Men's Retreat

What can I say about the men's retreat. For me is was relaxing and a change of pace. I was not the demographic I suppose. Most everyone out there was young. A lot of them shared a fantasy football league and playing soccer on Sunday nights. As usual I did not know a lot of name and came away knowing about the same.

I picked up Tom Holm at the church and learned Humberto's name. That's two.

There were a few people I knew. But now my mind won't come up with their names. Oh, David Gausepohl was there Friday night but he went home.

I enjoy walking and exploring and got enough of that. If you look at the pictures I got some pretty good shots. The sort of chronicle where I went. The raccoon was cool, too far for a great shot. He was old. He stopped when I stopped to look at me. Then he waddled down the road away from me a while before finally entering the woods. I walked up to see if I could see him in the woods but of course I couldn't. He had blended in by then. I saw some birds. It looked like a family of ducks that took off when they saw me.

The little subdivision of middle class, affordable homes was cool. There are some for sale and a few vacant lots if one wanted to build for oneself. There was a warning sign at the entrance saying, "All home construction must be approved by the homeowner's association before beginning". So no travel trailers anyway. A lot of the homes looked pretty modest. Quite a few people used a life preserver ring for a house number marker. Not everyone had boats and not everyone had easy access to the lake. Those who did tended to have fancier homes.

Late Saturday morning I went the other way. I ran into two guys who planned to jump in the lake. I did not see a marked off swimming area. There should be one. They had to pull themselves out on two foot high pilings. I would have had trouble doing that. Good for them though, they made their own adventure.

I walked down to the interpretive nature walk and got in on the last half of the ranger guided tour. He spoke of snakes. He showed us a banana spider and a special tree called a Hercules Club that he said the Indians used to get a pain killing medicine. I wondered if it was the substance that aspirin was derived from. He wasn't sure and neither am I. He said this was the last tree of that variety in the park. It has a unique bark.

We men ate "man food" and had a lot of circle time. We had two worship times and a couple of times to discuss issues of men helping men, support and so on. There were ideas thrown out. I did not think anything was decided though except that we should keep doing this.

I brought my family tent but did not want to put it up. People wondered how I was going to sleep. I proposed sleeping on the ground under the stars but when the time came I was mostly afraid of animals and perhaps being stepped on. So I slept in the car. The last two or three hours though I did pull out the old sleeping bag, which was inadequate and tried sleeping under the stars. I was under some trees so my star field was broken up. Still that was pretty cool. I slept at least as good under the stars as I did in the car.