Misplaced Matter

A new issue of BAR came today and while I was reading an article on the Biblical food laws and their cultural implications, I came across a quote that tickled me and sent me off on a tangent. Apparently Lord Chesterfield had a maxim: dirt is matter out of place.

I love it! Boy do I have some misplaced matter. I find it everywhere. Just this morning Jesse was helping me by removing misplaced matter from the track of the sliding glass door. It seems I am rich in misplaced matter. In fact, it just may be my most abundant commodity!

Look! There goes a bit of misplaced matter! (furball rolling under the piano)
Aww Oreo! Your feet are covered in misplaced matter!
Jesse you need a bath - you've got misplaced matter all over you!

I'm so easily amused...

Kayak Fishing The Juniata

While we were in Pennsylvania in August, we went camping to spend some time in the outdoors. Unfortunatlly, it became shorter than we had expected, but that is a completly different story. I was pretty excited since the campground was near the Juniata river, but I was even more thrilled to find that we could see the river from our campsite! So when we arrived at the campground we did the usual preparation such as setting up the tents and getting the camper rigged. Then we took my kayak down to the river and I loaded it with all my fishing gear and set out! The water was fairly shallow because of the dry weather we had (at least before we got there), so the kayak was helpful in enabling me to get through where other motor boats could not go. Then I got a strike on a topwater bait, which is the most exciting way to catch a fish, and had a fish but then it got off. Finally it was time to have chow. Yum!

This is the smallmouth bass that I caught.
I really enjoyed being on the river and seeing the Pennsylvanian wilderness.
Since fishing is what I enjoy doing, I fished most of the time.
There was a train bridge that we could paddle under but we had to be careful since the current was swift.

Then the next day we went to the Belleville market and ate lunch. And when we arrived back at the campground, and I went fishing again. That is when I caught the smallmouth bass. It was really tough to catch fish since it was so warm and the fish were sluggish and not bitting. Then I went back and ate dinner and got ready to go back to our grandparents' house.

Zach

Tortoise Tales

Meet Cherepahka

Just before Christmas last year, we were given a Russian Tortoise whose owner had left him behind in an apartment when she went home for the holidays. He was dehydrated and very weak. For a while we didn't know if he would survive.

Survive he did! He's a personable little fellow with some strong opinions about kale and anything that looks like it, and curiosity that gets him into some predicaments.

He's about 5 inches from nose to tucked up tail.

For quite a while, he spent his days in a big tub with a mixture of Bed-A-Beast and calcium sand under him and a heat lamp giving him warmth from above. He was so weak it took all his energy to eat. Then he would sleep for hours. He expressed his opinions on kale and some varieties of lettuce (especially anything with a red tint) by refusing to eat at all. He much prefers Romaine - but since that's basically tortoise candy, we try to get him to eat a more varied diet and sprinke his Romaine with Tortoise Dust for a nutritional boost.

As the months passed and it got warmer outside, he graduated to a plastic pool with substrate (and holes to let any rainwater drain out). He has his own terra cotta soaking pool in there too. Eventually we'd like to make him a nice enclosure outside and plant a browsing garden for him. In the meantime we let him graze in the yard - especially when some of his favorite weeds are abundant. Unfortunately he requires a babysitter for that. He goes everywhere!

His pool is in a nice shaded area - and we bring him inside if it storms - but he seemed restless. So one day I brought him inside the house and let him run free. I didn't have time to let him roam the yard, and I figured that in the house we could at least find him if he wandered.

What a funny little guy! He explored every nook and cranny. He likes to hang out with the kittens in the morning sunshine. We'll be sitting at the school table, working, and he'll go cruising through the room and back the hallway. Later I'll find him at the other end of the house. When evening comes, he finds a spot to snuggle up and sleep. One day I found him under a pile of pillows in our room. A different day he was in a corner under my guitar case. He likes to go under the quilt rack. A couple of days ago, I couldn't find him at bedtime so I decided to wait and see if he came out in the morning. Hannah came out with him, saying he was under her dresser and had tried to come back out where it was too low and she heard him bumping. He had given up and gone back to sleep. Most of the time, when he gets stuck he just turns around and figures a way out. He's a lot smarter than I ever thought he would be. He also has a lot more personality than I could have dreamed. He likes the kittens and they like him - Benny especially. Sometimes they'll curl up and nap together.

Benny and Oreo saying 'Hi'.

Cherepahka is our interpretation of the Russian word for 'tortoise'. Thanks Phyllis and Will for helping us with the naming! We usually call him 'Chere' (sounds like cherry) as Will suggested.

Earlier this week my mommy radar told me to go look for him (how does that work anyway?). I found him in my bedroom, in front of the sliding door, upside down. The kittens were with him. Apparently somebody thought it might be fun to flip him over and see what happened. He wasn't terribly upset but he didn't feel like hanging out with the kittens anymore either.

Sticks and Stones and ... Beaver Bones?

Sticks

It doesn't matter that David and I have now lived longer 'away' than we ever lived in PA; the rolling tree covered mountains are 'home'. There is something so restoring about their gentle wildness that I am drawn by an almost physical ache.

Our family has made a tradition of spending a day at Tall Timbers. Because it was too remote for the early loggers, it is one of the most pristine places I've ever been and actually has some virgin growth forest areas. The trail we regularly hike is reported to have 'second growth' trees but there are some real beauties there. Swift Run begins here at the upper reaches of the Penn's Creek watershed. Each of us has different ways of soaking in our surroundings. David takes photos. There are parts of Swift Run that are so beautiful with moss and mist that he tries again and again to capture them. The kids run free and play. They whittle sticks into boats and have boat races. We once had a dog who spent her time there carrying stones out of the creek. (Yes, she was a retriever!) All who are able hike. I savor those hikes.

Hannah enjoying a natural slide!

Why does it call to my heart so?

I think Chris Rice says it best in these lines from his song

My Cathedral:

Out here in the stillness,
I find my house of worship
with column trees and canopy of stars,
Here in my cathedral.

The kids love to climb this sheer rock face - the big kids too!

Stones

A Rigel vacation has to include stones. David took the junior geologists to the shale pit to look for fossils.

Jacob, Isaac, Jesse

Beaver Bones?

As a homeschool mom, I've found myself asking odd questions and doing strange things over the years - all in the quest for knowledge. Among the strangest of the strange is that I now get excited about good roadkill. That I even have a definition of 'good' roadkill cracks me up! I've been known to go cruising for roadkill (leisurely driving rural roads in the hopes of finding something 'good'). I've stopped to pick up an interesting looking tidbit. I've even gone back for something special. Why would I...? Hannah.

My beautiful daughter #1 likes bones.

She has tried drying pelts and stuffing birds but I think she really enjoys rearticulating a skeleton. The funny thing is, I know she'd much prefer the creature to live. But, in the event of it's demise, she'll skin it, clean it, and make a puzzle of it. And the family gets involved.

That's how it all started on vacation.

Most of us went for a walk one evening. Zach had gone to the lake and we were planning to catch up with him. We never made it past the neighbor's farm where we stopped to chat and catch up with old friends. On our way back home, we came upon a freshly killed groundhog. David took it back for Hannah - you just can't pass up one that fresh! They took it out behind an outbuilding along the edge of the millrace and put it under some wire fencing so scavengers wouldn't carry it off while it decomposed a bit. (Let the wild beasties do their thing.)

A couple of days later, Hannah, Bekah, and Julia were walking down the creek to meet the boys who had gone fishing with Uncle Stan and they came upon a dead beaver. Now this beaver was not fresh! But it was a beaver! You just can't pass up something like that. So we went back for gloves and bags and came back to retrieve said beaver. Now we have two stinky carcasses to bring home. A few days later, David and I were driving along and I spotted a dear carcass beside the road. I thought it was pretty clean and a possible source of some good long bone (remember we just visited Jamestown and now we'd like to try making tools the way the native americans did -and you need bones for that...) so we stopped and oh so casually picked up a small bagful of deer bones.

One bagful of stinky beaver!

For more on our trip, check out Hannah's blog.