Busy Hands Homestead

I braid one thin braid after the other and secure the ends in a rainbow of hair bands carefully selected and organized. The motions seem like right of passage and it is officially summer break. We are on the tail end of a whirlwind road trip, moving down the highway at moderate speed.  We took the converted school bus we are currently living all the way to Niagra-on-the-Lake and back.We are rolling along, somewhere between the east and west boundaries of South Dakota. We cooked dinner while the day darkened and the stars emerged in the sky. We drove and drove and drove as we put the jagged peaks of the rocky mountains behind us and the landscape became flat then then the plains grew to hills and mountains and water.  The lush green of a deciduous forest, ferns and flowers all around us.  Somewhere along the way our bus gained a name - meet Alice. The dense vegetation broken by ponds dotting the landscape, the intermittent water become vast a...

Strong, cold wind blows down the beach, the water is so cold my toes tingled and the kids still get soaked from head to toe, splashing in the space between solid land and sea. The kids shriek and run.  They gather up rocks, poke at pieces of jelly fish, and these moments alone would have been worth the drive.  The moments with friends and the most decadent camping food, in the history of camping, would have been worth the drive. But, the excuse for this trip, is a moment 1 minute and 55 seconds in length. Intellectually, I had been prepared for this moment. We had listened to podcasts, heard other people's stories, shushed the children on the eleven hour drive split between two days: "Shhh!!! Listen, to this story.  They are talking about what we are about to see." "Don't look at the sun without your glasses.  It's dangerous." The sun was bright, the temperature dropped, our shadows become duplicate, the spaces between the leaves turne...