Solidarity - Facing the Forecast Together

As I was moaning about the weather forecast to my daughter, not just for Wisconsin but the cold and suffering of almost the entire nation, she said "Hey, Mom, it's all about solidarity".

roomy sites at Hardy Lake

With that in mind, I scoured my drafts to find something that wasn't a mural and  that somehow got overlooked and found a post about the last stop Wayne and I made on our way back from the Smokies in October.  Better than posting pictures of snow and freezing cold, right?  We've made it our habit to stop at Hardy Lake, though on this stop we had a close call when we made a wrong turn on to a dead end road and had to back up in the dark and try to make a three point turn where there really wasn't any room to do it.

We arrived a little past peak for fall color, but there was a lot of fungi to look at instead when I got up in the morning and went for a wet walk before we hit the road again.  Recent rain made the trail soggy and messy, but all that damp contributed to some great fungi finds.

Right now these pictures seem a little surreal to me.  The forecast for the next ten days STILL doesn't show a relief from sub zero temperatures for the Midwest.  Look at that green!  My eyes don't remember what trees look like with leaves on them, I feel a little dazed.

Most likely I am going to rent a two bedroom house in Sheboygan for 4 or 5 nights next week.  My mother is planning to stop in for a few days.  Maybe Katrina will come up for a few days.  I'll explore and post some pictures from a place that I normally only go in the summer.  Maybe I'll find some new murals that they added in 2014, who knows?  I still have a handful of murals from 2013 to post from the Sheboygan Project, a few more to add to the collection could be cool.

I have quite a few books that I've bought over the last 6 months that I'll finally get to read.  With no wi-fi I'll only use the internet when I leave to go to a coffee house for an hour or two.  It'll be good to exercise my brain and I plan to try to go for some walks at Kohler-Andrae in the snow too.

I did do some reading on our recent trip south.  In addition to a couple of issues of "Smokies Life" magazine I read "Bear in the Back Seat: Adventures of A Wildlife Ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park" and it was so good I'm going to get the sequel for my stay in Sheboygan.  It'll be good to cozy up on the couch and read about the Smokies while looking out at the wintry wildness of Lake Michigan.  We'll all get through this winter together with a little help from some books I guess.

I also read "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker and "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer.  Of course it wasn't my first time reading "The Color Purple" but it was my first time reading "Into the Wild" and it did not disappoint.  Be prepared to be saddened but awed but the story of Christopher McCandless and his accidental death in the wilderness in 1992.  It inspired a lot of thinking on my part since quite a few of my followers are "adventurers", myself included.  Not that I go to the extremes that McCandless did, but as Sharon pointed out I don't bring enough water along with me on what I assume will be a short adventure.  Since I am so often alone what is to say that I won't end up in a situation I didn't plan for?  I'm going to be more mindful of this in the future.  And hey, I carry a couple of band-aids and some ibuprofen with me and I'm getting better about taking a cell phone too!