Over the weekend we were able to sneak in a brief visit to the mountains. The Cascades were beautiful and bright with fall colors. The vine maple leaves have turned to an eye-popping crimson and the cottonwood trees and large maple trees are sporting brilliant yellow leaves. The darkness of the deep forest is brightened by the dazzling colors. And the aromas were heavenly! The air was steeped in the scent of fir and spruce trees, along with a few other needled trees that are also members of the pine family. The ground was littered with leaves from deciduous bushes that shed their leaves as soon as frost hit hard in the past several weeks. And there were magnificent mushrooms just beginning to heave their way up from the forest floor - great big colorful mushrooms, clusters of frail petite mushrooms that looked like a perfect little village perched on the hillside of a decaying stump - mushrooms all over the place. We haven't learned about harvesting mushrooms and after looking at our Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, I know that we never will!! We like to have the mushrooms that Campbell's has picked - that yummy staple of the cupboard, cream of mushroom soup. Or the mushrooms that come on our pizza or in an omelet or that we simply purchase fresh at the store! We all have areas of expertise and identifying mushrooms is not ours!
Just a few minutes in that beautiful forest brought back a lifetime of memories for us. We used to have a teeny little trailer - a 15ft. Aristocrat Lo-Liner - that we would drag behind us all over the place, but especially to the mountains. It was such a roomy little trailer with a dinette that would seat four and a sofa area that would seat 6 or more depending on how well you liked each other! (We had fifteen people in it for a turkey dinner once!) The stove, oven and ice box (yes, we had to bring ice) were turquoise and the woodwork was light gray. It had louvered windows all the way around so it felt much larger than it actually was. We use to put a roast into the oven on low and take off hiking. We would come back to a wonderful aroma and a hot meal. Such a treat in the woods. But that old trailer is long gone, replaced by an equally small camper that later was replaced by a larger camper. We still long for the simpler time when we could just hook up that trailer and take off. Seems we don't get out there very much anymore. It feels like the more things we have, the less time we have to enjoy them. While all the technology of today is supposed to save us time, using it seems to also rob us of time. Time has to be spent researching a purchase to be certain that you are getting the right model, style, peripherals, etc. And then after you have finally made your purchase, you barely have time to use the item and find that there is something new out with more features... and you need to replace what you have with an updated version. Planned obsolescence is what I think we called that in economics. Makes me wish I was back in the woods again....
"Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance." John Petit-Senn
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