Slug Kisses

A project makes you think of doing things you never thought of doing before.  Not kissing banana slugs.  The kids do that all the time.  Though never before have the slugs puckered up so nicely.

No, it was something else.  Something bigger.  Taller.  We waylaid a ranger on our hike along the Brown Creek Trail in Prairie Creek Redwoods Park and asked what mammals there might be here in this deep and muffled wood.

Full of trees that can swallow a kid whole.

"Well," the ranger said, "At the top of Douglas fir trees lives the red tree vole.  It spends its entire life there.  Multiple generations live in one tree."

So I thought...hmm...if we want to see a red tree vole we're going to have to climb a Douglas fir.  I'd been planning to bring the audio version of The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring on our trip about the folks who first climbed giant redwoods and rappelled down into them.

I asked Evelyn what she thought of learning to climb big trees.  She jumped around saying "boing boing boing."  I've found a tree climbing school in Atlanta, and a tree climbing adventure outfit in Oregon, but nothing closer to home so far.  Very disappointing.  Like a big ol' slug kiss on our dreams.  Going to keep trying.