Quietly Walking...

...through the woods, enjoying nature and its beauty all around us.  There's always new things to see (even though its the same woods) but today, we came across some real treasures.

As we were walking, Johny heard some rustling and scampering and saw a grouse running toward the creek.  He didn't think anything of it until he saw why she was trying to distract us...10 beautiful eggs in a nest...

...snuggled between two big roots of a Birch tree. We mounted our critter cam, aiming it at the nest, to see if we are lucky enough to watch her nesting and the eggs hatching (you can be sure I will share more about that).

As I turned around, on another Birch right near the nest was a clump of black stuff.  Mountain Man immediately identified it as Chaga, a fungus which is known as the "cancer tumor herb" and for thousands of years has been used to strengthen the immune system, detoxify the body and to extend the span of life (click on the link to read more).   We had thought we found Chaga before, but we were mistaken.  Today, however, we are quite right!  Now we'll have to figure out how to harvest it and maybe we'll live to be over 100!  And this is the tree we put the critter cam on.

Then we spotted a few clumps of Showy Orchis, which I wrote about last Sunday.  Today's find is extra special because this flower usually doesn't bloom above 3000 feet, so not only do we have a rare orchid in our woods, but its especially rare to be at our elevation (3600 feet).

As we walked back to the cabin and watched our creek flow, the sound was anything but quiet...we've had so much rain it's rushing...

...this video lets you hear just how loud it is.  Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep, I listen to the creek and let its melody bring my mind back to a quiescent state, until slumber finds me again. We have 2 creeks, the one pictured above and in the video, and a second...they merge where the video ends and continues past the cabin...our creeks run along 2 sides of the cabin.  (If you are receiving this by email and can't open the video, click on the title of this post to go to the blog to view it.) 

I always enjoy participating in ABCWednesday (click on the link for more blog posts) though I must admit the letter Q put my brain in a bit of a quandary as I tried to figure out what I was going to write about today. Then we took a walk.  Everything was so peaceful and quite.  And all these lovely little treasures from our woods presented themselves. That's when I remembered that I most often find myself in the right place at the right time...I just have to trust that things are unfolding just as they should...and that is one of the ways to bring quality moments to life, don't you agree?

Thanks for reading my blog, you are the best f/f/r/s/f's, see you tomorrow,
Lise