Feather Moss Trail

This is the story of how Feather Moss Trail came to be. 

It came just in time, because I needed a space to go be alone (and sometimes with kids), 

a project to work on, 

and an off leash dog zone. 

There is a green space as you drive into our neighborhood. 

I knew it was full of trees, but I assumed it was also full of boggy mud and thick brush. 

One day while walking Koda, I wandered in there to see what it was like. 

There were bits of a trail, but they were overgrown with branches and forest debris. As me and Koda walked along, I said out loud: now, this is something! we can make the trail go here. And here. I need to clear that, and cut that...

I went back every day for about a week, scouting out a route, finding a way to make it into a loop.

One day me and Koda went in with a rake to scrape a clear path. 

The next day I knocked on the Dickson's door and asked "can your mom play?"

We got our clippers and headed down. We chopped and clipped and used our boots to clear the leaves out of the way.

There is this great old fort in the middle of the trail. 

This is the after picture. I cleared a lot of the log build up and straightened the roof. I don't know how long it has been here, or who built it, but according to the moss and decay, it seems like it's been around a long time. 

After the trail was implemented, the next task was to walk it. Round and round we walk. 

It's about a .3 mile loop. 

It is imperative we walk round and round to get it clearly established. 

Sometimes I walk round with my friends or Jim and have nice conversations,

sometimes it's just me and Koda walking round in silence while she sniffs and sniffs,

sometimes the kids come and it's loud and exploratory and school. 

With each lap we find neat new mushrooms and forest art. 

We identify plants. 

We named the trail Feather Moss Trail based on the cool feather moss found throughout the forest that me and Evan identified one Friday (it's this cool moss that looks like a feather).

Now he points out feather moss EVERY time he sees it.

One day Andrew played Johnny Oops with Lindsay. 

She knew the trick, thankfully. I hate watching people learn the Johnny Oops trick. It's just so stupid. 

Last Friday for "school" we drew maps of the trail. It mostly consisted of naming specific landmarks because map making is tricky! 

Some of my favorite landmark names are:

Groot's Prison

Liar's Fort

Mushroom Tree

Old Man Shoe Forest

Coffin Gateway

Covid Marching

We carry on with the new normal even though the world has been turned upside down.

Covid was the vehicle that brought us to this crazy place in history. 

In our little corner of the planet, everything seems quite lovely, though. 

I'm thankful for that. 

Bea had a birthday party at the beach. It led us into the sunset.

I love the combination of a sunset and a fire - the colors and the reflections.

My friend Laurie moved this week.

Covid is to blame for that. 

Andrew's "literacy choice" of the day was reading to Koda. 

This quasi-homeschooling would not have happened without covid. 

I quasi-love it,

I quasi-hate it. 

Friday "choose your own school adventure" was super rainy, so I forced my boys to put on their rain jackets and head to the forest to identify some mushrooms/plants. 

We found this super cool tree. 

Turns out this is indicative of a dead tree. Mushrooms flourish on a dead tree. 

We get along MUCH better out here in the wild than we do at the math table. 

We identified a few types of moss:

feather moss

windswept broom moss

mountain fern moss

Stay tuned for future information about this forest because I just discovered it in our neighborhood (even though we've lived here for 6 years!) and I made a trail through it. It's been a fun project - a project that is a byproduct of covid. 

The boys are getting really good at boxing. Andrew got big, golden boxing gloves in the mail and was so excited to take them to practice this week. 

(The boys also reported that Jeb shot a gun after class. I assume since he's been to bootcamp that he knows gun safety? It's fine.)

Boxing would never have happened without covid. 

A dog sitting on a chair at my dining room table.

Covid.  

Sunday was our first day back to church. 

It was so...weird. But good. 

My kids are out of shape for being reverent for that long (45 minutes). 

Imagine if pre-March me got dropped into this sacrament meeting without context.

This is one of the bigger consequences of covid. 

It's good to be on the healing, building side of that fallout. 

We watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It took us many nights to get through all of it.

But...you guessed it...because of covid, we don't have a hard/fast bedtime. 

It was a little intense for Andrew, so he would cuddle up to me and bury his head when he needed to look away. 

We took the kids and dogs to Galbraith. The dogs ran off to find the kids (who had biked ahead). We assumed they would find them. It's a big mountain...but our children (Evan) are a loud bunch, so it wasn't hard. 

Along the way, Lisa found this pine cone. Look at that little universe growing out of the cracks. 

I've never seen anything like it. 

It's a dying pine cone. That's what makes the little universe grow. 

Has anyone ever seen anything like it? 

Heliotrope

We had a therapy session at Heliotrope Ridge last week. 

Little mushroom, big root.

Jessica drinks the glacier water. 

Two years ago when Jim and I did this trail, the river was high and wild. We had to take our shoes off and figure out how to get across the cold white without freezing or falling. 

  So this year I found a wizard's staff/stick and carried it with me all the way to assist with the crossing. 

But the river was mellow and low. You could hop from rock to rock to get across. 

Look at this gal. All her fancy fringe. 

We hike up and up, rock to rock, mushroom to mushroom,

I use my wizard staff to point out the neatest ones along the way,

but as we come to the steep ledge of the glacier field, 

I drop to my fingertips. Lisa says "what the...?"

and we sink down to the ground because it is so vast. It makes the world around you spin with its vastness. 

We hike higher and higher. I want to see where the trail ends. I want to touch the glacier.

Eventually it's only me and Roxanne going up and up to touch the ice. I have met my match. 

Plus, this trail goes on and on. How can one ignore a beckoning trail? How high does it go? What will we see? 

The trail ends, we touch the glacier. 

We stand and listen to the groans and the cracks. 

I notice: we are in the actual path of the glacier. This could be dangerous.

And then there is a LOUD crash right as "dangerous" exits my mouth, as we turn and run! 

We run to safety. We run to the rocky trail. The crash is inside the bowels of the ice, unseen. It's hidden in there with the melting, rushing rivers we can't see. 

I could sit and watch a glacier all day.

(That is what a park ranger at Rainier told me one time.)

 I said "really?" because don't glaciers move at a ....glacial...pace? 

But I get it now. They are mysterious, dangerous city scapes, moving and changing all the time. 

And back down the mountain we go. 

This therapy session I have committed to being infinitely more patient, applying calming techniques for when I get so frustrated with my kids (my poor kids who also wish they could go to school).

Here is the obvious analogy: I will try to be like a glacier - calm and stoic on the outside with all the turmoil and treading water on the inside. 

"It's ok to be angry: it's not ok to throw things."

It is strange how much the stress of covid is affecting me. If I wrote all my "problems" on paper, it would a be a short list - I truly have nothing to complain about. And yet. The littlest things tip the bucket, and my anger spills all over the carpet.

I am the glacier. I am the glacier.