preserve

We'd never taken the boys to Yellow Springs, so spent a day exploring Glen Helen recently.
We arrived at the raptor rehabilitation center just as the birds were being fed lunch - tiny turkeys and rats and venison. We walked along limestone cliffs and looked at waterfalls, the boys calling from ahead for us to notice something, never hanging around to see if we had. We marveled at cathedrals of green, all the gauzy layers of moss and leaves, sunlight dappling. The boys found crawdads and salamanders along the creek edge, and were fascinated by Hopewell mounds and rock formations, and I tried to ignore all the dirt, tried to take in the complex web of growth, green and human.