Soul Tending

When I need to feed my soul, the best place for me to do that is the beach. The sound of the surf, the smell of salt air, sand between my toes...it relaxes, restores, refeshes me. (See picture at left of Nora and me on the beach at Assateague last summer).

Marcus, on the other hand, is a mountain man.

For him, relaxing is packing up the tent, the backpacks and the dog and heading for the hills to hike and sleep beneath the stars. (This other picture is actually from our trip to Colorado in January, but you get the point.)

The past two weekends we have been blessed to get to do both of these things that we love. Last weekend we made a quick trip to a friend's beach house in Fenwick Island, MD. (It's so great to have generous friends...and even better to have generous friends with beach houses!) It was so good to get away just for a couple of days, and I came back feeling like a new person.

And this morning we went to hike on Sugarloaf Mountain. It was so fun seeing Nora climb all over the rocks (so far we are not sure if she prefers the beach or the mountains...she is terrified of the waves, but also of caterpillars), and we got to take in some beautiful views, have a picnic lunch and even happened upon a little festival at the Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard where we got ice cream and Marcus enjoyed the free wine tasting.

I just share this because I feel so lucky to have had these two brief, but fun and relaxing little excursions with my family the past two weekends. It has fed our souls!