Floating Upstream: swan valley, week two

July 15
I know a few of you are wondering what in the world we're doing in a cabin in the middle of (seemingly) nowhere. The short answer is not much of anything. That is why we came here.

Today it was pleasantly cool in the morning, and we read at home and/or made occasional forays to the creek for random items, including but not limited to, grasshoppers. In the afternoon, it poured. After the rain, brilliant sunshine illuminated the freshly scented earth. We biked to the river and skipped stones.

Then we came home, ate dinner, read books, and went to bed.

This, roughly, has been the tenor of our days here at the cabin. We haven't spent more than four days in a row without scampering off to somewhere else, and that's been both a blessing and a bummer. (Since I started writing this post three days ago, we've gone fishing at Rock Creek and played with friends at Georgetown Lake, about which more in the next post.) Given a chance, I'd spend weeks here and only leave once every ten days to stock up on fresh groceries. Given a chance, I'd spend my days reading and hiking and then reading and hiking more. I believe that's the dictionary definition of "retirement."
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Anyway. There's been much play in the creek, off and on every single day. Raya took a while to attempt "full-body dunks," but once she did try, she couldn't get enough. The series of photos below represents a sequence that repeated itself many many times. The water is freezing, for lack of a better word.

Mama, are you watching? I'm going to dunk!

under

Did you see that??

That was fun! I am going to do it again!

Their play in the creek has undergone any number of mutations. Because a big bear crossed the neighbors' property some days ago, I now require that they be visible from the cabin porch. That limits their games a bit but not too much.

Jars can be filled with all sorts of treasures.

When the days are open, and no one wakes up with an agenda, there is a tendency for the hours to blend and for all of us to move seamlessly from one activity (or state of inactivity) to another. We've now gone through a good bit of our book pile, done a tiny bit of math, and even indulged in the occasional half hour of iPad; he plays one of two games, and she watches snippets from The Sound of Music.

she is enchanted by the romantic story of Maria

There's also been a whole lot of drawing, including a series of pictures of girls in various dress designs, endlessly being created and compared.

In the evenings when it cools off (or doesn't), they invariably ask us/me to play tag and/or set up a performance of a wordless chase that strongly resembles a silent cartoon. The plots are incomprehensibly complicated, and I rest assured, once I've witnessed the entire thing, that the thirty minutes of daily vigorous exercise mandated by Kaiser Permanente have been completed.

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Rado's been gone for the past week, and I've been referring to my time alone with the kids as "homesteading." I do have water and electricity, and the small kitchen is wonderfully stocked--plus the shower is a huge bonus--but hey...we're on the edge of the wilderness, and we have to drive nine miles to a tiny store that sells ice cream, beef jerky, and diet coke.
Before Rado left, we managed to pull ourselves together for a few family activities. First, everyone really wanted to kayak on Holland Lake. Majestic like so many lakes in this beautiful valley, Holland is, unfortunately, quite popular. We loved kayaking as a family for the first time ever, but we weren't keen on the motorized boats, and the beach had a few too many people; our kids refused to enjoy it, and we regretted not having swum off a quieter shore while we were kayaking.
Sava's Christmas list, renewed daily, now includes a kayak, as does Raya's. Single kayaks both.

Raya in front of Rado, and Sava & mom in the kayak ahead

We should have stayed and swum here, right at the foot of the waterfall, which feeds the lake.

Instead, the kids made only a lukewarm attempt to enjoy the "official" beach.

I purposely cut out the two dozen other kids, but who are we kidding?

Still, Sava would love to come back alone, in a single kayak, and he probably will, in a couple more years.
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More interestingly, we repeated a hike to Glacier Lake, which we first made three years ago when Raya was still in a carrier, and 3.2 miles felt monumental for Sava. This time Raya, who's been hiking with her older brother since she was tiny, covered that same distance seemingly without any effort. We didn't realize, until the very end, that we now have two kids who will walk 3+ miles without even so much as asking "why?" It's just what we do.

She hiked in a swimsuit in anticipation of swimming at the lake. There were a ton of huckleberries along the trail--far more than at Cold Lake two days earlier--and she found half of a robin egg, which she carefully carried in and out.

Although it's a very dry year here, as everywhere in the West, we were surprised at the fullness of Glacier Creek, alongside which the trail meanders.

Glacier Lake blew us away the first time we saw it, and we had very high expectations this time. Then when we both remarked that it's "very pretty," Rado and I diagnosed each other with Spectacular Alpine Lakes Surfeit. Now that we've seen half a dozen such glorious lakes in the span of about three weeks, we no longer seem capable of lofty exaltation. The human mind, apparently, habituates itself to every kind of beauty.

The kids dipped, and Rado swam.

Sava skipped stones, which, along with fly-fishing, has been his favorite activity these last two weeks.

Glacier lake is very very very pretty.

So it's glorious here, and the kids are already moaning about not wanting to leave Montana. We'll miss the water, above all, but also the greenery and the authentic wildness. More than all these, we'll miss the unscripted days.