vacation, migration

QUESTION: What do you do on your vacation when it rains 10 days straight (torrential downpours for hours)? ANSWER: Get out your mushroom guide, your rubber boots, and watch the storms roll in. Think this is a haunted house? Hardly. Rather a stormy 7pm in August. These photos were taken about three minutes apart in our dooryard. We quickly took shelter on the porch where we were dazzled by yet another eye and ear stunning tempest.

I try to take August vacation at home, a growing trend called "stay-cations." Millions of people migrate here for vacations, and I already live here. It's one of the precious opportunities of a rural, remote lifestyle. The persistent rain allowed me to hear large volumes of live music and read ravenously instead of the usual painting, haying, logging, and trail clearing. Did a lot of swimming too, which seemed a vertical in addition to a horizontal experience this year.

We had our annual visit to a nearby lake where a dear college friend has a family camp. Flash floods caused the lake level to rise two feet the day before we got there. I saw whole trees with a dbh of 8 inches (that's diameter at breast height for non-forester types) spit out by brooks and beached sideways on deltas, leaves, roots and all. The inundated shoreline sure made it easier to get in and out of the canoes, on the grass instead of the dock. I was a bit unaccustomed to removing sticks and other woody debris from my hair after swimming, though.

Mushrooms were spectacular! Several soggy hikes yielded so many shapes and colors. Coral-colored coral mushrooms, really. Orange and green Pfifferlinge look-alikes. Savory Steinpils. Chanterelle. Along the river, I had fun making up bizarre common names. Troll Tongue. Frog Futon. Southern Belle Parasol. Raccoon Eyes At Night, the whole extended family. Tired Toadstools. I could just imagine all the toads being excited about all the extra forest furniture this year!

The biggest gift this vacation was seeing migrating Sandhill Cranes. Wow! My exceptional, ornithologically inclined nephew would have been thrilled (although he sees them regularly where he lives out west). There was no question what they were--red forehead, white cheek, tail bustle, gray with reddish brown streaks. Two adults with two juveniles which were slightly browner, slightly smaller. Sandhill Cranes summer in Alaska, Northwest Territories, and north-central Canadian provinces. They winter in Texas and Mexico, generally, and some go to Florida, NOT New England. I've only seen them in Wyoming and Idaho.

I was tagging along with some of the other moms on a blueberry picking mission while our kids were at camp. I saw the cranes in a field, my heart skipped, and I stuttered, "Those are Sandhill Cranes." I might as well have said there's a loaf of white bread out there. I said, "We need to turn the van around, really." They said, "We're going to be late." I said the same thing over again, so they humored me. Luckily, we had binoculars and a camera in the van as we watched, awed, by the side of the road. After speed-picking blueberries, and driving back the same way, other cars were pulled over with people toting monstrous viewing lenses. Awed, all over again.

I feel so relaxed after my two-week vacation, and best of all, the migration came to me!