Doyle, Hagrid and I spent our Sunday afternoon in one of our favorite ways - on a hike down in the Buffalo National River Park. After early Mass and a little relaxing time devoted to reading the Sunday paper, we packed a picnic lunch, loaded up our big dog and headed south.
Our goal was Hideout Holler (I love that name!) It was a mile in and a mile out, up and down hills, with some huge rock formations, and a gorgeous view from the edge of a bluff. Along the way were all kinds of lovely signs of fall.
We did have one mishap that could have been deadly, but turned out okay. On the edge of the bluff, as we were admiring the view, Hagrid suddenly started barking and running in circles, and we realized he was COVERED in yellow jackets, after apparently sticking his nose in the wrong hole. Doyle immediately took charge, telling me to stay back, and brushing all kinds of insects from our frantic doggie. Hag ended up with about 15 bites, Doyle with about five, me with none. I was terrified that Hagrid might have some kind of allergic reaction to all those stings, but he didn't. They both seem to be fine tonight, except for a few sore bumps.
Thank you, Lord! Doyle told me his biggest fear was that Hagrid would run over the edge of the HIGH bluff in his panic as the bees were stinging him.
All in all, a very satisfying day. The hike was just challenging enough to make it interesting and fun. One of our favorites. Wish you could have come with us!
Here are some of my favorite photos from the day: (if you're interested in seeing more, I'll post the photo album at right).

One of the writers who has had the biggest impact on my life is a
man who died on the same November day in 1963 that John F. Kennedy did,
when I was in the second grade.
He never traveled widely, but he
thought widely, and his mind was one of the most respected of his day.
He taught in one of the world's oldest and most revered universities.
An eminent scholar, his specialty was medieval literature.
Although
he was brought up in a church-going home, he became an avowed atheist
at about 15, and didn't come back “kicking and screaming” to
Christianity until he was in his early thirties. He eventually became
one of our faith's greatest defenders, with a rare ability to explain
deep theology in a way the world can understand.
His works, which
have been translated into 30 languages and sold millions of copies,
vary widely in subject matter. Along with his scholarly writings, his
work includes a fascinating autobiography; imaginative novels,
including a science-fiction trilogy; and stacks of wisdom-infused
letters that have been compiled into various volumes. One of his
best-known books, “Mere Christianity,” was compiled from a series of
radio talks he gave about the faith during World War II. But this
intellectual scholar is probably best-known for a series of remarkable
children's books he first wrote for his stepsons.
He was a close
friend of the brilliant author of “The Lord of the Rings,” J. R. R.
Tolkien, who, like most of his friends, called him “Jack.” We know him
as C. S. Lewis, recognized in today's world as the author of the
“Chronicles of Narnia.”

Clive Staples Lewis was an Irishman by
birth, but spent his adult life in England, where he, like Tolkien, was
a professor of English at Oxford University. He spent most of his life
as a bachelor, living with his older brother, and faithfully taking
care of the widowed mother of an Army comrade of his who was killed in
the first World War.
In middle age, much to his surprise, Lewis fell
deeply in love with an American woman, Joy Gresham, marrying for the
first time when he was past 60, after she had been diagnosed with
terminal cancer. The couple spent four happy years together before
Joy’s death in 1960. After his wife’s death, the broken-hearted widower
published “A Grief Observed,” which has since helped many others cope
with tragic loss.
I can't remember when I first discovered C.S.
Lewis — maybe when someone gave a paperback set of the Narnia books to
my little sister and brother when I was in high school. I devoured the
magical books with delight, and have re-read them a number of times. I
had fun reading them to my own boys, who loved them, too.

 “The
Chronicles of Narnia” — which have sold more than 100 million copies —
are not just books for children. In fact, Lewis believed a test of a
good children's book is whether or not adults can read it with
enjoyment, too. I learned much of what I know about our Lord Jesus by
reading about Lewis' golden lion Aslan, “the son of the
Emperor-Over-Sea,” and his descriptions of “Aslan’s country” have
colored my own grasp of what eternity will be like, and helped inspire
my own quest to “come farther up and farther in.”

Later I read “Mere
Christianity,” a thought-provoking book that explains the basic tenets
of Christianity in fresh, un-churchy language, as well as a number of
Lewis’ other books.
This week I've been pondering a nugget of C. S. Lewis' wisdom, which always brings light.
 “I have tried ... to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration,” Lewis writes in “Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer.”
I'm
thinking about this in light of looking around at the natural beauties
of the fall that I've written about — the leaves beginning to turn, the
woods’ colorful fungi, the bright wildflowers, the slanting golden
sunlight.
Lewis went on to explain: “I don't mean simply by giving
thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I mean something
different. How shall I put it? We can't — or I can't — hear the song of
a bird as simply a sound. Its meaning or message ... comes with it
inevitably ... This heavenly fruit is instantly redolent of the orchard
where it grew. This sweet air whispers of the country from whence it
blows. It is a message. We know we are being touched by a finger of
that right hand at which there are pleasures forevermore ... One's mind
runs back up the sunbeam to the sun....”
I've been pondering this,
and what it means to me is this: When I see something that touches me
with its beauty — like a burning red leaf floating gently on a puddle
in the fall woods — I am not only thankful for it, but it turns my
heart toward God — the maker of that leaf, the inventor of that color —
in worship of Him. The beauty of that leaf is a reminder of “the
orchard where it grew,” in God's country. The “sweet air” of the Ozarks
breeze in the fall reminds me of the country “from whence it blows,”
from God's country, from eternity, from the land for which my heart
longs.
Lewis helps me realize that when I admire something in
Creation, my heart is turned worshipfully toward the Creator, my “mind
runs back up the sunbeam to the sun,” and I am able to know a little
bit more about what He is really like.
I believe that dear old Jack
Lewis himself is there today, in Aslan's Country, delighting in being
near “that right hand at which there are pleasures forevermore.”
 I hope to join him one day.

-------------
By Celia DeWoody
Copyright Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times 2008
Published Sept. 24, 2008




 

   After Hurricane Ike lost his way and blew through
our corner of the Ozarks Saturday night, toppling trees and stealing
electricity from our neighbors, we were ready for the gift of blue
skies and cooler temperatures that Sunday brought us.
   Doyle and I
loaded up our big dog and headed south on Highway 7 to the Buffalo
River Trail at Pruitt. Early fall was in the air, in the fresh breeze,
and the sunlight that seems more golden than it is any other time of
year.
   You had to look sharp, but you could spot the first colors of
fall along the damp trail. A bright-red scrap of Virginia creeper that
had lighted next to a fern at the base of a hickory tree. A maple leaf,
grapefruit-colored, floating in a puddle near a spring.
Narrow walnut
leaves fluttering down in the gentle wind, glinting gold in the
sun-rays that pierced the trees, sparking against the green woods like
lightning bugs. Fallen hickory nuts still in their husks, nestled
together like a clutch of tiny green pumpkins on the ground.

 A
storm-blown oak branch, loaded with green acorns held tightly in their
little wooden cups.
   Colorful fungi took center stage in the woods
drama that post-storm afternoon. Delicate miniature trumpets in
jack-o-lantern colors.

Creamy clam-shells, with carefully drawn arching
stripes of brown, trimming a fallen log.

A living tree serving as host
to a battalion of white fungal half-circles marching up and down its
trunk. Toadstools skirted in rusty-red with yellow petticoats — beige
mushrooms sprinkled with darker brown, like nutmeg on custard —
browny-orange flowers of fungi ruffling over a fallen log —

 spindly
stalks as yellow as egg-yolk reaching upward — delicate white stag-horn
stems, growing in a coral-like bundle on the forest floor.

   I delight
in each new sign of fall I see. Watching the seasons shift has always
been a joy to me, and I never can decide which change I welcome more —
the one from summer to autumn, or from winter to spring.
   This time
of year, I'm compelled to watch carefully. There's a dogwood tree in
front of the Harrison schools’ Central Office I've been keeping my eye
on for several weeks, ever since it started showing rusty-red in
August, long before I spotted new color on any of its brothers and
sisters. When I drive past Maplewood Cemetery on my way to church, I
spy patches of orange and even red already showing in a maple tree here
and there. I gather these small proofs that fall is really and truly
arriving, and paste them into a mental scrapbook that for some reason
gives me great satisfaction.
   Why is it so gratifying, to watch the
seasons change? I think part of the reason is because it reassures us
that the more things change, the more they remain the same, as the
French proverb goes.
   We delight in change, and yet, underneath that change, we like for there to be things we can rely on to remain the same.
    Like
a child who insists that the Christmas tree always be put up in the
same corner from year to year, we like for there to be some certainties
we can count on.
   Hurricanes may rage and whip up the waves on the
Gulf of Mexico, but the tides still ebb and flow on the same eternal
schedule they've always followed, obedient to the powerful tug of the
moon, regardless of the drama being played out on the surface of the
sea.
   It's a fresh season, a brand-new autumn — and yet we can know
that the maples will always flame out at the cemetery, and pansies and
mums will appear at roadside stands and in pots on front porches, and
the dogwood leaves will turn rusty. The hickory nuts and walnuts will
fall. Continuity in the midst of transition.
   Things change in our
lives. Some delight, and some are hard for us to bear. Babies are born.
Loved ones die. Jobs disappear. New careers begin. Storms destroy.
Couples fall in love. Marriages end. Trees fall. New homes are built.
Sons and daughters go off to war. Families move from place to place. A
child starts to school. New presidents are elected.
   But no matter
what happens in our lives, underneath the surface changes, the great
wheel of the year still turns, just like it always has. Winter melts
into spring. Spring blossoms into summer. Summer glows into fall. Fall
freezes into winter.
   Our planet revolves around the sun. Days grow shorter. Leaves burn with color. The year tips downhill.
   And Life goes on, cupped gently in the loving Hands of the One who started the wheel turning.

By Celia DeWoody
Copyright 2008 Harrison Daily Times
Harrison, Arkansas
Published Sept. 17, 2008

 

Remants of Hurricane Ike blew through the Ozarks last night with lots of rain and some hard wind...then the SUN came out this morning. Doyle and I loaded up Hagrid and headed for the Buffalo River Trail at Pruitt. The themes of today's hike were:
"Early Signs of Fall" and "Colorful Fungi."
The air was fresh, the breeze was cool - it was a delightful walk. If you want to come along, open the Web album above right. Here's a preview:

Woolly worms, August fogs, the breastbone of a goose, the song of a katydid ...
...
Since I’ve been writing this column, many people have told me that our
late publisher emeritus, J. E. Dunlap, often wrote about natural signs
that predict the weather, and they often say they’ve missed reading
about them since J. E.'s been gone.
Not knowing a thing
about “weather signs,” I decided to do some research. It gave me an
excuse to go to one of my favorite places, the Boone County Library,
where I found a treasure — “Ozarks Magic and Folklore,” published in
1947 by Vance Randolph.
A native lowlander, Randolph
explains that he first visited the Ozark country in 1899, and spent
much of his life in the Arkansas and Missouri hills. “I fished and
fought and hunted and danced and gambled with my backwoods neighbors,”
he writes. “I traveled the ridge roads in a covered wagon, consorting
with peddlers and horse traders and yarb doctors and moonshiners ... “
Although
much of the colorful folklore of the region is gradually fading away
with each new generation homogenized by television and Internet, I
believe that a lot of folks still enjoy watching faithfully for these
weather signs that Randolph records.
“Signs and
superstitions about the weather naturally seem important to a people
who live by tilling the soil, and are taken very seriously in the Ozark
country,” Randolph writes.
The author quotes a gentleman
in Jasper County, Mo., as telling him, “Nobody ever claimed that them
old signs was always right. But I've been a-watchin' the weather for 60
years, an’ I believe these here goosebone prophets are just about as
good as the government men we've got nowadays.”
The term
“goosebone prophet” refers to the practice Randolph describes of
examining the breastbone of a wild goose killed in the fall. “If the
bone is thin and more or less transparent, the winter will be mild,” he
writes. “If the bone is thick and opaque, the winter will be severe. If
the bone is white, there will be a great deal of snow.”
Another
winter sign comes from “a patriarch at St. Joe, Arkansas” who said that
“for every 100-degree day in July there will be a 20-below day the
following January.”
The folklore collector says that many Ozarkers told him “it never frosts until the cockleburs are ripe.”
It was widely believed in the Ozarks that “katydids sing to bring on cold weather in the fall,” Randolph said.
He
found a number of variations in the katydid/frost connection. Some said
a frost will come two weeks after the katydids sing; other farmers
expected the first frost exactly six weeks after the katydids’ singing
begins; others said nine weeks; others three months. Randolph says he
heard in Taney County, Mo., that the first killing frost always comes
10 weeks after “the locusts begin to holler.”
The writer
says an old man in Washington County, Arkansas, told him he always
marked on his calendar the date he first saw a “Devil’s-darning-needle”
insect, sometimes called a “walking stick.” The old man told him the
first real frost always comes just six weeks later.
He
writes that if you see butterflies late in the autumn, that’s a sign
that cold weather will arrive soon. “The same is true of big woolly
caterpillars,” he adds. (Those must be the “woolly worms” J. E. used to
write about.)
“Some say that the number of days the
first snow remains on the ground indicates the number of snows to be
expected during the winter,” he writes.
A lady in Rolla,
Mo., told Randolph if you count the number of sunny days between July 1
and September 1 and multiply by two, you’ll arrive at the number of
freezing cold days you can expect the following winter.
 Many
Ozark folks of Randolph’s day believed that the severity of the coming
winter was indicated by the thickness of natural things like feathers
and fur and cornshucks. “If hair on muskrats, skunks, coons and possums
is unusually thick, the hillman expects a hard winter,” he writes. He
said every child of the hills had heard the rhyme, “Onion skin mighty
thin/Easy winter coming in.”
Other signs of a severe
winter include: squirrels heading south; hornets building their nests
low in the trees; a big crop of walnuts; an abundance of acorns;
cherries or lilacs blooming in the fall; woodpeckers beginning to peck
at the foot of a tree and working their way to the top; the moon
appearing farther north than usual in the fall; and a very hot summer.
When
the trees’ foliage is unusually dense in summer, or bright in color, it
was said to mean a very cold winter is on its way. Have y'all noticed
how thick the leaves are on our trees right now, and how fall color is
already showing in some of the dogwoods and maples?
Randolph
said it was widely believed that the number of fogs in August is always
equal to the number of snows the following winter.
 Jeff
Christenson told me this week a man stopped him recently to ask, “Who's
keeping up with the August fogs now that J. E. is gone?”
 Are
there any goosebone prophets out there who counted the fogs in August,
or made note of the day the locusts started to holler?
 
By Celia DeWoody
Copyright 2008 Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times

Our annual hot-air balloon gathering is this weekend, and the Hare and the Hounds race went over our neighborhood....here are some of the photos I shot standing in the street this morning...

   Doyle and I had the most wonderful get-away day yesterday. We piled into the Prius and headed west, over to the Norfork River, to Rose's Trout Dock, where D was once a weekend fishing guide years ago when he was in his 20s.
   Our plans weren't to fish, but just to show me the Norfork and White Rivers from the water - the best trout fishing water in the country, many people believe.
   We rented a trout boat for half a day and headed out into the sunshine. As you look at the pictures, keep in mind that the water in the river is only about 52 degrees, because it comes through the dam from the cool depths of Bull Shoals Lake. Even though it was about 90 outside yesterday, on the river it was delightful, with a cool breeze, and at times a breath of truly chilly air when you'd go through a shady spot.

The happy first mate....

We saw blue herons, a kingfisher, hawks, and even (maybe) a bald eagle! And I kept a sharp watch for the first signs of fall, spotting red leaves here and there, especially on the Virginia creeper. Early fall wildflowers were everywhere...

We couldn't have asked for a more perfect day. Doyle spotted these sunbeams spearing out from behind a cloud....don't they remind you of the way God's love is always shining on us, even when we can't see Him?