A peek at our day

A little peek at our Wednesday afternoon.  We worked hard at math, history and writing in the morning, then played away the rest of the day.  Being able to be outside on a glorious sunshiny day and follow my daughter's animal loving heart are just two of the many blessings of learning at home, on our own schedule.

Fungus!

What a fun way to welcome June!  My girls and I joined 3 other fun-(and fungus) loving homeschool families for a hunt along the Yellowstone River today, at Loch Leven.  As we pulled up, the pouring rain did not bode well for happy kids, but as we finished our lunches, the sun came out and shined for the next 2 hours!  We looked like a bunch of humans doing impressions of hound dogs, heads down, wandering about, getting really excited over something our eyes or noses or intuition led us upon.  I found the first morel, a really small one, but you would have thought I had found GOLD!  Katy found the gigantic morels(I'll come back to them because they were an exciting mystery) and a large fairy ring of probably edible mushrooms (I have to do a tad more research before I take a bite of those).

Bella found horses (of course!), other kids were enchanted by red-tail hawks, the river, nests in trees.  It was a magical couple of hours watching kids and adults alike thrill at their discoveries.

Ok, back to the mystery morels.  Another mother and myself thought we had correctly identified them as false morels, which may or may not be safe and tasty, but picked them to bring back to the group to show off anyway, just because they were so big.  But others in the group thought they too were morels, really good ones.  Hmmm, what to do?  So someone suggested we stop by the Livingston Ranger Station and let them have a stab at it.  We did, and the awesome young lady rangers there correctly identified them as morels, after slicing one open to confirm it was hollow on the inside.  YAY!

Just a side note, I am so happy whenever I encounter female rangers (something I never remember seeing as a girl), and today, there were three and not a fella in sight.

Whatever you are searching for today, I hope you find it!

Rivers

The Gallatin, near Cameron Bridge, Fall 2009

When I was a little girl, "The River" was a mythical place that edged the boundaries of my family's small existence.  There were two rivers actually, the Missouri and the Musselshell, but one only ever spoke of "the" River, as if it were the centering force of the universe.  I loved the sound of the water flowing.

The River (usually the Gallatin because it is so near my home, but sometimes the Yellowstone, or the Madison as well) is still a place of magic to me.  I never know what I will encounter there.  

Once in the springtime, Bella found a snake hatch.  A whole rocky slope covered with slithering aliveness.  We were both entranced at the abundance of renewal and she was quick to pick up one baby Garter after another and utter "Isn't it cute Mommy?"  Cute, well, maybe, amazing definitely.  

Another time the dead and bloated carcass of a large dog floated where our dog often chases after his own splashes.  Quiet gasps and "Oh no, that's so sad," from both my girls.  We couldn't stop looking.  

In the winter once we discovered no matter how hard we hurled rocks in a certain iced over pool, the ice would not break, but just down the way we created hundreds of little holes, reveling in the "plunk" and tiny spout of water rising each time.  That day we skated too, for hours.  

The girls have even given names to some of our little places, most memorably "Isabella Island," inspired one snowy cold day after listening to hours of Shackelton's spooky adventures in the Antarctic.

I go to the water to feel calm, to let myself breathe. It's a place to reconnect with my family too.  It's also real and alive and sometimes dangerous.  Sometimes I can't shake a haunted feeling of being watched or followed.  We've met scary people more than once (are they there to find calm too?) and once Bear Cub almost lost himself in the current of the Missouri.  Once a poor little turquoise stuffy bunny fell into the irrigation ditch and needed much rescuing.

 
In some deep way, the River is where I mark passage in this life.  It is where my sweetest and most profound memories of my children, eyes wide with curiosity, live in my imagination.  My favorite photograph of myself is one where I crouch on the edge of the water, back to the camera, paints in hand and the wide expanse of water taking up the entire background.  Bella took it, many years ago.

Where do you go to find your soul?  Where do you feel truly alive?

"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy"

~Rumi ~