Paperamblings

A Break from Paper for a Peek at Nature (and a Bit of Reminiscing)!

Yesterday, the kids and I made the trip to "The Cottage" where my sister and her girls were already camped out for the weekend. One of my favorite places EVER, I go there now with bittersweet feelings...wanting to share such a joyous part of my childhood with my own children, here in the present, while at the same time trying to stay composed in the midst of thousands of long-lost happy mem-ories as they come flooding to mind... and missing some of the family that helped create them but have since passed on.

The cottage is a late-1800's church camp, Ridgeview Park, located at the base of the Laurel Highlands near Derry, PA. It would certainly appear to be nothing special to a stranger who might come upon it...just a large handful of fairly dilapidated shack-like cottages (though some still boast a bit of their original quaint "gingerbread-y" touches) in the woods. But for me - and my sister and cousins - it was such a large and important part of our growing-up years...from a walk to the railroad tracks to smash pennies, to hot afternoons spent in the community pool as Grandma and Grampa patiently watched our tricks in the water, to a short drive to Bergman's Dairy for a (humongous) ice-cream cone, to Sunday morning church services, to an evening stroll to the candy store, with it's sweet, woody aroma (and I could go on with about a million more "to's"!), the cottage holds a very sacred place in my heart. So today, I take a break from posting cards and instead share these shots from nature (that anyone might appreciate), courtesy of the beautiful Laurel Highlands!

A lone patch of butterfly weed down by the tracks...host to several color-coordinated butterflies!