Get Thee To the Woods: In Search of an Ancient Pyramid

Well, not ancient, exactly; one that was erected in 1897 as a monument to the Civil War. Here is where General George Meade's Union troops broke through Stonewall Jackson's Confederate lines during the Battle of Fredericksburg in December of 1862.

I had heard there was a pyramid in Fredericksburg, and the other day Moe and I decided to set out to try and find it. We drove to the end of Lee Drive as directed by various websites that told us to do so, and started to look around. At first we weren't sure we were in the right place.

First we headed down a trail toward the site of a former train depot called Hamilton's Crossing.

There was no pyramid to be found here, but plenty to see.

We wandered around in the field for a while,

...and finally we spotted it.

Unfortunately, the pyramid is on the opposite side of some busy railroad tracks, but we walked down a trail through the meadow to get a closer look.

"Take my picture so it looks like I'm holding it up with one hand!"

(I'm not sure the point of this sign, since there's no way to get anywhere close to the thing.)

It was a lovely afternoon, and reluctantly we headed home to start dinner.

Soon spring break will be over, and there won't be much time for adventures. I hope we can squeeze in a little bit of outdoor fun in the days and weeks to come!

How about you? How have you and your family enjoyed the great outdoors this week?

Get Thee to the Woods: A Couple of Blacksburg Parks

On Holy Saturday while visiting my parents for Easter, Joe and I were anxious to get the kids out of the house for a while. They all wanted to go to see the Hunger Games movie; I thought we should do something more physical than that, like a hike. I prevailed, and a hike it would be.

My mother suggested a relatively new park on the western side of Blacksburg, Heritage Community Park. It's so new it isn't on Google maps, but we found it easily.

A network of trails lead past ponds, through meadows, and an old farmstead.

Tom's Creek.

The park was once the Brown Farm, although I don't have any idea who the Browns were or how long ago they lived here.

Nearby is Gateway Trail, which leads into the Jefferson National Forest.

We greatly offended a couple of chickadees, apparently; they scolded and fussed at us loudly as we passed.

When we began to climb, I wondered briefly if maybe we shouldn't have gone to the movies instead.

There were a few muddy spots like this, but not many.

See this rock? Moe picked it up and tried to heft it over this fallen tree. It fell short and landed on the tree instead, and stayed there. The log bounced up and down from the weight of the rock, but still the rock stayed. We were pretty impressed.

We hiked to the top of a ridge, where there was a teensy bit of a view. The trail kept going up, and there are many more that branch off into the forest. We vowed that on a future visit we'd take a day and hike more of these trails.

A couple of years ago when I started this Get Thee To the Woods theme, it was in response to a blog challenge to get your family outside together. I haven't posted under that tag much lately. It isn't that we haven't been going outside; I just haven't documented it as much. (Well, actually, I have; I just haven't posted it under the outdoors theme). Anyhow, this Lent has given me the chance to re-evaluate my place in the social networking world; giving up Facebook and Twitter (mostly) was hard at first, but I realized after visiting those pages again that truthfully I haven't missed all that much. I'm happy to be able to connect with family and friends again this way (and it's FUN, let's just admit it right now), but I'm thinking I probably wont spend as much time on those sites as I used to. At least not for a while.

We're on spring break. We're doing some housecleaning (which means it's time for me to wrap this up here and get out of my pajamas and tell the kids to turn off the TV so I can give them their chore lists) and swapping winter clothes for spring ones, and I'm hoping to drag the kids to at least one natural and/or historic site in our area. Wish me luck. And hopefully I'll get my behind out of bed early enough to go to daily Mass at least one day this week.

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter, and Happy Spring!

Good Friday

One of my New Year's resolutions was to go to confession once a month. I went in January and February, and then I did not go at all during Lent. I resolved to go to at least one "extra" Mass every month besides Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, and so far I've been able to do that, but then again it's still only April. (I don't know about you but when I'm at Mass, there isn't anywhere else I want to be. Even on days when I'm distracted, not paying attention, nodding off during the homily, thinking about all of the things that need to get done--at Mass I'm truly home.) I even told myself I'd go to Holy Thursday Mass, but as usual, that did not happen. We (I) treated Holy Thursday just like any other ordinary day. I dropped the kids off at school and went to work and ran errands and gossiped and worried and made mistakes and took the boys to tae kwon do and did laundry and plopped my lazy self down on the couch when there was work to be done. And every Holy Thursday night, after the Eucharist--which we Catholics believe to be the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ--is taken from the church and brought to our parish hall until midnight when it's (He's) taken away (laid in the tomb) until Easter Vigil, I always, always, make an effort to go and spend a few minutes with Him, no matter how tired I am from the day. Last night I didn't even do that.

Often I have a hard time sleeping, fussing over things to be done, things I wish I hadn't done, things I wish I had or hadn't hadn't said, things that I've been putting off that should have been done yesterday. I think, if the world ends today all of our troubles will be over. When we all get to Heaven everyone will love each other and nobody will see anyone's faults or past mistakes, only the beauty that God made in each one of us. At times I've even found myself wishing God would speed things up a bit already. But I realize that there is still much work to be done. God wants us to face challenges and learn from our mistakes and love each other and stand up for the weak and feed the poor and clothe the hungry and encourage those who need encouragement.

It's almost Easter. I'm ready. (And I can get on Facebook again. Oh, and I can get on Twitter and tell all my followers to PLEASE vote for Gavin on Dancing With the Stars, 'cuz he's hanging on by the skin of his teeth and I REALLY don't want him to be eliminated this week. The number is 1-800-868-3404.)

All silliness aside, I hope you all have a blessed Easter. Today, Good Friday, may we all be filled with the hope that Christ's resurrection brings. He's alive. He's prepared a place for us. We are His.