For Akiva’s first day of first grade at his new school, I sewed him a new backpack! The design is all my own, fully lined, in two colors of orange canvas with generous and deep water bottle pockets, a rear pocket, and a MONSTER pocket on the flap. The shoulder straps are padded with felted wool from old sweaters. The closure under the flap is a drawstringβ my favorite kind.
Although designed for school books, it works fine for walks in the woods, too.
When we get to the place of the Grandparent Trees,
Iris demonstrates the effects of centripetal force.
Akiva demonstrates his own sort of force.
If we have to have a school and a school has to have a name, thus I have named it: The School of Everywhere.
Perhaps our mascot can be the wind.
Here we are again!
I know I’ve taken many, many photos at this spot, but this is the only one I can find:
A cloud hangs over the bay,
and Iris looks out on the morning.
She returns with specimens:
seaweed, driftwood, stone.
Β *Β Β *Β Β *
A cloud hangs over the bay,
and Akiva drives out in the morning.
Out in the morning, out in the morning. Akiva drives out in the morning.
While Iris and I went for a walk up the Sainte-Marguerite river,
Martin stayed by the bay and played with metal cars with Akiva.
Upon my return, I noticed we were situated in the perfect location for shooting 4×4 truck advertisements!
I made some mock-ups using Toyota advertising slogans and Lorem Ipsum text.
I.
II.
In the afternoon, we went on a hike.
In the evening, we made popcorn with a cute little popcorn cage that we held over the fire. I made a couple of batches and timed it: six minutes to pop over good coals. Martin wanted to make a batch, so I filled up the cage with corn. Wanting to be a guy and beat my six-minute average, he tossed a couple of logs on the coals to build up a roaring guy-style camp fire. Unfortunately, Martin never did spend much time studying the physics of campfires and did not know that before you get a roaring flame, the logs have to catch fire. Then after you get a roaring flame, you have to wait for good coals or you just burn the kernels. It took him a good 20 minutes of shaking those kernels over the cold fire in an uncomfortable squat position before I relieved his suffering by moving aside the logs to reveal the coals. Sorry, Martin. Sometimes, it hurts to be a guy.