Hope

The three little boys and I weeded the lettuce bed. It's 64 today!! We usually get a run of days in January that get up to the 60-70 degree range. I call that Hope. By the middle of January, this Florida native is done with what I know to some is a mild NC winter. So this day, with my little lettuces thriving, my daffodils sprouting and the discovery of some forgotten little onions is so cheering. 

 

Even still, this stack will be gone in less than a week. My lumberjack will be splitting more wood after school today, because we still have at least 2 1/2 wood months left. Sigh. 

Good old Sadie. She's 12 now, grey and her hips hurt. She has bouts of barely being  able to get up to then chasing the garbage man (for the treats he throws out to her) and trying to play with Atticus, our new puppy. 

Who really is an absolute doll. As Grace has demonstrated. I'm so glad our Christmas pound puppy has turned out so well. He's growing fast and is going to be big so his doll clothes wearing day are almost over. 

To Be With You...

Very busy holidays here. Food, laughter, hikes, tears, smiles, flurry, play, fights, makeups, more food, love. 

Our Christmas puppy, Atticus. He is a sweetie!

Piggybacks from biggest sister. 

Hiking with cousins.  

River rock climbers. 

My girl come home to our hills. 

Pinesap Flower

Found on today's hike above the falls at South Mountain. I thought it was a dark Indian Pipe, but it was just different. I looked it up when I got home, sure enough, although in the Indian Pipe family, it's a Pinesap. How have I passed so many autumns here and never noticed it? How is it that no matter how many trails I take or how many times I hike them, I see new things every week? It's infinite, creation is just infinite. I'm so utterly grateful. What a marvelous world the Creator has made.

Among all this hiking and being and coming more and more into my own, I have been doing other things. Like teaching my children, despite in all honesty just feeling tired after seventeen years of teaching. I love my children, I love the philosophy I have chosen to submerse our family in but I have been tired. I guess this week, actually this day, after four weeks of school, is the first day I actually enjoyed. I'm certainly not required to enjoy the things that I have chosen and believe to be right and good. But it sure does help. So, again, I'm grateful that as I've moved through the motions the feelings are returning.

I've also been doing fun things with friends, and this year started a Natural History Club with my dear friend, Sara. You can read about that if you like. It's a lot of fun and we are slowly learning. It's very wonderful to live in community with kindred spirits.

I'll leave you with a two year old cutie.

Little River Trail Falls

The boys and I hiked around 6 miles today. I saw so many neat things! It's a lot of hard work, going up and down hills but I am feeling stronger and I get to be in my favorite place, outside, doing what I love, seeing and experiencing creation. 

We intended to hike Saddleback but it was closed because it was too wet. So we chose to continue on to Turkey Ridge and connect to Little River Trail because that would be new to us and give us the extra miles we wanted to push ourselves on with. We started doing 2.5/3 mile trails so we are pretty proud. 

I've been wanting to see this for a very long time. Indian Pipe. This is a really cool plant that is white and feeds on decaying vegetation by a symbiotic relationship with fungus in the soil. Um, wow!

I believe this beauty is a Hoof Conk, but I'm new to identifying fungus so I could be wrong. A fungus/mushroom identification book is at the top of my Christmas list!

This bizarre mushroom is a Stalked Puffball-in-aspic. I'm certain of this identification. It was a really exciting find for me along the banks of Little River where we stopped to each lunch. 

In this photo you can see the grey cloud of spores that proofed out when Ben gently touched the ball of fungus. The stalk was gelatinous and gooey. They were growing out of a mossy bank all along the little path to the river. 

We stopped on the bridge to eat our peanut butter and honey sandwiches. It took us about an hour and a half to reach this point. We seem to average 2 miles per hour when we hike trails with elevation. We have backpacks that are pretty light. When I hike with a 35 lb toddler on my back it takes me longer to get up those big hills!

These very poor pictures show a vine growing in the tree down to the river with its roots in the water. 

I wish this was my lunch time view everyday!

Rattlesnake plantain and muscadines. We've enjoyed scavenging for trail snacks this September.  

We decided to continue on to the end of the trail but when we got almost to the end, we ran into this curious sign. 

I'm pretty strict about not leaving trails. But there was quite a worn path where many had gone before and I had two very adventurous boys with me. Sooo....

Over the fence we went, along a slightly inclined path and saw this:

(Or rather heard, then saw)

This pictures do no justice to the beauty of this waterfall. Looking down here we couldn't see much but it was loud and we could see another worn path so down we went!

It was so lovely! I felt like a little girl again. I stood as close as I could to the spray and just listened to the sound of the water and felt the rush of the cool air. I've never done that. It felt like our own. 

Looking down, we were at the halfway point and I'm guessing it was 25-30 feet high. 

We stayed a bit and ruefully regretted eating our lunch on the bridge where the river looked and sounded so placid.  Then we had to climb back up to the path like mountain goats but we loved every minute. 

Our view on the return hike, we could see so far. It was, as always, a good hike with my guys. I always feel so good after a long hike. I'm definitely getting stronger and have better endurance and that makes me very happy. 

Hiking

So I could say a lot of things here. I'm a bad blogger, I've quit facebook so I'll blog more, blah blah blah. 

For now I'll say, turning 40 has been amazing. It's been an awakening of who I really am. One thing I've discovered, I'm a hiker. I hike. A lot. 

That's pretty life changing. I'm used to the 1-2m nature hike but I'm up to strenuous 4-5m hikes 2-3x a week right now. That dream of hiking the Appalachian Trail? Gonna make that a reality in the future. 

I saw a meme. It said, Hike while you can. Yeah. That. I can so I am.

My treadmill. 

My hiking buddies. 

 

Edisto continued ~ We adventure off

We started out our next day with yummy campfire breakfast. 

We then adventured off for some hiking. 

Isn't this pink lichen cool?

Fern got tired. 

So did Silas. 

Then we took off for a dusk walk around Charleston. 

Edisto Island Vacation-part 1

We just got back from one of the loveliest vacations we've ever enjoyed. (Although it STILL feels weird not to have Kaley along.) I'll admit in the last 18 years most of our "vacations" have been to visit family. We were blessed this year to acquire a camper, or as the children named it, "Dutchy". Or as Max calls it, our Little Home. I like that. I've dreamed and dreamed of having a camper. With a family this big, it's gotten hard to visit family and tent camp everywhere. So, for my 40th birthday, we bought one! 

I'm so thrilled with it. We've used it twice, once to visit family and now for vacation. It's in good shape so the only things to do are purely for my own sense of taste. So in time. I love love love it!!

We chose Edisto Island so we could camp near the ocean. The state park has two campgrounds there, one next to the beach and one 1/2 mile away in a woodsy area. We chose woodsy and I was so glad. Much more privacy and room for the kids. 

Here's our camp site all set up. With this big of a family, set up is a breeze!

The boys still tent it although we can all sleep in the camper if we needed to. 

Site #121. Very roomy! And there was a short cut path in the woods to the bathhouse. 

As soon as camp was all set, we took off for the beach. We found it very quiet, mostly families or older people and mostly empty. Lots of oyster and welk shells. Right away we found a live welk. 

We all felt like Max! 

Silas loved the shells. He was so excited to bring me his finds. 

Fern enjoyed it, too. She loved digging. 

Right before we headed back to camp, we found a hermit crab without a shell! He was not moving at all and very slow when we scooped him up. We weren't sure if he was a marine crab or a land hermit crab (they are different) so we covered him with a shell and left him. 

Back at camp, burgers and watermelon!

Edisto is purely residential. Nothing there but a small Bilo grocery and a few restaurants. It was nice. After dinner we actually all went to bed by 9 and slept very well. The lack of light pollution was wonderful!