The Seattle Pacific website reminded me yesterday that we only have 9 days left until we take Elisabeth to college. I am not working this week so it's a great week to spend time with our daughter and also get to know our new community.
When we lived in Columbia, Missouri, we loved to go to a place called Eagle Bluffs. It's a wildlife refuge on the Missouri River and a great place to bird watch or look at the river. Paul also taught Elisabeth to drive there!
Since we have moved to the Vancouver, WA area, I've been looking for something similar to Eagle Bluffs. I saw something in the paper about a bird festival that will be held at a place Called Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and so we headed up highway 5 yesterday.
The refuge is a place that you drive around and then stop and walk. It's mostly wetlands with some great walking trails. It was really quiet, with a few birders on the trails. We didn't see that many birds-some blue herons, harriers that we didn't get a picture of and garden variety ducks. There were plenty of snakes and lots of rustling in the marshes. It's a place I will definitely go back to visit.
At the beginning of the trail was this charming sign.
Elisabeth in her $6.00 designer sweater and $10.00 skinny jeans bought at a consignment store.
The new piercing. Hey mom...they were have a piercing sale!
The deep green, the blue skies and the clouds were so lovely.
“
“
It's hard to see but there is an otter on that log...there were otters in most of the water.
A blue heron off in the distance...again the beautiful golden light.
“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Wendell Berry
I am loving your posts these days. They feed my soul. I also have a long email that I've been wanting to write you for a few months...forthcoming.
ReplyDelete