Dwell in the wilderness...Psalm 72:9

9/17: Wow! I came to make a post and found that I never actually published these pictures from July & August. Here they are:

The day after M's baptism we took a pack trip up in the mountains with family (13 of us in all) and the Dog.

The Man knows a man who for various reasons isn't doing professional packing this season, but wanted to keep his animals in shape. So, he offered to take our stuff up in the mountains for us.

Here are that man and his brother packing our stuff into the bags (don't they look like authentic mountain men?)
Here is the mountain man riding and leading two of the pack animals up the trail.

Here's the third animal following along behind.
He left our stuff beside this quiet little lake. For the next 3 days we didn't see any other people.

With the Dog along, we didn't see many other creatures either. We did find some fresh evidence of bear.

We also found a few yellow jackets. S found the most. He now knows that jumping up and down on top of a yellow jacket nest is not a good way to get them to stop stinging. The Man made him some charcoal poultice and that made life a bit better.

A tiger lily that The Man liked...

Wednesday morning we packed up our stuff and the mountain man returned to pick up our things. Here he is weighing the packs. The animals like it if their load is evenly balanced. Maybe that is a good lesson for all of us.
It was good to return home. Some of us would like to live in the wilderness forever, but some of us enjoy an occasional warm shower and clean clothes.