Back to the hunting lodge

The Bunting Family Lodge, Assateague Island National Seashore.

I thought about how many elements it took to create the simplest of things – a pink sky an unusually perfect day, a happy family, a deep friendship, a moment of pure delight. I wondered, too, what it took to undo these things. It seemed to me that undoing something was far easier than creating it.

~ Aditi Khorana, The Library of Fates 

Beached and bleached.

When I wrote up my piece for Cathy’s challenge (you can find the post, along with a link to the challenge, here), I struggled a bit with brevity.  No surprises there, eh?  Brevity, as we all know, is not my strong suit.  I also went off on a couple of different tangents that I took out in order to keep close to the 750 word count.  I’m going to share part of one of them with you today (because it makes a good start, I think, for a post) along with some more photos from my hike out to the Bunting Family Lodge on Assateague Island.  (In case you missed it, more about that here.)

Looking out at the bay from near the lodge.

If you’ve been visiting my blog for a while, you know that I have a driving phobia, something that became worse after the car accident I was in two years ago.  This phobia extended to riding in the car as a passenger for a while and even today I sometimes react with a full-body startle reflex when cars or trucks approach from the right.  In addition to that, I’ve learned a lot about truck safety — or a lack thereof — through Dawn’s blog which has resulted in an overly keen awareness of all the huge trucks on the roads and highways when we travel.  To complete the trifecta of traveling-by-car disquietude, I am not fond of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge which is one of two ways we have of getting off the island.  I label it with the hashtag #scarybridge whenever I post about it on Instagram, something I do pretty much every time we go over the Scary Bridge because taking a picture and going through the steps to post the picture calm and distract me while we get from the island to the mainland or vice versa.

The kitchen in the lodge. I didn’t get too many photos of the inside because I’m short and had trouble looking in the windows.

In her post on the journey: taking ourselves from here to there, Cathy writes about how we take ourselves wherever we go.  I immediately thought of how in bringing myself, I also bring my fears.  But I also bring my sense of wonder, even when we are traveling roads we have traveled many times.  Somehow, the wonder often cancels out the fears.  It’s nice that it works that way.  Otherwise, I might never leave the house except on foot.  Or on bicycle since I don’t seem to mind that, either.

Hiding.

As you might have guessed, M does the driving from here to there when we go on road trips.  I am the chief navigator and reader of the maps (or Waze, a navigation app I have on my phone).  Waze is great, but I still use paper maps.  I enjoy them almost as much as I enjoy the scenery.  Maps makes me think of adventurers and explorers, of those who traversed the land before us, showing us where to find the rivers, mountains, and other geographical regions, marking the borders and lines, and making it possible to find and visit the places they found and explored.  A paper map also does a couple of things no app can do — it works when there is no cellphone coverage and helps us find our way when the GPS app is wrong.  And they are often wrong.

I don’t know what this is. M thought it might be some kind of land and water vehicle.

I am good with maps, maybe even better than I am with using an app on the phone.  The only time we get lost is when the driver either doesn’t pay attention to his navigator’s directions or he decides to go rogue.  I’ve always thought it a good thing that I know how to read a map.  My sense of direction is terrible.  Without a map, I’d be lost or going in circles a lot.

I still don’t know.  But it looks like it makes a good planter.

In other news…  I’ve been reading some wonderful books lately.  I highly recommend the NY Times-NPR book club, Now Read This, if you’re in search of relevant good reads.  They will be announcing the book for April soon.  I am currently reading the pick for March, Exit West: A Novel by Mohsin Hamid.  It is beautifully written and quite thought-provoking in terms of war, refugees, and immigration.  Hamid’s descriptions of living in a war torn country are written in such a calm, everyday voice that, to me, makes it all the more shocking.  I am about two-thirds of the way finished and finding it difficult to put down.

Beyond repair.

Thank you for stopping by on this cloudy Good Friday.  The weather folks are saying the clouds will clear out this afternoon so it’s possible we’ll see the sunset.  Let’s go to the Point to have a look if the clouds clear.  Sunset is scheduled for 7:25 PM.

Be good, be kind, be loving.  Just Be.  🙂

Do you think the sand recognizes itself in the glass? Or the glass recognizes itself in the sand?

A few of the 10,000 reasons to be happy:  596)  A scrumptious lentil, quinoa, and kale soup for lunch.  597)  Coming across the first snake of the season.  Just before I spotted him or her I was thinking that it’s about time for the snakes to come out, and there s/he was, stretched across the trunk of a downed cedar tree.  598)  Upgraded internet service.  We just switched over so I’m not sure if it will make a big difference or not.  We shall see.  599)  Budding trees and shrubs, some of them already beginning to leaf out.  600)  Reassurances when needed.

A door. (From a nursery in Shelbyville, Delaware.)