Noah's Discoveries

"Hey, Mom! Look what I found," Noah said holding up a branch pulled from the forest floor.

"It's those giant pine cones that are really long. Can we take them home and make a wreath or something?"

Soon we were loading branches – of a timbered white-pine into our car's trunk – with Christmas in our minds.

We'd stopped at this particular trailhead to check out the ice forming on a pond we'd noticed during our Saturday-morning forest drive.

(Dad and the boys were away: pheasant hunting with family and on a church youth-group retreat.)

Then Noah and I walked down to the pond to see winter's first signs.

Across the thin, translucent sheet of ice, I admired slivers of tree-top reflections around a mossy log.

"Look at this!" Noah said holding up a couple leaves trapped in a small plate of ice.

As I focused my camera on his find, Noah said: "Hurry up! It's melting down my arm!"

On the trek back to the car, Noah noticed a fuzzy, hollow log. "That looks like a cozy, little place for somebody to hibernate."

As we wound along the forest road toward home, we discussed creative options for the pine cones: wreaths, outdoor pot arrangements and ornaments.

"Remember those gold spray-painted angels?" I asked. " We could try those. We'll need a some kind of nut for the head and milkweed pods for wings. "

We stopped near another water body to add milkweed pods to our car trunk collection.

"You know what?" Noah said.

"You should

make a

blog with

everything

we found

and call it "Noah's Discoveries." "That's a great idea," I agreed.




Sunday afternoon, Noah reminded me about the pine cone arrangements.

Light snow fell
flocking the spruce boughs
as we trimmed a few
from our tree line
at home.





In a plant pot weighted with stones, we stuck a few spruce sprigs and a couple branches of long, white-pine cones.

Viola!

Christmas –

including the Norwegian tradition of cat and pig –

amidst Noah's Discoveries.