The Packrat!

I admit it!
I am a packrat!
I've been a packrat all my life.

When I think of my packrat self,
I see a bushy-tailed woodrat.

Bushy-Tailed Woodrat

Source:  mnh.si.edu

Kind of cute, isn't it?

The Ever-Patient Terry doesn't think so.

I was sorting through my big collection of maps yesterday,

and Terry was just shaking his head as he watched me:

"Life would be so much easier for you

if you would just listen to me, Babe.

Get rid of them all! ~

There's so much on-line!"

Non-packrats don't get packrats.

Since I've retired,

I've eliminated most of my school things.

But I have a long way to go
with the rest of my treasures ~

or crap, as the E-P would say.

Right now I'm contemplating 

my 84 numbered photo albums,

my 15 or so unnumbered albums,

my shoeboxes filled with photos,

my dozens and dozens and dozens 
of photos packets in file drawers,

and some 53,000 photos on my computer.

It's a little overwhelming!

So, just for fun, 
right now,

I'm pulling a random packet out of a pile of photo packets 

I found hidden among my hundreds of maps yesterday.

And I promised myself 

I'd post one or two of the photos 
I discovered in the packet,

just for fun.

Here goes ~ Opening the packet!

OMG!  

I can't believe it!

Honest to God.

Honest to God!!!!!

The E~P and Me
Along Cape Flattery Trail
September 1984

I've been looking for this photo forever!

Who knew I should look in my scary map drawers,

(a file cabinet of four legal-sized drawers 

crammed and filled with piles of maps in folders and loose)!

This is Terry and I on our honeymoon
in Washington State in September 1984
along the trail to Cape Flattery.

We are sitting in a hollow log
just off on a muddy trail
criss-crossed with knobby roots.
It is misty-rainy
and Terry is good-naturedly hiking with me
to the northwestern most point 
in the continental USA.

He has learned over the years 
that I want to get to the highest and lowest points,
the tips and ends of everything,
just around the next corner;
well, under, above, behind, on top of,
in short, everywhere!

And in the funny way this Universe works,
I started off with a bushy-tailed woodrat in this post,
a character from a favorite children's book 
I read aloud almost every year to my kiddos:
Will Hobbs' Kokopelli's Flute.

And Will Hobbs, 
just the most personable author in the world, 
also wrote Ghost Canoe
which takes place on and around Cape Flattery!

And in the same envelope of photos in the packet is this photo:

Moon House

Cedar Mesa, Utah

Terry and I are sitting in a door 
that leads to a tiny room 
in an Anasazi cliff dwelling called Moon House
located on remote Cedar Mesa in Utah.

This room was featured in Kokopelli's Flute.
The moment Will Hobbs read aloud a passage
in his just published Kokopelli's Flute
to a group of us at a children's literacy conference,
I knew he had been at Moon House.

So of course 
we talked about Moon House 
after his presentation,
and Will wrote this
in my copy of his book.

The page is a little damaged
from one of the floods
my classroom endured
over my career.








There was a second envelope of photos
in the packet, and I found this:

Sara and Natalie

Christmas Morning, 1996

Just a cute photo of my nieces.

Except that just before I began this post,

I wrote a comment on my friend Audrey's heartwarming post,

and I told her a story about these two that took place

just a couple of days after I snapped this photo.

Sometimes life is downright enchanted!