Floating Upstream: nuggets, 10/03/12: of birds, and bees, and redwood trees

My brain's been a bit muddly of late, as my friend Annie might put it in eloquent New Zealand parlance. Consequently, I only have a small story and a whole lot of pictures from our most recent adventure.

We camped again, this time at a park where I'd return in a heartbeat. We joined a group of almost forty people, of whom we knew only two, and we spent the night among towering redwoods, a mere stone's throw from the Pacific ocean.

Though we hardly knew anyone of our party, it felt like we had known many of them for years. (Wish I could post photos of some of them, but I can't, as I have not asked for permission and this blog is still quite private.)

So often, human encounters seem to happen through walls of glass where we see each other and hear our own words but not the words of others. Every now and again, the glass cracks and shreds of meaning float in both directions.

This weekend, I met a woman, the friend of our friend, whom I liked almost as soon as she said hello to us. The lilt in her voice, the gleam in her eyes, the Keens she was wearing over long underwear under granola shorts, the way she took charge of the group and directed conversation but stayed in the background while everyone did their thing--all bespoke the sort of inner grace that poets and novelists sometimes have the gift to celebrate.

When on Monday I wrote to the group to thank them for welcoming us and she wrote back to say it was a pleasure to meet our family, I hit reply. I told her that almost as soon as I'd met her, I'd felt like asking if she wanted to be my new best friend, and that it's funny how those kinds of encounters happen less frequently with age, but when they do happen, we feel like kids again. She wrote back to say, among other things, "Let's hang out some day, eh?"

Crack. The glass had splintered and we were hearing each other.

On our way out of camp, we stopped at the small town of Pescadero. This is what Main Street (or whatever it's called) looks like in Pescadero:

Half a dozen small stores and cafes, bikers taking a break from their treks along Highway 1,

a few charmingly decrepit houses,

and there is small-town America for you.

Picking our lunch place was easy, as the Country Store was the only place with an outdoor space, and when you have a sunny day on the coast of California, you take every opportunity to make the most of it.

Sister's learning to do cartwheels, which makes me oh so nervous.

Best part about eating at the Country Store in Pescadero? Almost as soon as we sat down, a couple started playing and singing a folksy kind of music to which I have not stopped listening in the three days since.

Raya was mesmerized, not only because Amanda West has a dulcet voice and plays the guitar like an enchantress, but also because her partner, Pete Solomon, played instruments and accompanied her vocally while rocking an infant in a Baby Bjorn; the little boy eventually fell asleep. Sister was in heaven, as was her mom, for different reasons. The boys just sort of put up with it.

A couple of songs hit me straight in the gut, and one of them is embedded in the upper right corner of this blog. The kids and I spent all of yesterday afternoon dancing to "Habit," sometimes all of us on the floor, but more often than not, with one of them in my arms and the other circling around us. It's magical, I tell you. Listen to it. Dance to it. Sing it. Only in California can one stop at a dinky Country Store and find first-class music being played for free.

On our way out of Pescadero, we also stopped at our favorite beach, Bean Hollow, which this blog has featured a few times before. It was sunny, around sixty degrees, and Sava was so cold he wouldn't go near the water, while Raya ran, splashed, and shrieked: I looooove being cold! I loooooove being frozen!

We got sunburnt after about thirty minutes in the blazing sun and then piled into the car to drive over the mountains for an hour and arrive at temperatures in the 90's inland. Seriously, people, that's a thirty-degree difference between coast and land.

California, amen.

Some more photos from the redwoods. Raya loves kiddie camping chairs.

An all-natural playground five minutes from our campsite had the kids playing to distraction.

Much climbing over fallen logs and crawling through hollow tree stumps was had.

The rustic "seesaw" was a big hit with kids, though parents had to engage actively to make sure nobody got mortally injured.

Kids combined in every possible way, and I suppose it was a good lesson in physics for some of them. Raya and Sava on one side equals Mina with some help from Rado on the other.

Raya too close to the middle equals pinched fingers.

Sava and Mina without any adult help equals potential imbalance.

Sava and dad on one side equals smiles.

The older kids also engaged in an elaborate game of "restaurant," where menus featured "moss balls," "pine pops," "pine bark cake," and many others.

It was magical, really, and the things they came up with were works of art. A case for nature play, if ever there was one.

All kids roasted marshmallows, and all, save for ours, ate them. I might well have the only two children in the world who dislike s'mores.

For the record, everyone except for mom had a good night's sleep, and at this point I am willing to declare that our family does well at camping. We've done it, and it works.

The children enjoy being outside with friends, old and new,

and we like seeing their smiles.

It's all more than worth it, even for the dolls.

:::
Because of the above-mentioned muddly quality of my last couple of weeks and the fact that I failed to record every single brilliant saying, this posting will omit, woefully, Stuff They Say. Instead, just a few more mundane photos that will entertain the grandparents.

It's been hot around here, as is typical of late September in Northern California. We went to the pool, and the water was almost unpleasantly warm.

:::
Also, while I am thinking of it, an update on the hemangioma; we continue to apply Timolol externally, but we apply a single drop, which usually covers the chin only and very little of the under-chin. The effect is quite visible in this picture, where you can see the pale color on top and the brightness on the bottom:

Despite a few stray remarks here and there, she is still, for the most part, blissfully unaware of what the hemangioma means and is learning to say "birthmark" when people draw attention to her face. It's not really a birthmark, but the word works for now. Long explanations will come later.

I have every confidence that she will deal with the consequences of having a facial hemangioma as well as any kid could, but as her mother, I do not look forward to tween- and teen-agerhood one bit. We live in a culture where standards of beauty are as ruthless as they are stupid, and she will need every ounce of hutzpah that she already has, plus more.