Woodland adventure

At the tender age of four days Izzy made her first foray into the wild Blue yonder up to my parent's cabin.  We were anxious to go for many reasons, not the least of which was that we had not seen the place since the massive Wallow fire burned through the area.  I hadn't mentioned on the blog up to now because while the fire burned it was just too hard to talk about, and since it had been contained I really didn't have much to say, not having been up to the area yet.  We knew that the fire had burned literally up to our mailbox and that it wasn't severe there... Another reason we were itching to go was the heat of Tucson which, among other things, had caused a terribly over-TVed four year old.  All said we got it all together and headed up to the woods by 3 pm last Thursday.

When we first went up to the cabin with Evie it was an eye-openingly epic trip up there... constant feeding stops, screaming babe because of the change in elevation and just general new-parent traveling with infant anxieties.  Given previous experience both Patrick and I prepared for it to be a long and arduous trip.  We were pleasantly surprised when it was a lovely trip up (mind you not a short one) with only one not so pleasant stop to feed Izzy off the I-10 near a pile of asphalt.  The best was our sunset stop to feed the babe at the Aldo Leopold lookout in New Mexico.  We watched the sun set, enjoyed the cool and I was treated to Patrick playing his guitar and Evie making up lyrics to songs while I fed Izzy.  By the time we made it to the area that had burned in the fire it was too dark to see anything but we could still smell the fire, which was really interesting.  The driveway to the cabin was a mess because of sheet-flow flooding that had come through the area sometime in the past week. 

We spent our cabin days playing at the river, sitting in the hammock or hot tub and just generally relaxing.  Pretty ideal post-partum recovery place if you ask me.  (Made particuarly luxurious by the presence of my parents who made meals for us and helped out with both kids)  Evie spent most of her time playing with Patrick but I tried to steal away at least once a day to spend time with her.  One day we took her horse down to the river (it is actually my horse, a toy of mine from my grandfather when I was her age...) for a hike.  She found it a bit difficult to get him to cross the stream and "practiced" with him at least a half a dozen times before he "got it".

One morning we decided to head up the road because I was curious to see what Alpine looked like and my folks property up there, where the fire had burned straight through and actually destroyed houses adjacent to theirs.  We stopped to feed the baby at Luna Lake, which was really low, most likely because of all the water taken for the fire fighting efforts, but still just as beautiful as before.  The view to Alpine though was really sad, most of the mountains surrounding the town are varying degrees of charred trees... Later in the morning Patrick and my Dad took a hike up the hill from the property in Alpine to see what it looked like and it was a lot of charred crispy trees.  Kita went with them and came back with what looked like a black eye from just walking around in the mess.

At one point during the week Patrick was bitten by the I-must-build-treacherous-balancing-structures bug and proceeded to first make a balance beam for a "circuit" around the front yard and then later a "bridge across the river.  The balance beam did not cause any serious injury, the bridge was another story...  I was up at the cabin when I heard the distinct cry of a harmed four year old and then Evie came up the road with Patrick with a (minorly) cut up knee and a (majorly) bruised little ego.  Later in the day Evie bravely decided to get back on the bridge and go for it again despite her injury and convinced me to come along and give the death-trap bridge a try too.  (I left the little Lacroix back at the cabin for this one).  I went across a couple of times without incident, all the while Patrick was trying to "improve" the bridge by putting rocks under the middle of it to "stabilize" it.  As I crossed he put another rock underneath that had a decidedly un-stabilizing effect on the thing and ended with me bum first in the river landing smack dab on a large rather un-soft rock.  (Hmm I just bet rickety bridge walking and river splatting are probably not among the list of approved activities for postpartum stitches...) 

Another activity was playing on the zip line, which turned out to be a great way for Patrick and I to get some exercise because we must have pulled Evie up the route about 50 times in a hour or so.  Inspired by an e-mail and website sent to me from my friend Sonja I tried to do some artistic outdoor baby photos of Izzy.  Well I am certainly no profession but did manage to get one cool photo of Izzy in the mint.  (She woke up pretty soon after so I abandoned the effort and just FYI babies don't particuarlly like to lay on pine needles...)  We had to head home on Wednesday, sad to leave our woodland adventure but so very, very thankful to have been able to spend the time up there given everything that had happened!