Finding peace

I have been in the habit for many years now of telling people that our schedule is pretty easy to work around. We homeschool, so we're home, which makes us flexible, right? Just the other day I was scheduling an appointment and told the woman on the phone that I was pretty open, only Friday wouldn't work. How about Monday, she asked, but then I worried about having enough time for school with choir looming in the evening, so she offered Tuesday, but that's my running day, followed by evening meetings and theater . . . three options later and we'd finally settled on a time that might work, with some adjustment on my part. As I was hanging up I apologized for being the most difficult flexible person of her day. Thankfully she laughed, but I was aghast to realize that somewhere between toddler and upper elementary things had become complicated.

It's just a truth, this busy-ness that comes with the business of life, especially when you blend three people and all their required and requested activities, and especially, especially at certain times of year. Spring, for instance, when everyone prepares to mark the end of another school year with presentations and performances galore. For the past few weeks our every day has been filled with (fun!) (exciting!) (enriching!) activities that have kept us, if not always on the go, then at least getting ready or preparing for the going. Theater, then choir, then theater again, and homeschool group classes, with theater there. Calvin has two different stage plays in his pocket right now, plus three choir concerts on the calendar, then add to that Jon's off hours students and my meeting schedule. 

And I have been craving a bit of peace. Silence in this otherwise cacophonous world.

Last year we dropped our science curriculum in the spring in favor of a more in the world approach. We hiked a lot, identifying plants, trees, and mammal tracks, identifying birds, and learning more about what spring rebirth really means. It was so wonderful that this year I planned an even greater freedom, and scheduled many of Calvin's school subjects to be finished before or go on hiatus during the month or two of the spring awakening. We started that lighter schedule this week, as temperatures warmed again, coaxing buds from trees and migrating birds into our midst.

We hiked at least briefly every day this week, sometimes in multiple layers to keep the chill at bay, but we were rewarded with sunshine, glimpses of bright green, an inner peace that only nature can give, and a surprising amount of new energy for many other things that require our time every day.

American Robin

Brown Creeper

Blue Jay


American Tree Sparrow

Yellow-Rumped Warbler

American Coot

Brown-headed Cowbird (female)

Eastern Phoebe

American Robin

Northern Shoveler

Back at it

Calvin reminded me this morning that by this time last year we had already logged several weekly hikes to watch nature wake up. This year we're way behind. The mild winter made chickens out of us and we stayed inside too long. But with or without us they're all coming out of hiding, the snakes, the frogs, the little things that sprout under the leaves, so we decided that we should finally join them. And late as we were, we still caught some winter-only residents before their annual trip north, plus lots of regulars who came out to say hello again.

November recap

Good books, good times

We went to the Audubon lands at Waterloo to watch the migration of the Sandhill Cranes.

We voted

We did science

We tailgated, sometimes with the Boychoir

Pumpkin beers were taking over, and so were giant bears

Calvin and I ran the turkey trot

Iris learned to help with the dishes

We spent a lovely weekend with my family at a lodge in middle of nowhere. And it snowed.

It snowed even more at home

But it melted before Thanksgiving

MST3K Thanksgiving marathon

The last game of the year, the last disappointment (we hope)

Hiking Tawas Point

If cool, wet weather isn't great for beach going or campfires, it does not ring the same death knell for hiking. In fact, it is much easier to be happy and protected from poison ivy, biting flies, and ticks when it is cold enough to warrant the donning of long clothing and multiple layers.

We hiked every day on our camping trip, although some of those hikes might more accurately be called brisk walks. We hiked between rains on our first night, in a brilliant morning sun on our first morning, and in a varying degree of cloud cover every other time.

Tawas Point State Park is a fairly small peninsula, and seemingly shrinking. The park is a little over a mile long, and about a quarter as wide, so even though the trail was not well maintained, and parts of it seemed to be gone altogether, getting lost was neither a problem nor an option. Still, the park is teeming with relatively tame wildlife. There were so many frogs—leopard frogs, to be exact—that walking near any shore caused the ground erupt in leaping. The deer prints were equally plentiful, but it took us until our final day to actually spy a handful of deer. It was also on our last night that we met our first skunk—a very cute baby that was checking out our neighbor's site. Birds were plentiful, of course, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that we'd caught the front end of the fall warbler migration.

leopard frog

leopard frog

common garter snake

common whitetail

greater egret

great blue heron

american toad

cooper's hawk

white-tailed deer

eastern chipmunk

black-throated green warbler (fall plumage)

yellow-rumped warbler (fall plumage)

cape may warbler (fall plumage)

A wild bouquet

Summer is in full bloom. The meadows and prairires are full of robust, vividly colored blooms and the soft sound of buzzing everywhere. It's 4H fair week for us, but we took a break from the plentiful activities at the fairgrounds this morning for a meander through field in search of posies as part of the Junior Naturalist program. The quiet was a welcome reprieve, and even the heat was enjoyable amidst so many delightful sights and sounds: the hawk overhead, the song birds hiding in the brush, the bees busy at work, the butterflies flitting from petal to petal.