Anniversary Trip to Olympic National Park

For our one year anniversary we drove to the other side of Washington to go backpacking in the Olympic National Park. It was a wonderful time to get away, be together and be outdoors. Here are a few things that made the trip memorable:

1. Getting to spend two nights backcountry in the Hoe Rainforest and two nights camping on the beach.
2. Having a mouse take up residence in our car while we were back country (he made a little nest and also found some trail mix which he "hid" in little piles all over the car). We named him Herb so Claire wouldn't be so freaked out if he ran across her lap while driving to the coast. Note: We stopped in Forks (yes, land of Twilight) to buy a mouse trap, but he never took the bait. We figured he ran out when we weren't looking.
   
3. Forgetting our eating utensils when we were back country, so John whittled spoons out of sticks.
   
4. Seeing a coyote up close; he looked at us and completely ignored us. Somehow this little guy must have missed out on the whole fight-or-flight gene.
   
5. Getting to see tidepools. This is one of Claire's most vivid memories from her childhood.
   
6. Reading a Spurgeon sermon together after dinner every night.
   
7. Praying through the goals we set back in January and thanking God for enabling us to meet so many of them.
   
8. Going to a marina in La Push and seeing a boat named, "Miss Clarissa"
9. Watching the sun set over the Pacific Ocean from our campsite.
10. Having a lavender flavored Americano in Sequim (home of Washington's largest lavender festival)

Our Journey Begins

John sets up the stove



View from our beach campsite

Eating with John's whittled spoon


My husband is sooooo good looking.


A boat named Miss Clarissa

Community Gardening

Is it strange that we live next to other living breathing humans, who in imago dei should be honored, valued and known, and yet many times we barely know their names. We go about our separate lives, isolated by a yard, a fence, or (as in our apartment/house) a wall. Is it not also strange that though we have the ability and the space, we have other people grow all of our food? Sometimes I wonder if a more tribal way of life, of living in community and eating food that is the fruit of our own mutual labor is more of how God intended us to live. Though I by no means will deconstruct the entirety of our post-industrialist society and claim things ought to be different, I can't help but wonder if we have disconnected ourselves too much from one another and the means which were origonally used to obtain our nutritional substinance. Just a thought.

This year marks our first real attempts at cultivating the seemingly barren Spokane soil to produce something we can eat. In May we talked with some of our neighbors who had also expressed interest in having a garden and together we tilled the soil in the empty lot next door (though often it is not quite as empty as the name implies, having various transients taking up overnight residence). We figured that if any of the homeless folks living on the lot decided to ransack our garden for tomatoes and spinach, they probably needed it more than us. Now, 2 months into our horticultural adventure we are starting to see the evidences of all our toil. Especially considering that is only our first garden, we are quite pleased with the results. Getting to spend time with our neighbors, digging in the dirt together has also been worth the effort and thoughts are already begin to take shape of how next year's garden could be bigger and better.

Sean

Claire

Becca and Sarah