Wolves Under Protection Again

A judge in Montana declared Friday that gray wolves be placed back under endangered species protection! Read more here

Been Too Long

Yesterday was the first sermon I've preached in almost 2 years! I thought it went alright and the content challenged the congregation to think about where they might have lost Jesus and how they can fall in love all over again. Here's a quick highlight from my message:

Wilderness represents mystery. It represents the unknown... faith. Sadly enough the word faith has come to mean the opposite today from its intended use. When I use the word faith, I think of Hebrews 11: faith=things not yet seen. Today faith seems to be more about answers, clarity, solutions. We even go so far as to say that Jesus is the answer. Done. Figured out. Checked off the list. I don't want that Jesus. We aren't even comfortable seeing Jesus as a mystery anymore, a mystery that we continually fall in love with.

Being Hospitable

Though the Village of Lena may not necessarily agree. I purposely let my grass grow a bit taller than the yards around us. By a bit I mean 2 inches. On my days off it has been interesting to watch how much more animal activity we seem to have than any of the other yards. Aside from the squirrels and hundreds of various birds, I've seen rabbits, raccoons, weasel tracks and a groundhog in the back yard.

Just yesterday we saw a rabbit that has a warren right next to the house and she had come to nurse her young babies. Amazingly, Brenda had just done some weeding the day before in that very spot and did not see the warren or burrow. I too had this sense about not mowing that area at all, had I done so I would have probably killed about 3 or 4 babies! It just makes me wonder about receptivity. I think by purposely allowing our yard to be a little more hospitable to animals we are seeing more than our neighbors.

The picture below was one of the better pics we were able to take while the mother was nursing her young.

Princesses Tracking

Last week was an interesting week because one of the three camps that was at Far Horizons was a Pampered Princess camp. I didn't get it at all. These girls were there to be pampered (spa treatments, manicures, pedicures, facials etc..) all that feminine crap. Why did they sign up for a camp that was out in the middle of the woods? Some were complaining because they thought that they were going to be staying in a motel not in cabins with but, spiders and bats! This was the group that had lots of issues (homesick, ecophobia etc..). I found myself not even paying much attention to that group.

Until...

I had the luxury of being one of the few staff old enough to drive the vans so I was stuck with taking these pampered princesses to Galena for an off camp activity. They went to a bath and body kind of place for more manicures, massages, fingernail painting and coloring a rubber duck. I, on the other hand, sat in a chair in the corner plotting my revenge since they had me for a nature session later on that afternoon!

I wondered if these girls would even give a rip about the nature stuff at all? So when the time came for me to teach them about tracking, fox walking and other wilderness skills, I was shocked at exactly how interested they were! They really got into the tracking and wasn't even afraid to get a little dirty. So it ended up being a good experience for them and I'm glad I didn't just pass on that particular camp otherwise they and I would have missed out on a great learning experience.

At the campfire that night, all three camps were interested in how I got the fire going as well as asking more questions about fox walking or tracks that they had seen around camp.

Just goes to show that you can't judge a book by its cover or a girl by how "pampered" she is.