Storm King

On one of our days off, I went with my friends to visit the Storm King Art Center, a sprawling, 500 acre sculpture park in the beautiful Hudson Valley.

 

.There are monsters dotting the landscape

that reach their arms up to the sky.  They look very alien.

We were on a pilgrimage to see a wall built by Andy Goldsworthy, an artist we admire.

It interacts with the land upon which it is built.  Here it falls into the water, and surfaces on the other side,

 

and then winds its way around the trees.

There are tons of different materials and ideas around the park.  Some built into the land -

 

others sticking oddly out of it :)

 I really liked this mirror fence, and stared at it for awhile as it played tricks on me.

 

Some were beautifully detailed,

others more simple,

 

and some didn't even quite look real!

It was a wonderful day, and I'm considering going up to visit in the fall when the land will look equally stunning in a completely different way.  What a cool place.

Droplets

I took these photos of water droplets falling off my paddle when I was out kayaking - they look so ethereal at closer glance.  My friend shared a quote by John Muir the other day that I love to think of when looking at them, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." 

One of those days

"Today I pry myself loose from my own entropy."

 

I finished reading Bluebeard's Egg the other day by Margaret Atwood, which I really enjoyed.  Good, descriptive language in there that had a nice flow.  That's a line from it that I liked, and seemed very fitting for today.  The weather is dragging and I'm tired and have sort of been blobbing around for most of the afternoon.  Best part of the day so far:  two great letters in my mailbox!

The Letter-Writing Project

 

Before I left for Luzerne, I was digging through an old desk drawer and stumbled across the address book I took there as a student 8 years ago.  It was part of my letter writing box, as we didn't have phone or internet access during the camp, and were only allowed to communicate via snail-mail.  I never used the book much (we just exchanged email addresses and aim names), but I never got rid of it because it had amazing pictures of telephones from all over the world decorating its pages.  Coming across it now, and still thinking it's really cool, I decided to undo the binding, cut out the pictures, and use them as envelope liners.  And the letter-writing project began!  I packed the same letter writing box I used 8 years ago, started making my own envelopes (each one different from the other), and am busy popping them in the mail.  Send me your address!  I would love to share some handwritten stories with you.

Campers

My job is to play :)

Day Off!

 

 

 

I had a glorious day off recently, and spent the afternoon kayaking, swimming, watching the boats, and reading by the lake.  Ahh :)

Happy 4th!

We made red,white, and blue chocolate-covered strawberries with the campers to celebrate.  I also won 5 bucks during breakfast by accepting and conquering a spontaneous challenge to get the 80 people eating to stand up and sing the national anthem together.  At first they all just stared at me when I started belting it out in the midst of our french toast, but apparently if you pretend it's a totally normal thing to do, everyone will eventually join you :)

Lake Swims

 

 

Ahh, pretty magical.