may the forest be with you

Just back from a trip to Florida to visit the family. Remind me never to do that again...that is take a 12-hour car ride with a 3 month old baby. Sheesh! V's a good-natured baby, but anyone would scream uncontrollably about being strapped tightly into a plastic seat facing backwards in a hurtling metal box for hours on end. And then there was the rain...so much freakin' rain. It rained the whole time we were in Florida (remind me to post about our Exciting Trip to the Beach where we stood under a picnic shelter for 2 hours and froze to death with an obnoxious group of drunken teenagers before we finally gave up and drove home). Then it rained the whole trip back. Hard. And the car leaked. And the floors were flooded with stinky water which kept getting all over our stuff and splashing in our shoes...okay, okay...I'll quit whining.

But it was great to see the family again, even though they were passing around a nasty head cold. Also, on the trip back we stopped at one of my favorite places in the entire universe -- the Hostel in the Forest. Hidden away in the pines and palmettos in an unlikely place just off of I-95, the hostel is and has been for many years my occasional salvation. As you drive down the long, ragged dirt driveway into the heart of the land you find yourself leaving behind you a trail of all the stress and aggravating shit that the modern world heaps on us every day. What you find at the end of that road is peace...well, peace and a bunch of wild, barefoot hippies cooking up "love bread" in the communal kitchen and using composting toilets and such.

At the hostel, you get to sleep in your own treehouse, which is incredibly cool. Many of the treehouses are totally without electricity, so at night they glow with candlelight. Some are very secluded and some are located close to the main dome structure that houses the office, kitchen and dining area. There's a pond for swimming and canoeing, a natural spring-fed swimming pool, a meditation and yoga building, outdoor showers and lots more and all of it is connected by catwalks. It's just so dang awesome!

So anyways, we're back now. Back to real life. Bah humbug. Oh, well...the good news is....

WE GOT MORE MUSHROOMS! Scott found a bunch of these little white puffball guys that we love that taste like scallops. Generally, puffballs are not something we mess with because some of them are very poisonous, but we know this one quite well and it's yummy, so we're always glad to find it.