Doyle and I went on one of the best hikes we've made since moving to the Ozarks today. We drove about an hour south of Harrison to the King's Bluff Loop Trail in the Ozark National Forest, between Pelsor and Ben Hur, Arkansas. It was a sunny blue day, 45 degrees, just perfect hiking weather. We love winter hiking in the Ozarks (no ticks and chiggers!) because you can see so far when the leaves are off the trees and it's just the bare bones of the landscape.
This hike had it all ... two waterfalls ... great rock formations ... gurgling creeks ... great views of the hills ... not a power line or housetop in sight, just wild old hills. Wonderful.
If you're interested in coming along on our hike with us, I'm going to post the slideshow above right.
Here's a preview:

Hey, friends,
How was your Christmas?
Ours was lively, with plenty of food and conversation.
Doyle's daughter Erika and her fiance' Mike drove all the way up from South Florida to spend Christmas with Doyle, Ruby and me, bringing along their six-month-old boxer puppy, Indie. Our Great Dane, Hagrid, was terrified of little Indie at first, because he's never really been around another dog much, but they were soon fast friends and spent as much time as possible playing together.

I only had Christmas Day off from work, so it's been kind of busy for me around here, but it's been a nice week. We enjoyed having the kids here, and loved being in our new/old house for our first Christmas. I went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, which I love. I missed my boys - I think this is only the second Christmas since Alex was born that I haven't had one of them with me.

We've got the downstairs pretty straight and square-away, and it does look pretty, at least to us. The upstairs, where D and I hang out a lot, still has lots of boxes to be put away, but we'll get there.

Tomorrow's my birthday - I'll be 53. Yikes! How did that happen???

Tell me about your Christmases, friends!

Christmastime
once again is here, my friends, and my heart is full, as hearts tend to
be during this holy, stressful, joy-filled, busy, bittersweet season.
I
have a feeling your hearts are as full as mine is, with all of the
emotions that well up so strongly during these sunshine-shy days,
during the long winter nights spangled with the glow of Advent candles
and Christmas lights and the twinkle of starshine.
My heart is full  — of longing.
Longing
for my dear ones who are far away — both for those who are in different
places on the map of this country, and those who are far away in that
joy-filled land where there are no more tears. I’m especially missing
my older son Alex, who’s out in the faraway Rockies, spending his
second Christmas in Boulder. He has the day off from the Mediterranean
Restaurant, where he’s a grill chef, and will probably get together for
a meal with friends. We went out there to see him in August, and I
probably won’t see him again until next summer. A few days once a year
is just not nearly often enough for this Mama to see her firstborn
child. I’m longing to sit next to him and listen to his stories and
laugh, and think about how much he reminds me both of my Daddy and of
his Mississippi grandfather, both big storytellers who had the gift of
holding their audience in the palm of their hands.
I’m missing my
dear sisters, my lifelong best friends, and their children, and my
sweet little brother, and faraway friends in Mississippi and Florida.
I'm missing my cousin Beau in Louisiana, who’s always been more like a
brother to me. I’m especially missing my little nephew Ben, who
confided to Santa Claus he wanted a MOOSE for Christmas this year. I’m
missing Mama and Daddy, and my grandparents, and my dear aunt Mimi, who
have all flown away.
My heart is full — of memories.
Memories of
long-ago Christmases. The Christmas when I was a little girl living
with my family in Whidbey Island, Washington, when Daddy gave me and
Cissy both our very own pair of little red wooden skis. Alex’s second
Christmas, when, after he had torn open two or three gifts at his
grandmother’s house, he looked at me and said, “No more pwesents, Mommy
— dat's enough.” Jamie’s first Christmas, when his favorite object
among all the toys and ornaments was a bright red apple, which he bit
into, then crawled all over the house with it poking out of his mouth.
My Daddy’s last Christmas in 2004, when Doyle and I went to his house
in Sarasota on Christmas morning, and my husband fixed his special Eggs
Benedict, which Daddy adored, and we all had such a happy visit.
My
heart is full — of anticipation. I’m looking forward to so many things.
To our first Christmas in our new home, which will be shared by Doyle’s
daughter Erika and her friend Mike. To the arrival of our first little
grandson in February in faraway South Florida, where Doyle’s son Robert
and his wife Christine and their three daughters are expecting little
Robert Parker DeWoody. To our first springtime in our new house, when
Doyle and Ruby and I’ll get to see what bulbs pop up in our yard, and
delight for the first time in the blossoming of our very own dogwood
tree. To another year of making new friends and growing deeper roots
into the soil of our beloved Ozarks. To further opportunities to try to
use the gifts our good Father has given me. To seeing what the Lord has
around the next corner for us. To new lessons in His school of love.
My heart is full — of gratitude.
Gratitude
for so many answered prayers, for blessings of “good measure, pressed
down, and shaken together and running over,” as dear old Saint Luke
said. For answered prayers for our families, for our children, for our
friends, for ourselves. For our wonderful old Harrison house, where we
all love living already, and for our warm and welcoming new neighbors.
For my fun, challenging, interesting job here at the Daily Times, where
I get paid to write, which I love to do, and for getting to meet all
kinds of fascinating people and tell their stories. For my bright,
funny, creative, supportive colleagues. For our church, and for our
dear pastor, Father Greg Hart, who means so much to both of us. For my
husband, who never fails to show me every day that he loves me, no
matter what. For my sons, who are both such blessings to their Mama.
For all of my kinfolks and friends, including my sweet mother-in-law
Ruby, who love me and encourage me and pray for me and laugh with me
and cry with me, and show me what love is.
My heart is full — of joy.
Our Beloved has come. Love has won. Let Heaven and Nature sing!
Merry Christmas, dear friends. God bless us, every one.

Yesterday was my Mama’s birthday. She would’ve
turned 75 if she were still living on this side of the River. Now she’s
living in a place where life is not measured in years, but is ladled
out in big dollops of joy.
I wish you could’ve known her, because
you would’ve loved her. And she would’ve loved getting to come up here
to see us in our new hometown in the Ozarks and getting to know some of
you.
How can I describe Mama to you?
Well, I can tell you what
she looked like ... In her last years, wizened from osteoporosis and
lung disease, she didn’t weigh 90 pounds soaking wet. But when I was a
little girl, she was a true beauty, tall and very slender, with
light-brown hair and green eyes and skin like silk — and the most
perfect nose I’ve ever seen.
When I was young and living in an old
family home in our little Mississippi town, a man I’d never met knocked
on my back door one morning. He turned out to be a native of the town,
a relative of my in-laws who was at that time a well-known neurosurgeon
in Memphis. While we were visiting, he  realized who my mother was.
“Lucile Adams was the most beautiful girl who ever grew up in Macon,”
he assured me very solemnly.
I don’t know about that, but I do know
she was voted “Most Beautiful” all four years at Macon High School.
When I found the old annuals at her mother’s house and asked her about
it, she just grinned and said, “Honey, this is a little town — there
wasn’t much competition.”

As beautiful as she was, Mama wasn’t the
least bit vain. I can just see her, putting on her makeup as she walked
through the house, slathering drugstore foundation over her cheeks and
dabbing on a little lipstick without even looking in the mirror.
She
loved pretty clothes, but hated to shop, so she might have on something
pretty and stylish, or she was just as liable to have on a pair of
faded denim “pedal-pushers” and some beat-up white Keds.
I can tell
you what she collected. Santa Clauses. White china angels.
Christmas-tree ornaments. R. S. Prussian china. Cranberry glass.
Letters and cards from her children. Pictures of her family.
I can
tell you what she was good at. Telling funny stories, usually making
fun of herself. Writing letters full of colorful details about our
family’s lives, brimming with love and encouragement. Growing things.
Perfectly folding an unwieldy fitted sheet. Matting and framing
pictures. Decorating for Christmas. Making pecan pie and cornbread
dressing and potato salad and the best fried chicken in the world.
I
can tell you what she didn’t like. Going very far away from home,
wherever that happened to be at the time. Mushrooms. People who hurt
her children.
I can tell you a few things that will give you an idea of what kind of person she was.
She
took stray kids into her heart and into her home. When my younger
brother and sisters were still at home, my folks were living in the DC
suburbs. Mama took in a succession of their friends, kids whose parents
had moved away before graduation, or who weren’t getting along with
their families. They all adored Mama, and never forgot her. They knew
she loved them.
One of her special kids was a black boy named
Curtis, who had been a friend of my brother’s in junior high school.
Curtis, who lived with his grandmother, had a hard life. Mama took up
time listening to him, and he knew he was always welcome at her house.
Curtis went down the wrong road, and ended up in prison for selling
drugs, but he stayed in touch with her. He would call Mama collect from
prison when he needed encouragement, because he knew she loved him and
was praying for him. He would send her cards on Mother’s Day.
I
can tell you what she loved ... She loved to laugh. She loved pie. She
loved birds, especially redbirds. She loved flowers. She loved pretty
antique china. She loved the old comedian, Jonathan Winters. She adored
babies, and could get a fussing little one to settle down with a magic
touch that I’m thankful to have inherited. She loved Christmastime. She
loved her children and grandchildren, her family and her friends. And
even though they were divorced after 30 years, and he married twice
more before his death, she never stopped loving my Daddy.
I can tell you a few of the memories of my mother I treasure most.
Mama
trying to teach us how to “Beat the Hambone,” a syncopated, rhythmic
clapping, foot-tapping game she had learned from her black friends on
the Mississippi farm when she was a little girl. Mama sitting at the
breakfast table in about 1963, teaching me how to play jacks, scooping
up the little metal stars so quickly you almost couldn’t see her
slender hand. Mama holding my babies, looking into their eyes like they
were windows into Heaven. Mama listening to me on the phone, laughing
her wonderful, infectious laugh. Mama reading “The Three Billy Goats
Gruff” to my little nephew Ben. Mama in her hospital bed, patting my
hand, opening her green eyes to look at me and give me her sweet smile
and tell me she loved me one more time.
Mama’s unconditional love
was something we could always count on. No matter what mistakes we
made, or how we might have disappointed her, we always knew we could
count on her to believe in us, to be on our side, to pray for us, and
to never stop loving us.
I believe Mama’s still doing all those things for her children.
-----
By Celia DeWoody
Copyright 2008 Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times
Published Dec. 17, 2008

Help! Does anybody know how to add code to link to a Picasa web album now that I'm using this Xanga themes doohickey so I can have a fancy page? I used to be able to paste the code for my web albums into a box on the Look and Feel page, and it would create a slideshow on my Xanga site of my Picasa web album, but on these Xanga themes, I can't find a box to paste the code into. Is it possible? 

Doyle and I ran away to the river this afternoon, and it was a lovely break from the past three or four weeks of packing and moving. We moved into our new house two weeks ago, and yesterday, we moved Doyle's mom, Ruby, in with us, so we've been busy!

A dose of Nature was just delightful. It was warm today, overcast, but the woods and the river had their own austere beauty.

If you'd like to see more photos of our Christmas-tree cutting expedition Saturday, and our Buffalo River trek today, see my newest Web album on this site ...
Hope y'all have had a great weekend!

I’m wishing I hadn’t already used the headline “Ghoulies and ghosties
and long-leggety beasties ...” for a column earlier this year about
mountain lions, and how we seem to enjoy the idea of scary creatures
sharing our old hills with us.
 Well,
since then, the idea of “ghoulies and ghosties” has come a little
closer to home than those alleged mountain lions out in the bluffs near
the Buffalo. A LOT closer to home!
You know we moved into our
new-old house last week. We’re having fun getting settled. We love the
spaciousness and the tall windows and the porches, and the big trees in
the yard, and the old pine floors and the quirky nooks and crannies.
But we’re not quite sure how we feel about the GHOST ...
Through
all my almost-53 years, I have never before encountered anything that
made me personally believe in haunted houses. When I was a senior in
high school, my family lived in a 1800s-era converted carriage house
near Newport, Rhode Island, where everyone else in the family claimed
to have heard spooky footsteps or even to have seen a ghostly figure.
Because I never had those experiences myself, I chalked the stories up
to my kinfolks’ vivid imaginations.
Well, right now I’m being forced
to change my opinion about the reality of house-hauntings. Odd things
keep happening, almost every day, at the interesting old house that —
just for fun — we’ve named “Squirrels’ Leap.”
The week before we
moved in, I was at the house by myself, painting on the second floor. I
was perfectly comfortable, not nervous, just thinking happy thoughts
about our new home. Right at dusk, suddenly, the house filled with a
combination of noises that at first I attributed to squirrels in the
walls or on the roof. Then I realized it was louder and heavier than
little squirrel feet — it sounded like somebody RUNNING through the
downstairs rooms, causing noise and vibrations through the second
floor. I laughed about it later and said the old house had more than
squirrels in the walls — maybe they were chimpanzees or wolverines,
judging by all the noise they were making. “Ghost” just never occurred
to me, so I kept on painting.
A day or two later, my son Jamie and I
were over at the empty house, looking around. The house suddenly filled
up with a delicious aroma that reminded me of baking apples, or maybe
apple cake. We looked at each other, puzzled.
“Where’s that smell
coming from?” The oven was off, and there weren’t even any pans in the
kitchen yet. In some rooms, the sweet scent was strong — in others, not
discernible at all.
Several times, doors have been found open that
we left closed, but the strange phenomenon that has puzzled me the most
is the white noise. We have a clock radio that is also a white noise
machine. For several years, we’ve gone to sleep with the noise set on
“Wind,” which makes a soothing, rushing noise that drowns out other
noises and is pleasant to fall asleep to.
Since moving into the new
house, every time I’ve set the machine on the wind setting and tried to
go to sleep, I’ve heard what sounds like a faint voice speaking a
phrase over and over and over again, under the wind noise. It’s similar
to what it sounds like when you’re in the house and can hear someone
talking outside, and even though you can’t understand the words, you
know it’s unmistakably the cadence of a human voice. The strange, muted
voice is so noticeable that I’ve had to get up and turn the noise
machine off because it was keeping me from sleeping. As soon as I turn
the machine off, the voice stops along with the wind noise. Once it
sounded like a man’s voice. Another time I thought it sounded more like
a woman, repeating the same indistinguishable phrase over and over
again.
Okay, here’s the incident that really gave me the creeps, and
pretty much made me a believer. There were just me, Roscoe the cat and
Hagrid the Great Dane in the house. Hagrid, who refuses to climb the
steep stairs, was downstairs. Kitty was keeping me company upstairs.
I
was in the bathroom getting dressed. The house was perfectly quiet.
Suddenly I heard the unmistakable sound of human footsteps. Step — step
— step — step — step — step — across the bare pine floor in the central
sitting area upstairs, right next to the bathroom. I called out,
“Doyle? Jamie?” No answer. I walked out into the sitting area. Only
Kitty was sitting there, perched on a chair, frozen, his eyes wide
open, terrified. He was staring in the direction the footsteps had
gone, toward Doyle’s office. No human was in the house but me.
Not
willing to believe it was a  ghost, I told myself, “Those footsteps
must have been Kitty walking across the floor. Maybe this old floor
just amplified his soft steps.”
Nope. Right then, Roscoe jumped down
from the chair and walked across the same section of floor the
footsteps had come from. With a fearful certainty, I realized that his
little white feet were perfectly silent as they padded across the floor.
I
don’t quite know what to think. I don’t get a feeling of evil or some
malevolent presence — it’s all just very, very strange. All of these
incidents are totally outside the realm of my experience, and I’m not
sure how to process them.
For almost 20 years in Mississippi, we
lived in a house much older than this one. Like all old houses, it made
noises. It popped and creaked and moaned in the wind. But I never heard
footsteps, or smelled baking when the oven was off, or heard a voice
murmuring through my white-noise machine.
Could our old house truly be haunted?

By Celia DeWoody
Published Dec. 10, 2008 Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times
Copyright 2008 CPI, Inc.

Super-busy week here in our world. We moved into our new/old house on Monday. I took that one day off, and have had a busy week with work, church stuff, and trying to unpack in the evenings. But we are so, so grateful to have our wonderful old house and to be getting it sort of straight.
Doyle's mom Ruby will move in next weekend. Hopefully we'll be a little more organized by then!
I did put out some Christmas decorations in the house last night, but that's ALL the Christmas preparations I've accomplished so far.
I loved getting out my Mama's little white porcelain angel choir, and the nativity scene my son Jamie gave me two years ago to replace the one we had when he was growing up that got lost in our move from Mississippi. And my Santa Clauses...including some from my mother's collection.
Can't wait to go chop down our REAL tree at the Christmas tree farm like we did last year. It was the most beautiful Christmas tree I've ever had in my life, and smelled SO good.
I'll put up photos of the progress we're making in unpacking and getting the house settled, as soon as I can!
What have YOU been doing this week?

PS- Remind me to fill y'all in on our GHOST!!!