Simple Pleasures

Sundays have become a sort of picnic day. We packed a simple lunch and hot water for tea and set off into our forest to hike out to our picnic spot. Our picnic spot is also a popular picnic spot for others. It is this big open area in the forest accessible by car or by hiking as we usually do. The only negative is all the trash laying around as people picnic but don't bother to pick up their trash. We look past the trash issue and continue to picnic there anyway though the need for a anti-litter campaign in Turkey comes up in our conversation almost every time. The picnic spot and the hike through the forest would be much better if there weren't so much trash. Anyway, I wasn't meaning to focus of the trash aspect. We chose a spot under a big oak tree this time where the ground was covered in acorns. After a nice lunch under the tree the kids got up to start collecting acorns. Then they found some bricks, two to sit on and two to use for cracking open acorns, which is what they did to entertain themselves for the next half hour. We didn't realize right away that the bricks were actually the remains of someone's fire pit so they got dirty pretty fast sitting on their bricks in the middle of an ash pile. But it was wonderful to sit there in fading light sipping tea and watching our kids take pleasure in such a simple thing as cracking open acorns. I regret not taking the camera but I'll paint the picture for you. Both were seated on their respective bricks with a third brick set in between them. Sonora would grab an acorn off the ground and lay it on the middle brick. Malachi would pick up the fourth brick for smashing and with a quick blow smash the acorn. Then Sonora would quickly pick up the smashed acorn and place it in their "acorn cup" and set a new one down to be smashed. It was a beautiful assembly line of sorts and they worked so earnestly together as if it was an important job or something. This morning Malachi, who is in a world of "noticing things" said to me, "Do you know what I noticed with the acorns? The inside of each acorn was different." I'm not sure exactly what he meant by that but their cup of smashed acorns was taken home and now sits on the kitchen table. Simple pleasures.