Focus on Life ~ March, 'Checked Out': Week 11 "Beauty All Around"

Sally Russick of The Studio Sublime is hosting another year long challenge which is... sublime... as you'd expect with such a studio name. The challenge is named 'Focusing on Life' and for 2014 Sally is choosing a monthly theme, with a different prompt each week.

The theme for March is 'Checked Out' and this week's theme is 'Beauty All Around' and this is what Sally recommended for the week:

The beauty that is all around us, the beauty that we sometimes miss because we are busy with the daily activities we "need" to accomplish. This week let's slow down and smell the roses, feel the sunshine and enjoy the beauty that abounds in our world!

Ah, yes - ironically enough this week seems busier than the one before, and I know the next 4 weeks or so will be plain crazy. But I also know the importance of slowing down (no roses around here yet, we just had another 10 inches of snow dumped on us a couple of days ago) and since today has been a spring-like day, I got the child and visited one of our favourite spots: Crawford Lake, The Iroquois Village.

The park has a very rich history, it is built around the Crawford Lake, right through the Niagara Escarpment, and Bruce Trail. In the 70s the scientists discovered the lake is meromitic: because the lake basin is deeper than its surface area, the lower levels of the water are rarely disturbed by wind or temperature change. Because there is no mixing of lower and higher levels of the waters, the bottom of the lake has no oxygen, and no life, hence no bacterial breakdown. Which makes it a perfect sedimentary preserve. That's how they made their second important discovery: they found corn at the bottom of the lake, corn over 500 years old. So they rightfully deduced there must have been a settlement close by and started archaeological studies, and they soon after discovered an entire Iroquois Village 100 m away from the lake.

Today there is the Conservation area, with wonderful trails (around the lake, through the forest, or to another Escarpment spot, 7.2 km away), and reconstructed long houses where you can learn about the life of the Iroquois people 550 years ago.

During March (and sometimes April too) they host (like many parks around us) the Maple Syrup Festival, in here it is called Sweet Water Festival. You learn about how the Native people made syrup and sugar out of maple sap, you eat cornbread with maple syrup, you learn original ways of making corn pancakes, you eat maple taffies made on snow (yummy!), and ultimately you have a lovely walk through the forest.

William and I both know those trails by heart and we almost didn't go to the lake today (it was very windy and slushy, as the tons of snow are starting to melt), but on a whim we decided to trek to there and back, quickly. To our surprise, something beautiful greeted us as soon as we stepped on the trail:

Over the winter (we've been there in the fall last time) these lovely wood sculptures were installed. Gorgeous and perfect in the natural setting: it's simply wood and a bit of colour given by the contrast of wood to the burnt wood. The animals are very realistically depicted, you almost want to touch them to make sure they are not real. You touch them anyhow, because the wood is just calling you.

The hand holding the large bird seemed to be 'crying' and it took me a little bit to discover a small patch of snow on top of the hand (higher than eye level). My only regret is that the wood is sealed, so you can't smell it - I can imagine how it must have smelled while the artist cut through it.

That's the Beauty All Around us this week! To see more beauty, please make sure you visit everybody else.