This Is What It's All About

Once we settled into our cabin (home until Wednesday) Kyle started reading the cabin journal.  After reading about several bear sightings from the front porch, I jokingly said, "Okay Jesus, you have 5 days to show me a bear."  The only black bear I've ever seen was the rump of one as he ran over a hill, a bear butt does not count in my opinion.  Kyle sees them all of the time, so I've been anxiously awaiting my first real sighting for years.  Which brings me to yesterday.

Yesterday started with me noticing a beautiful tree outside my second story bedroom window.  The green  leaves are all trimmed in red.  While showing Kylee the "gorgeous, just gorgeous" tree, as she described it, a  raven flew past our window with bread in her mouth.  Not happy with the tree options in the area, she flew past a second time determined to find a place to eat her breakfast.  What an awesome way to start a day!

We decided to go to Cades Cove and enjoy the mountains for the day.  Heading out the door, I saw a stick bug.  Sure, I've seen them at the butterfly conservatory, but there on the wall, in the wild, I was thrilled.  It takes so little to make me happy.  No, really; they're like 2 1/2 inches long.  He was too high up for a pic, but it was enough just to see him.  Note to self: get a telephoto lens. Grinning from ear to ear we headed to the Cove.

Stopping to check out a cabin inside the park, we spotted a dung beetle. While he was interesting and it certainly was amusing to see him roll around and around on his ball of dung, something about his diet kept him from being too exciting to me.  Kylee on the other hand found him fascinating.  She could not get over (or stop giggling about) a bug that eats "poop".  We had to start walking away to get her to leave her great find, so we took a different route back to the car.  This one cut through the woods, where we spotted deer trails that headed to the meadow.

As we exited the woods, a bright white, round, spiky mushroom caught our eye.  Kyle had the camera and was a good distance ahead of us, so no pic of our cool find.  Note to self: need a second camera.  No sooner had that thought ran through my brain, I hear Kyle say the magic word, "Bear!"  I looked up in time to see a black bear running across the meadow.  Thank you, Jesus!  Giddy with excitement, I muse to my husband,  "How cool would it be if we saw another one?"  Ever practical, he reminded me how unlikely that would be, though he did acknowledge that seeing a bear at midday (which we had just seen) was pretty unlikely, too. Completely happy and satisfied, we finished our trip.

 









As we left the park, we noticed an abundance of cars along the side of the road, which can only mean one thing - BEAR!  Not only was it a bear, but a mama and her cub!  Both of which went about their foraging as if there weren't two dozen people on the bank across from them taking a bazillion pictures.  We sat for at least  10 minutes, watching mama and her baby in a rare, unforgettable moment.  With a sigh of utter contentment and a heart filled with gratitude to my awesome God, for not one, but 3 bears, the thought occurred to me, THIS IS OUR NEW LIFE!  This is why we're full-timing!