Silver Liight, Golden Water

One last camping trip to close out the summer.

This time we spent two nights under a

gibbous moon and

two days sounding out the golden waters of the Wallowa River. I managed to slip away downstream to do some fly fishing.

I haven't done much fishing in recent times so the electric jolt of a 12 inch rainbow hitting my line and then cresting beyond the river's surface was almost more fun than I had remembered.

Beth fixed them up and we ate like royalty.

Beth took paints and brushes down to the river bank and Tess and Colm

painted rocks with strange symbols almost like runes and hid them as buried treasure. Their minds are currently in the thrall of wizardry and swarming in their imagination is the notion that even the strangest stories might well be true.

Much of their reading and viewing (Harry Potter,

Calvin and Hobbes, Over Sea Under Stone, and Avatar: the Last Air Bender) has nourished this appetite for the fantastic,

but it is first and foremost the emblem of childhood. Beth and I feel so fortunate to witness its flowering before our eyes. A recent ransacking of Beth's childhood things unearthed a ouija board. Tess and Colm have since been peppering it with questions and have come by intelligence from the future that great things await each of them. In the meantime, while at camp Tess thought to ask the board if it would give them a thousand dollars. The next thing we knew both kids were exiting the tent trailer excitedly saying something about a trash can. They returned empty handed and sought clarification from Father Time (that is what the ouija board calls itself, they claim). Off again they ran, this time saying something about the "third trash can of a neighbor". Once more they returned empty handed and a little deflated. I said to Colm that it seemed pretty unlikely that a ouija board could find you a thousand dollars; if so, everyone would be doing it. Colm replied that some things that happen today have to become legends much later on. I didn't even want to contest that one. Wasn't it me who told them that very day that you can't catch a fish if you don't cast something out onto the water?