You are hiking in a cedar forest, the sun steaming the sodden ground where ever it breaks through the trees, periodically pausing to listen for a whistled tune.  The whistle leads you to your prey, because you are hunting dinosaurs.  One dinosaur in fact, a piccolodactyl.  Not familiar with that species?  Then you haven’t been watching Little Einsteins where in one episode the kids imagine dinosaur musical instruments, and a baby piccolodactyl gets separated from its mommy.  Thus began our dinosaur hunt through our neighbors forest.

Carving a path through the wilderness in the Enchanted Forest.

This was one of those perfect Spring mornings (though it’s no where near Springtime yet, and I’m ever in wait for the snow dump that we’ll get before true Spring hits) when the sun was out and everything was steaming.  The road.  The trees.  The masses of sodden leaves and conifer needles covering the forest floor.  Our breath.  Little Man and I couldn’t stand the thought of staying inside one moment longer than absolutely necessary, so once we were ready for our public we dashed outside with his balance bike.  Then we coasted down to the original farm house on our street where the owners (they are relative newbies like ourselves, having lived here only 6 months longer than we have) have put in tremendous labor to create an accessible wilderness in their forest land.  Their grandson is Little Man’s age, and they miss the sound of little kids running around and have granted us access to their forest (aka Enchanted Forest) whenever we like.  They don’t know it yet, but there are some gooey cinnamon rolls coming their way soon as a partial “thank you.”

The dog leading Little Man on the dinosaur hunt.

It was to their house and forest that we set out for on our steaming morning.  The dog trailed us contentedly, and Little Man constantly called to her to run with us down the paths of the steaming forest. We take turns whistling like a piccolodactyl and hiding behind mammoth cedars while the other searched for the missing dinosaur.  I should say that I was whistling while Little Man did more of a hooting call.  In the end likely more dinosaur-like than my whistling.

A pond that Little Man wills to be a river.

After much running, hiding and whistling/hooting, it was eventually time to coast back to our house for lunch.  Before lunch could happen, we needed to visit Little Man’s Ladies to gather eggs, and it was on the way to the chicken coop when Little Man and I noticed that once again the farm was living up to the name I gave this blog (see original post).  The sheep were out.  Although this time it was not “sheep” plural, but singular and tiny.  One of the smallest lambs had crawled out under the gate and could not get back under to get to his momma.  Little Man held the egg basket while I cornered and caught the little lamb, then he got to pet the soft black and white head, cooing “sweet little budgie.”

Pooh Bear under arm, ready to return home for lunch.

On the whole this has been a lovely farm and wilderness morning.  Hiking through the Enchanted Forest hunting for dinosaurs, snacking by the pond on a Lorax stump, rescuing and cuddling a lamb, gathering eggs and tossing food to “the ladies,” tossing a few winter garden scraps to the pigs, and finally lunching on the bounty of our labors (a couple of the eggs made their way into some fried rice for lunch).  All in all, a lovely winter/spring day.