Wild Berries!

A copy of myspace blog:

Wild Berries!!
Current mood: exhausted


Today really was an exceptional 'family' day. The four of us went to Pratt's Falls, which is about 20 minutes from us, near the city of Pompey. The drive out to where the falls are is really gorgeous. It is more of a rural area, and we saw some farms and dairies, lots of rolling hills. Everything is still a beautiful summertime lush green up here.

At Pratt's Falls, we saw a waterfall and did some hiking on trails, then had to break for lunch (no, of course we didn't pack a picnic, this would have taken some planning). We ended up having lunch at Ann's Country Store in the town (or village) of Fabius, closeby. This small country store had a little of everything: groceries, a deli, and even an antique store in the back, where I found two small hot air balloon pictures, which I love to collect, one an acrylic and the other a watercolor. I asked the woman who rung us up if she was Ann (I'm a dork!); she kindly pointed across the store to Ann's daughter and said that she's the owner now. I paid a little more for the two framed paintings than I really wanted to, but I'm glad now I have them.

After the store, we went on to Highland Forest, another county park. Here we really settled in to hiking. The four us us walked up and down trails and talked and laughed for quite some time. Alissa and I paired off, and Sophie and Eric walked up ahead of us. Alissa and I kept picking up little stones, round ones and heart-shaped ones.

The perfect little round stones remind me of what my Grandmother always called 'worry stones': they're perfectly round or oval shaped and smooth, they're small, pocket sized, and you keep them in your pocket, and when you're worried, you rub your fingers on them. Not that I ever actually keep a worry stone in my pocket, but I always think of my Grandmother's story when I see flat round little stones like the ones we found today. The heart shaped stones were just a little something different, and Alissa and I liked them. I told her the worry stone story; maybe she'll remember me and my Gram and the little story of worry stones when she's hiking or at the beach when she is much, much older. Who knows.

After we decided that the 3.5 mile total hike would be the one we'd do, we decided to start to make our way back. On this trail, we found blackberries and raspberries growing alongside the trail. At first, we though we would have to go far off the trail to get at them, then discovered there were practically zillions of wild blackberries growing along this sunny patch of trail. The raspberries were there, growing close to the ground, and just here and there, but wonderful all the same. Alissa and I drove Eric and Soph nuts prolonging the hike and delaying us getting back to the car. We were apparently on a mission to get as many blackberries and raspberries as we could-eating every single one of them as we picked them and walked and waved at Eric just to go on ahead. We finally got back to our car, drove through rolling hills and rural areas, stopped again at Ann's for a soda, then made our way back to North Syracuse and home.