The Canadians Have it Right

We had a Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday since we may be gone for the American holiday. October was perfect! The kids could play outside, the harvest was still happening, and we didn't care that the doors were swinging open and shut all day long. No mud. No snow. No dreary weather. Have I mentioned that going on this mission we get to trade two winters for two summers?! God loves me.

Working backwards: Our boys love a good project! What better project than to cut down the last of the dead poplar trees--after dark--from a ten foot ladder?! In our family, a "project" needs to have a big impact! Once started, we were afraid the big impact might be on the neighbor's house if we didn't see it through to the end. NOT a pleasant way to wake up the people over the fence.

The crash was enjoyed by the pre- and primary-school crowd, as you can see. Wondering why the stump is so tall?  Glad you asked. It's the uphill zip-line stabilizing tree.

 Earlier in the day we enjoyed pressing cider from bushels of apples, smoking "firebird" on the grill (there is no tastier turkey in the world!), and plenty of zip-lining and visiting.

What is it about Thanksgiving that makes it the best holiday of all, whether it's in October or November? I believe it is all about low expectations (low thrill-threshhold, yet again), non-commercialization and family being together. And left-overs.

Suzanne introduced the sisters to an exercise in which we select three adjectives that we want to have characterize our remaining years. One of my words is "engaged." I want to be present. I think gratitude is a large part of what I aspire to.

“We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” 
― Thornton Wilder

Thanks everyone for all you contributed to make this a Thanksgiving to tide us over for the next year and a half. Believe me, I am conscious of my treasures as I remember this day!

Ahhhhhhhhhtummmmmmm

Does the title of this post give you any idea of my favorite season? There's a spiciness in the air, the leaves are brilliant, hikes are breathtakingly beautiful, soup and bread can be on the menu every night, and we can do some yard cleanup with fire, which satisfies a certain pyromania of mine. I simply can not get enough of the sights, the smells, the feel, the experience of autumn.

And, of course, s'mores.  Here's our new twist on the classic:

  1. Roast marshmallow with a freshly carved stick.

2. Fill the center with a gob of Nutella. (We don't need no stinkin' knife!)

 


3. You can handle it from here. Jay cracked walnuts and tucked them inside--You can add your own innovations. Peanut butter is good--isn't everything with Nutella?

We roasted potatoes in the coals, poked some late-season lavender into a jar of tiny sea shells and arranged crazy curly-willow sticks and mountain ash loaded with its tiny orange berries in a vase to keep autumn just a little longer.

Two hikes this week took me above town and into the maples. Everyone we met seemed overwhelmed by the loveliness, fresh-faced and happy. Truly heaven on earth.

At the end of Mary Oliver's wonderful poem, "When
Death Comes," she expresses so well the way I feel, not just in autumn, but almost always:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Some bargains are just not

When my glasses were donated in Kanarra Canyon to the Three Nephites, one of whom apparently needs bifocals by now, someone told me about getting glasses from China for a fraction of the cost. They had me at the words "thirty dollars."

Never mind that navigating the websites took thirty hours, nor that I had to go to my eye doctor for an additional measurement: pupil distance, which is not part of your typical prescription, nor that the real cost was more like sixty dollars. After hitting "submit," I am promised my new specs in two weeks.

I wait the required time and they arrive as promised. One pair one day; one pair the next. Oh, yes, I sprang for two pairs, from two different vendors. The better to see you with, my dear. 

Except that I couldn't see through them. Either pair. Blurry near, blurry far, blurry in the middle-distance. I pull them down on my nose and look at the mountains without them. Better.  I take them completely off and read the words in front of me. No worse. Adjusting doesn't help and "getting used to them" is out of the question.

What could have gone wrong?  China glasses worked fine for Jay, for Will and for Phil, and apparently thousands of other satisfied customers.  

I have a couple of theories:

1. My eyes are really not very bad. It's a small distance between perfect and blurry. In the case of my new glasses, naked eyes work better.

2. The combination of progressive bifocals and a crooked face make fitting difficult. Add astigmatism to the mix, and I really need a living human to figure out the ideal viewing range, or whatever it is they do.

So, DI gets a couple of pairs of unused glasses and I get to pay full price (plus $120 for the experience) to see again. I'm happy to do it. Lesson learned.

........ except I hear that there's a fabulous factory in Logan where you can get trap-door pajamas for practically nothing.........

Zion Gal

Here we are showing off some of our retirement gifts from the fifth-grade team: hiking survival gear. 

Thank you, Karen, Franki, Christine and Emma!

We spent the better part of the week with our pals, the Betts, in Zion. What was going to be an overnight backpacking trip ended being two nights because we decided not to take the chance on the government shutting down and not being allowed to hike and waiting to start on Tuesday. Instead we got the permit for Monday, put ourselves into high gear--gathered up our packs, bought new stuff (JetBoil stove: highly recommended! Cheapo fold up ThermaRest sleeping pads---pretty bumpy for princess-types who feel every lump.), arranged a shuttle to Lava Point and took off on the West Rim Trail. We saw a total of two other hikers, and because the government DID shut down, absolutely no one else was at the Angel's Landing saddle, Scout Lookout. There were no cars on the road, no shuttle: we almost had the park to ourselves.  It was heaven!

We hiked roughly five miles each day--a perfect pace for us. The first night we were pretty cold and between the shivering and the chorus of coyotes we realized this would qualify as a true adventure. A regular Karl Lagerberg "slept like a baby" night (slept for an hour, cried for an hour) that was good to see the end of with a mug of hot chocolate in the morning.

After Jay's two hour marathon to filter water, we celebrate with a cup of "Jay's Exclusive" hot chocolate. The JetBoil stove heated the water in seconds. Maybe we should have just boiled the water?

There is almost nowhere I would rather be, though, than in Zion. It is my brier patch, my imprinted landscape, my holy place. I love the air, the sandstone, the river, the cottonwoods, the sky, the clouds. If I could I would lie right down and hug the ground--and without the press of crowds, it was almost as I remembered it from childhood. Our canyon. Our wading pools with polliwogs and watercress and swinging bridges and picnic tables. Our tunnel where we could pull into every alcove and peer down at the rocks and chipmunks who were just learning to be beggars or up at the cliffs of white streaked with red and honk our car's horn the entire mile.

The West Rim is spectacular, the complete package. Forest, grassy meadow, chiseled trails (thank you CCC and the Great Depression's government for NOT shutting down but improving the country while providing jobs), springs, vistas,  cliffs, rock cairns on slick rock, canyons to shout and hear your echo, wildflower's fragrance, breeze, sunshine......ecstasy.

If I don't die at age 90 falling off a cliff in Zion, here's a good place to scatter my ashes when I do.

 Another fabulous time in Zion. May they never end for us!