Hike time=good time

Yesterday was a fun day. The church I grew up in was at camp for their annual weekend retreat. I had the opportunity to lead a nature hike and it was good times. I had adults and children. Here are some observations:

* I love how you can tell kids something is edible in nature and they eat it without reservation. In fact they'll keep eating it like crazy until you tell them it will give 'em the runs if they don't stop. Adults are another matter. They are much more cautious. They sniff the plant, rub it, lick it a little, look at each other with skeptical eyes, ask repeatedly, "Are you SURE this is edible??", and then finally (slowly) nibble a corner of it, decide they don't like it very much and swig another drink from a cherry Icee their child has given them to hold. I much prefer the child's way of doing things in nature.

* Wasps were having a HAYDAY yesterday. Luckily no one in my group got stung, but dang...every where I looked before and after the hike, I saw kids crying with swelled up lips, arms, and backs. Parents were holding ice against the stings and trying to console them. Poor little guys. Apparently, some kids had accidentally stepped on a wasp's nest or something. One little girl got stung 10 times because a wasp got stuck inside her shirt. Ouch! They're so brave.

* We went down to the creek at one point and I used some rock paint to make a little boy look like a TIGER. He was so excited and starting roaring at us.

* It was a beautiful day! The sun was out, but for most of the hike, we were covered by the shade of the trees so it was perfect. It was so neat to see points where the sunlight snuck into little crannies of the tree branches and shone down on the trail.

At one point, I was holding up some redwood needles and talking about how cool the redwood tree is, when it hit me...do I really live here?! Am I really surrounded by redwood trees? In the middle of my little schpiel (however you spell that), I just had a moment of "Wow-I-love-living-here".

What do you love about where YOU live?