Friday, October 1, 2010

Squeezing In The Outdoors







Indian summer and I'm lovin' it. Two weeks ago it was gray and rainy. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy all kinds of weather for different reasons. After a long and very fruitful summer of events, I was getting a little bit pooped. Gray skies and rain made the desire for hot tea, pj days and a bright orange comfy blanket deepen, along with a great tv day.


But last week dawned with spectacular sunshiny days and the ache to get away from work to enjoy the outdoors at least once more before the white stuff starts to fall.


Kevin and I were originally headed for a small lake named Little Cultus Lake, which we did stop at. But the kayak call was minimal. Pretty, out there, no big boats and lovely. Then we thought we'd check out some other lakes, Irish Lake and Taylor Lake that were supposed to be just a few more miles ahead. On a straight away, a few miles flies by in minutes, on a 4x4 Jeep road, it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r!! Head-banging, kidney-jolting and neck-wrenching is more like it. For thirty minutes. And was it worth it? Ohhhh yessss! There were no kayaks on this day but the call within me was bursting, I so wanted to get on top of that water and scout the edges for whatever; foliage, critters, birds, a fantastic photo, maybe even a fish skirting underneath me. As it was, we simply enjoyed the peace and quiet. If it weren't for forest service burning, it would have been absolutely perfect. But hey, we all have to get along. There were campgrounds way up there and since it is after Labor Day, kids are back in school, we only came across a few cars. Hunters were setting up camp for the opening day of deer season. We stopped and chatted with a few who were just out walking, rifles slung over their shoulders. You see, we do have mountain lion (open season all year) and black bears in the area. It's just smart unless you want to do a Timothy Treadwell. And even then, he ended up calling for help.


We finally found a great spot to have a tail gate lunch of egg salad sandwiches, our munching being the loudest things we could hear. Every now and then a Douglas squirrel would scold an intruder, a dipping merganzer would call out a hello to a companion or a helicopter-sized blue dragon fly would flit by our noses. Even though there was a prescribed burn going on, it wasn't enough to hide the scent of the forest or fog the beauty of our surroundings. It was refreshing.

And yes, we will stuff the kayaks in the back of the truck and christen those lakes next year.