Great Grampa Cecil's Forest

     Just up the hill from my Dad's little lot on the Bay is just under 40 acres of forest land I played in when I was a child. With a gang of other children who lived near, we ran wild and free up there.  We rode horses, stole apples from the orchards, and damned the underground spring fed stream that cut through the rocks to form a waterfall. It pooled at the bottom where beavers built dams. Our dogs ran free, (once a small one of mine fell through the clear thin ice and floated downstream under it while I frantically crashed through after him until I freed him and ran him home under my jacket!) We skated in winter, built wood rafts and sailed them and now swans build nests there. It was a paradise to me growing up and even while estranged from my father I dreamed of the day I could go back and negotiate with him for ownership. When he passed away, my sister and I became stewards of this property, part of which is now Environmentally Protected land. YAY! For at least the present I have the opportunity to share the joys of this land, brimming with nature and wonder that is eastern Ontario, Canada with my grandson, my cousin, my husband and friends and YOU dear reader.

 We went up there recently to site the monuments and survey markers.
     I found an old fort we had built and this important "get back on your horse when you've ridden up bareback rock"
     I actually remembered the tree that this stump was the base of more than 40 years ago!!! FOURTY!!!!
     I guess we ate all the apples....but I don't remember what we did with the trees. :-)

My boys just

We found a robin's nest! with robin's eggs in it!!!

had the BEST time, shopping for sticks, upgrading them, shopping for more and eventually lying down in the cold spring fed MUD!!!

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We found the WATERFALL! It was a lot smaller than I remember
but look a frog! on the rock below it.
I call this La Frog Regardez le Fall de Aqua

My sister called this poignant....excellent word for it. My grandson never got to meet my father but he was  larger than life and to my grandson he is the owner of Great Grandpa's Forest and will always be just that Larger than Life. I'm glad

  And then after, we became Walmart people.    

My little boy just got Nature's best tour....robin's egg blue robin's eggs! a caterpillar, the waterfall in full flow, with a frog and hundreds and hundreds of river rocks tossed into a creek.


Still to come, there's a swan a laying, geese with goslings already and every wonderful wonderful thing I remember.
We had such a great day!!!! and I am so grateful.