more space simply means they have to yell louder to make themselves heard.

When the kids are at the stream, bird calls stop, but the kids aren’t gone a minute before ovenbirds, phoebes and pewees are calling again. At least I get to hear the sounds of the forest in between the groups. A few minutes of birdsong makes for a restful interlude before the next group arrives.

Thoughts on a wet morning

Honeysuckle on a wet morning

Tomorrow, if the weather cooperates (and unfortunately it appears it will not) will mark my first week of the new season of adventure camp. For some years now I have led groups of kids, 8-15 years old, into the forests around Roundtop for a bit of exploring. It’s the kind of thing that many of my blog readers probably did regularly when you were kids. You probably did it on your own, perhaps in a stream behind your house or over at grandma’s. Today’s children, consigned to living in suburbs and subdivisions, ferried from school to soccer, rarely get to do that.


Small groups of kids will hike down to a stream a bit less than a mile from the main camp. We will hop over vernal pools and get muddy and wet. We will catch crayfish and frogs, perhaps a turtle. Some will complain that the walk is “too long.” Some will be amazed at finding a crayfish. Some will jump right in and have caught several before their time is up. Some are more timid and will be content only to peer at the little lobsters that I keep in a bucket until we release them. If we catch a salamander or a millipede, I will show them how to let it walk across their hands.

These are all kids whose parents have the means to send them to camp for a week. Some will have traveled abroad or gone to the Grand Canyon, but I have yet to find any who know much about their own backyards or the forests near where they live. Most never get the opportunity to play outside on their own. It’s pretty sad, and it causes me no little amount of worry. I worry because their lack of knowledge of the natural world does not bode well for the stewardship of our planet when it is their turn at the helm.

We will be gone by then, those of us who grew up with our hands and feet in local streams, who haunted small patches of woods after school. The world will be theirs to do with as they will. It’s unlikely my efforts will make much difference in the long run, though it’s an effort I feel I must make regardless. To do nothing is to give up and surrender. And so I do what I can, trying to fan the flames of hope that perhaps it will make some difference to some child, on some day.

Too hot!

Normally I love the Tuesdays I spend down with kids from adventure camp down at a little bridge across Beaver Creek. I have to admit that yesterday, with its 97 degree heat, wasn’t one of my favorites. There’s just no way to enjoy spending the day outside when it’s 97 degrees and humid.

The kids didn’t seem to mind. The first giant crayfish they caught was all they needed. Suddenly the creek was full of kids catching crayfish of all sizes, from large down to nearly microscopic. They also snagged a few frogs, a couple of salamanders and even a few minnows, which are quicksilver fast and hard to catch. The kids quickly settled into groups working in teams so they could outwit and herd the crayfish into the nets. A few decided to “guard” the prisoners to keep the frogs and crayfish from escaping the bucket. A few others decided to create a dam to keep the crayfish was escaping downstream.

By noontime I was wilting and by the time camp ended I was ready for a cool shower and some air conditioning. Sometimes I long for the days, a mere 20 years ago, when summers in the woods were cool enough not to need air conditioning. Fortunately for me, this latest heat wave is ending today. As long as the afternoon storms don’t damage anything at the cabin, the cool air that accompanies them will be much appreciated.

I know it’s not just me that will appreciate cooler weather. My hens haven’t laid an egg since the latest heat wave began—not that I blame them. And my elderly Dog isn’t much interested in a long walk either. I’ve been seeing deer along the edges of the roads, no doubt hoping to catch something that resembles a breeze. Cars whizz by and the deer just stand there. They aren’t going to move until they are good and ready.

The storms are coming, and I hope some rain comes with them. It’s only the lightning and the wind that won’t be welcome.

Thoughts on kids and camp

Roundtop peeking over the neighboring hill

Ah, another Tuesday, another day of adventure camp. For once the weather held no threat of anything—neither thunder nor heat nor anything nasty. In fact, the weather was perfect—clear and cool. The kids had a good session, too. One group caught the mother of all crayfish. Really, the thing was like a small lobster. And it was finally caught in a net, after what seemed like hours of kids screaming directions and advice to the kid who was holding the net. When it was finally landed, they all cheered. I know the kids are having fun. I just hope that translates into spending more time in the outdoors.

My general impression of the kids is that they don’t have nearly as much knowledge of the outdoors as the kids I worked with even four or five years ago. By the time I was their ages, I had caught countless crayfish, knew the names of lots of birds, knew what poison ivy looked like and didn’t scream every time I saw an insect. These kids can’t tell a robin from a goose, don’t know enough to look in puddles for frogs or interesting animal tracks and don’t even try to be quiet when they are walking through the woods. With the kids I see, very basic knowledge of the outdoors is missing. What’s perhaps even scarier is that these are the kids who are interested enough to come to an adventure camp in the first place. What the kids are like who don’t want to come to adventure camp, I can’t even guess. And remember, these aren’t kids who’ve spent their lives in a city for the most part either. They are kids from small and medium-sized towns and the suburbs.

What I’m afraid that will eventually translate into are large numbers of adults with very limited or very shallow knowledge of the natural world. In the future, as we face ever more extreme weather, and our ever-growing population forces ever more choices about sharing the earth with its other inhabitants, I’m afraid the choices that will be made won’t be the best ones. Those kids don’t know it yet but their future, and those of their own children, will hinge on making the best choices humans can make, and to do that they need to know and understand a whole lot more about how the world works. I sure wish I could do more to help that happen.

A day at camp

Down along Beaver Creek

Yesterday was my first day of adventure camp for this season. For me, camp means spending a day with kids down on Beaver Creek at the bottom of Roundtop Mtn. I show them how to catch crayfish and frogs and salamanders and anything else they can find, and I get to spend the day outside.

The weather yesterday proved fine for the event. The early morning was cloudy, not always the best for crayfish catching, but the kids still found some. The groups that arrived after noon when the weather was sunny caught crayfish faster than I could keep up with how many they caught. I’m sure they found at least 30.
The kids caught the same poor pickerel frog three times. It had a damaged toe, so I know it was the same one. I kept releasing it after each group of kids left so it wouldn’t get stressed, and the next group of kids kept catching it. The crayfish ranged in size from nearly invisible to big enough to eat. The kids were also much impressed by the sheer ugliness of the hellgrammite, the aquatic larva of the dobsonfly.

The idea of the camp is to get kids outside and interested in something other than video games. I don’t have each group long enough to actually teach them very much. I consider it a good session if the kids have fun and get to see and catch a variety of stream denizens. My hope is that their fun will translate into wanting to do something outdoorsy another time and maybe another and then yet again.

Mountain babies

Ah, for just another week of this lovely weather before the dreaded 3H’s take over. Alas, that is not to be. So I took advantage of the good weather this past weekend to wander around the mountain as much as I could. Once the hot weather kicks in, my walks are shorter and often less enjoyable. No one—and especially not me—likes hiking when covered in sweat.

What I saw on my forays were the first appearances of a whole variety of mountain babies, most of them as clueless as only babies can be. Everything from just-fledged barn swallows to goslings to fawns let me approach much closer than their parents were comfortable with. The youngsters are so clueless that even a dive-bombing or a snorting parent didn’t budge them. Kids! What are you going to do?

The antlers of the male deer are in velvet already. At one point this weekend I saw a nice buck calmly grazing in someone’s front yard (they weren’t home). It was the middle of the afternoon and the deer looked as calm as someone’s cow. He looked as though he did that every day and maybe he does. Sometimes it’s not just the babies that are clueless.

And speaking of babies—tomorrow marks the first session of adventure camp for me. I’ll spend the day down at a really nice stream with at least six groups of kids. We’ll catch crayfish and frogs, probably salamanders, too. I hope the wood tortoise that was such a hit last summer is still around. I’m going to have more kids at one time than I did last year. So this noon I ran out and bought more minnow nets—great for reaching across the stream to get at balky crayfish—and another bucket for temporarily holding our prisoners. As a result, I won’t be online tomorrow, but I will have a report on how things went on Wednesday.

After the rain

Ironweed or wild butterfly weed

Yesterday I was supposed to lead my first outdoor awareness session of the summer with kids from the neighboring adventure camp. Instead, it rained buckets all day long, and the camp director wisely decided the kids wouldn’t have a great experience hiking down to the stream. It rained so hard that I got soaked even in my tried-and-true backpacking rain jacket for just the few minutes I took the dogs outside. It wasn’t only the kids who wouldn’t have had a lot of fun in that kind of weather!


Each summer I take the kids down to a little stream and teach them how to catch crayfish, frogs and salamanders. Last year they also routinely found a lovely old wood tortoise who didn’t seem to mind one bit being handled by a lot of kids. That tortoise was a big hit. The whole point is for the kids to enjoy themselves outdoors and experience a little bit of what goes on beyond their video game consoles. It would be nice to think that the experience whets their little appetites for more such experiences. That’s probably wishful thinking on my part, but I do what I can in the short amount of time I have with them to broaden their horizons a bit.

Anyway, yesterday the hike and critter-catching session was cancelled. I’m sure the critters were hiding from the weather, too. This morning the sky was crystal clear. Except for the leftover puddles, I couldn’t have guessed that the day before was such a washout.

Ironweed, or wild butterfly weed, is just starting to bloom along the forest edges, I noticed. The leaves and tiny flowers on this one still carry the drops of yesterday’s rain. Do I call every flower I photograph my favorite? I think I do, and when I am photographing one that one is my favorite. I know I particularly appreciate the pink-purple shade of ironweed and its showy size. If I do have a flower preference it’s for anything of strong color and good size. I’m not a huge fan of teeny, tiny little flowers. I like something with a strong sense of its own importance. Ironweed is one of those.

Will there be a stream left for August's camp?

Summer morning

When Monday night’s storms dropped half an inch of rain on Roundtop and nearly 2.5” of rain in Harrisburg, I was hoping the weather would raise the level of the little stream where I meet with the kids from camp. That didn’t happen, unless the level of the stream would have been even lower than it was on Tuesday. The stream, the North Branch of Beaver Creek, is barely flowing. I’ve seen it this low, rarely, at the end of a dry August, but never at the end of July.

I have two more weeks of camp with the kids, and I don’t know if there will be any stream left by then. Somehow, I don’t think an empty stream bed, or a nearly empty stream bed, devoid of life because the raccoons have feasted on the frogs, minnows and salamanders, will be nearly as interesting or as much fun for the kids.

The low water of yesterday contributed, I believe, to the kids finally catching the two biggest crayfish of the summer. I (and the kids) have seen these crayfish all summer, but they haven’t been able to catch them. That’s mostly because the crayfish hang out in the middle and deepest part of the little pool where we meet. Their little arms and the minnow net haven’t been able to reach into there—until yesterday. Both of the biggest whoppers were caught and spent the afternoon in my bucket, producing oohs and ahhs from the kids. All the “prisoners” were safely released at the end of the day.

The kids also are catching more minnows than they did at the beginning of the summer, too. The lower water facilitates that as well, but that’s not the only reason. In the early part of the summer some of the minnows were so small they could slip through the tiny holes of the minnow net. The minnows have grown some since then, and fewer of them are that small anymore.

The ever-obliging wood tortoise was captured again, to the delight of all. The tortoise is such a mellow creature, not in the least bit aggressive or even fearful. Even after we release it, the kids can watch it swim in the pool, stick its head up and watch us back.

Kids successfully catch (nearly) everything in sight

Yesterday I was worried about the weather for my session of adventure camp. The forecast was for 95 degrees and very high humidity, a combination that didn’t sound auspicious.  Hot weather is not my forte, and I live in fear that my camp excursions will fall on the hottest day of the summer or at least the week. Fortunately, the forecast was wrong, and instead I had weather in the upper 80’s, lower than predicted humidity and a constant, if warm, breeze. It was hot but not remotely unbearable.

The weather has also been dry here, and that is showing up in the amount of water running through the creek where the kids get to terrorize look for critters. So far, the lessened amount of water isn’t impacting what or how much they find, but if the lack of rain continues, and it’s supposed to for at least the next week, it won’t be long before that happens.

Yesterday, the kids found a bucketful of crayfish, a hellgrammite (or helgramite if you prefer), a long-tailed salamander and a small bullfrog. They missed catching a second frog, a toad and a tiny snake that disappeared faster than you could say “snake!” That little thing was taking no chances at being scooped up by a dozen kids, that’s for sure.

Hellgrammites are ugly as sin. They are an aquatic insect, the larval form of the dobsonfly. This one was about an inch long. They look a bit like a centipede. The kids were suitably impressed with its overall ugliness. I don’t know much about them, except that as bass bait virtually nothing is better. I can remember using artificial hellgrammites when I would go fishing with my dad when I was a child. Even the rubbery version was ugly.

June farm

Yesterday was another day spent down at the creek with kids. This week was better than the first. Maybe the kids are past that joyous hysteria of being out of school, maybe the counselors are settling in, but for whatever the reason the session was a lot less frantic.

I’ve also reduced my “lesson plan” to about three minutes of telling them not to throw rocks or logs into the creek and not to step on the forest plants like they are grass. This is my kid-level version of “take only pictures, leave only footprints.” I pretty much have to spell it out for these kids. After that I hand them a net and turn them loose into the creek.

This week we caught what I’m pretty sure is the same leopard frog we caught last week. The kids also caught a whole bucketful of crayfish, ranging in size from an inch up to about 4 inches. A couple of minnows were added to the bucket during the day. The salamanders escaped unharmed this week. A toad had its home unfortunately located in a hole at the base of a beech tree, right next to the official orienteering station where the kids have to take a rubbing of a portion of a quote. By the end of the trek, they’re supposed to have the entire quote. The toad was handled by two groups of kids and then retreated to her hole, coming out only when I was in between groups of kids.

A small snake of indeterminate species also escaped their clutches, gliding away from them through the water at what looked like a snaky high gear.

The kids got happily wet. Some even didn’t scream or throw rocks, so I count that as a success.

In between groups of kids I hid from the morning rain, investigated all the ferns around my station and watched the pewees flitting back and forth. The kids saw a tiny fawn, much to their excitement. I’ve seen 5 fawns near the cabin over the past few days. Two, two and a singleton. All are now following their moms, and all are tiny, barely higher than her knees.

So far the weather has been kind, despite the bit of rain yesterday. Even so, the day was steamy and with little breeze, making 80 degrees feel quite a bit hotter than normal. At this point, next Tuesday’s weather looks to be a repeat of yesterday, which means I’ll have at least one more camp session with tolerable weather. I’m still not sure how I’ll do once the temperatures top 90 or if I have to ride out a bad storm. I just hope I won’t have that to deal with..

Freedom to sit

Rattlesnake Fern

Even though I live in the forest, surrounded by its beauty, many times I feel I don’t have much time to spend there. My life is as busy as everyone’s is, with work and chores and errands. There’s always something that needs done, something that shouldn’t be put off another day, something. Time to ignore those demands and the constraints of daily life doesn’t come often. My time to just sit and enjoy the woods feels almost nonexistent. Occasionally, I just ignore the never-ending demands and go anyways, but I don’t do that as often as I should.

Adventure camp this year is letting me sit in the woods all day long, one day a week for eight weeks. And they are paying me to do it. How utterly incredible is that?

Of course, I have 8 groups of kids coming to my sitting spot during that day, and ideally I spend about 20 minutes with each group. But that still leaves me long stretches of time to just sit and enjoy the woods, to listen to the birds, watch the sky or see if I can still catch a crayfish or a frog. Yesterday was heaven. Even the weather cooperated, a joy I don’t expect to be repeated every week or maybe not even again. I will deal with that as it comes.

For now, I am content to be away from the work, chores and errands, to enjoy the freedom to putter around all day in the woods with no task in mind, or to sit in my camp chair and listen to the birds, watch the day’s sun shadows traverse the woods and just sit.

Tornados miss! Camp begins tomorrow!

This whole tornado thing is getting old. Over the weekend, another two tornado warnings kept my nose in front of the Doppler radar when I would have preferred to be doing something, nearly anything, else. Both times the tornado clouds were close enough to me and the cabin so that I had to pay attention to them. So far this year my area has had 50% more tornado warnings than we usually have in an entire season, and we still have at least two months more to go of prime tornado time.

And it’s not just tornados. On Saturday about 15 air miles south of me, just under 4” of rain fell in 60-90 minutes, but up on my mountain there wasn’t a drop. How weird is that? The good news is that for the next few days the weather will be nice, even cool, which is much appreciated after the heat and humidity of recent days. I will try and take the nice weather at face value and not pay any attention to whatever will come afterwards, whatever that may be. I’ve had far too few nice days this spring to waste them lamenting that they won’t last nearly long enough.

Tomorrow is my first session of adventure camp for this year, and that should be a fun way to spend the day. This year I won’t be hiking with the kids. I’m one of the “stations” on their orienteering course, and I’ll be located down along the stream at the bottom of the mountain, where I hope we can find some minnows or crayfish or something that will engage this young video-game generation. For me the change from hiking up and down the mountain 6 times a day is a welcome one. Last year not one of my camp days was under 90 degrees, and by afternoon I was starting to drag. This year I’ll be sitting by a stream all day long enjoying the view—and the kids, too, I hope! I’ll let you know how it went on Wednesday.