Daily Archives: February 2, 2014

Journey of the Heart – Part Two

heart-stone

My turn. Steve got things started here last month after the house sold but it took me a bit longer. The intervening weeks were filled with packing and sorting and moving, with organizing, reorganizing and then reorganizing again. Without help from Nicole and her friends, and Dennis and Nancy, I don’t know how we could have met the one week window we had to be out of the house. It was a crazy busy time and we are so grateful for everyone who stepped up to help us get it done.

We didn’t go far when we left, just one mile down to the campground where our adventure here started five and a half years ago, next to the beautiful lake that used to be a river. The photo of the limestone heart rock above was taken down at the shoreline. So fitting!

When we first arrived here it was summer and the warm water called us in. Not so this time. The season is different and wave after wave of unusually freezing temps just seem to keep coming. The new owners of the house formally-known-as-home returned to Houston, granting me permission to continue feeding the birds so I made regular treks back. The house had lost its pull on me but the birds were harder to leave, especially mid-winter, and looking at the garden, even in the dead of winter, gave my heart a tug.  I particularly worried about the roadrunners through nights of freezing rain and sleet so when Pteri showed up and “clacked” to me on my last morning of filling feeders, my heart lifted. With or without me, the birds will survive (or they won’t but that’s a much bigger subject than whether I feed them.)

There were also a fair amount of “until-we-meet-agains” (I don’t do goodbyes) and lunches with friends, interspersed with annual bird counts and Canyon Gorge docent commitments. And a couple of nights camped at the beautiful home of our friends, Joe and Jeannie. Their hospitality means so much to us. Once again, we are grateful. I love it here. Thankfully, the Army Corp offered us a volunteer position up at the Lake Office for the month of March so our wanderings will be short before we get a chance to check back in. February will be a shake-down cruise of sorts.

And that brings me to today. More than two weeks out, back on the road as “full-timers”, we have finally left Canyon Lake. We still didn’t go far, only about 75 miles, but in some ways it is another planet. No longer in the Hill Country, and not yet on the Gulf Coast (where we plan to spend most of the month), we are surrounded by a leafless winter woodland, a river and, most notably, a palmetto swamp. Today is cold and blustery … perfect for writing inside our cozy, colorful, homey trailer. Still, the space is small. Dogs need walked and there are birds outside. Somewhere out there, I know there is Pileated Woodpecker just waiting for me to find it. Let the fun begin!