Happy Birthday to me....annual trip to the Hood canal

I have always loved my birthday…

Thanks to my parents, it was always a special day. And I guess that growing up in a family of 5 girls, we relished a day that was ours alone.

There was no doubt that I was a dreamer. I remember this Grimm’s Fairy Tale book I received from my Mom. It was wonderful and fanciful, yet gruesome and horrible. It is one of the very early books I remember taking under my covers at night with a flashlight, when I was supposed to be asleep.

I always loved making my wish, and year after year, I would close my eyes and make this wish…I wished for a merry go round that I could play on and then fold up and put in my pocket…and take with me wherever I went. I won’t tell you how many years I made that wish...

My own kids love this story and they laugh at me (with me?) as I recall the perpetual wish. Well, last night, my oldest daughter gave me a present. I opened it as I looked at her face…she looked so wise. There it was, not quite as I wished, but still…my little carousel.

I think it is now 5 years that I have chosen to give myself a birthday present....a return visit to the Hood Canal to spend some "alone time" with my Mother-in-law and to tromp in the woods, looking for our favorite wild huckleberry. We are always so busy in our daily lives with kids (hers and mine) and she with her 10 grandchildren! Rain or shine, we are hiking in the woods, looking for those elusive clusters of berries. We pick for hours, come in and shed our sopping wet clothes and then we are at in again. In the evenings, we sit around a table and carefully roll the berries away from the stems, as we place them in jars to freeze for the winter.

This trip again was incredible. The Hood Canal was beautiful…always changing. Sometimes silver gray blue in the morning, and then a few hours later, an angry sea. Kingfishers and blue heron, loon and mergansers hang around the shore. And the beautiful forest...to hike and explore.

I know what it is about this place…it is the beauty, the serenity, the simple things…at times, we feel like we are all a world away…far away from the demands of the city, our jobs and our busy lives. It is an escape…it is, as it should be... a gift.