Today was Rosh Hashana, the head of the Jewish New Year.. For the first time in many years, I decided to observe our holiday at home. Tonight is also the time Muslim’s observe Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. It’s a big day for the Semitic religions !. As I said the other day. organized religion is not working for me since Sam’ passing.. Nonetheless, I felt the significance of the day, and used the time to hang out peacefully with my family. which is something I really needed to do (I also snuck in two naps.. which is another thing I really needed to do !) .
Diane,. Gabe and I and our friend RJ spent some wonderful time just lying on the skateboard ramp in the sun.. The sky was clear blue,. the sun was bright, the leaves in the background we’re showing a hint of orange… and I was happy… deeply happy, and that was as religious as I needed today.
Around 3 Diane and I took the dogs for a long hike up Ricker Valley in Little River State Park. There’s a great old history trail up there that leads you through old cellar holes, cemeteies and stone fences. Diane placed a SamStone in this fine old specimen
We stopped and explored the abandoned Godall farm.. It’s the only building still standing in the valley. All the rest have either fallen down.. or were carried away in the 1927 flood that wiped out our town and almost destroyed our house.
The house is sound, but pretty creepy, We took a look around and left a SamStone n the old cookstove.
A little way of the trail, Diane and I decided to explore a spur we’d ever tried. We knew there had been an old logging mill herein the early 1900’s .. but we’d never seen any sign.. We walked along the trail talking. I was thinking about the new year.. and how I might adjust my intentions.. more time with Diane.. more time with my kids, more fun in ,y life and less stress… those are my new yeas intentions.. If your a friend of mine. help m eby reminding me of those.
We were have ing a great walk and talk when the trail crossed a little stream and rejoined a bigger trail, we figured we’d missed the remnants of the old mil.. we turned to hike back up to our trail. and look at what we found.. It was like coming across a submarine in the woods ! I knew from reading this was one of the two 150 horsepower steam engines that was used to run the great saws used to cut up the trees into blocks. These trees milled here would be made into shoe lasts.. the foot shaped forms used to fabricate shoes. It was fascinating to think that this mill, that ran from the late 1800’s until the early 1920’s was actually full of people once. And now it was so very isolated from anywhere else.
I loved looking at the old pieces of equipment that were here slowly fading to rust..
Here’s a classic near miss on a self timer photo I was trying to make.. This picture cracks me up !
We accidentally found a geocache inside the boiler. Goecaching is a game where folks follow clues with gps coordinates to small caches of items. they can add/replace some of the times then go find the next. We put a SamStone in the one we found. There are SamStones in geocaches all over the world !.
This evening, we didn’t feel like doing much, so Gabe and I worked on a design of a tramp deck he’d developed. A simple idea, two old sneakers screwed to the deck of an old skate board. Easy to make….
.. and really fun to use… !
OK.. It’s late again.. and I’m going to go to sleep .. Amy will be bac with us as will Allison. We’ll have a full house getting ready for the last colony episode this Tuesday.. We’re having a party at Mexicalli’s on Tuesday night to watch the last show. Please see the
Myspace bulletin I posted earlier.. or see the
invite on Facebook. I want to wish all of you a healthy, happy and interesting new year..
Gnite Sam
-me