Exploring We Will Go

Explore. The need to discover. I feel this need. I feel a strong tug from the wooded areas of our farm. There is especially a spot where the creeks meet, below the church camp beside us, that draws me. Yesterday I felt like I'd gone a bit too far when I crossed the creek just to get a look at the rocks on the other bank. Pepper crosses it, Dottie crosses it, with little holding them back they cross it. Yesterday... I crossed it. Just for a minute. I looked around and took a couple of pictures and came on back across. I picked up the rock, on my side, that I had come for. A rock full of fossils, crinoids to be exact. It is a fossil that we grew up calling "indian money." I was amazed when I looked it up yesterday. I've yet to find how old these fossils of animal looking plants are. It's beyond my comprehension I feel.

Miss Pepper always wants to go to the left, up the hill, instead of straight on the path to home. She's fourteen and a half and still never quite ready to go back to the house (unless it's summertime). This day I followed her. When we were almost to the top we made a sharp right through the woods. In the wintertime there aren't near the brush and live twigs on the ground. Not to mention the thought of snakes and ticks and spider webs stretching from branch to branch. I was delighted that we ventured here. I found where a hunting stand was a some point. Not near as old as the fossils I had found earlier, but still cool. I might not have seen it if I hadn't heard a small Downy Woodpecker and looked to my right. He was pecking a piece of wood that used to be the tree stand. Sometimes you need a hint of where to glance.

Past the fallen down tree stand and down the hill, I found a tree. Perhaps the biggest Beech tree I've ever seen. If I stretched my arms out around it they wouldn't even span half way around. I had to just stand there and touch it. Just past the tree, I found another tree that looked to me like it had been shot with a shotgun and the spread of pellets from the shot embedded into the side of it. Upon closer look, I don't think this was the case at all. I found one hole that didn't seem as old as the others. Which leads me to believe that this wasn't a shot wound at all. Maybe it was bugs. Maybe it was wood worms. Maybe it was both and the hole were from a hungry woodpecker.

It's amazing what you can find if you just take time to look. As soon as my hair dries, I'll be exploring again today. I figure when I'm old I might have seen all there is to see on our farm, but I doubt it. The Lord blesses this earth with too many treasures to count and me with a curious heart to find them.