When a creek creature nibbled on my grandson's toe yesterday the boy found a crawdad in his Crocs, and I guess I'm glad it wasn't a crocodile. Crocodiles are not known to live in our creek, fortunately, and the crawdad's nibble didn't even leave a mark.
In their weekend visit to Grandma and Grampa Camp, the grandkids have similarly failed to see any live bears, although they had lunch with some taxidermied grizzlies at the Bear's Den outside Cambridge, Ohio. The restaurant was a great place to meet my son-in-law for the official handoff of the young imps, and I enjoyed introducing them to great locally raised beef, crispy sweet potato fries, and what may well be the best mac&cheese I've ever eaten. Plus bears, of course. You can't ignore the bears.
The kids have been rebuilding the dam that got washed away by spring floods, at a spot in the creek that's mostly dry right now. We found some places to splash on our creek walk and also located crawdads and a cave and another dry creek bed. In the afternoon when the temperature rose toward triple digits, we stayed indoors and made candy sushi, a sticky mess that's fun to assemble but so sweet it makes my teeth hurt.
In the evening when the news came through about the shooting in Pennsylvania, we were all sitting on the sofa reading. The grandkids had discovered the stack of Calvin and Hobbes books downstairs and they were working their way through them one after another, their quiet reading only interrupted by occasional giggles and snorts of laughter. They were blissfully unaware of the violent events taking place in the outside world, which is fine for now. Someday they'll have to negotiate all the dangers and disasters the world can toss their way, but just for today, let them immerse themselves in a world of books and sushi and nearly-dry creek beds, where the worst danger they face might come from a crawdad in their Crocs.
The black bear seems tiny compared to the grizzly.
 |
| Candy sushi. The only fish involved are Swedish. |
 |
| Jump! |
 |
| He's been getting stone-skipping lessons from the master. |
No comments:
Post a Comment