I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures following one another softly like pearls slipping off a string.

I just read this line to the children from Anne of Avonlea a while ago while as we sat on blankets in our campsite. The words describe today just perfectly. The sun is shining, but a gentle breeze has blown all day. We stayed in camp today, even Taido stayed here and studied most of the day in the camper. We have been converting Mary Polly’s bed to a table for her to draw and Taido to study, which meant I could leave Simon there for a nap after lunch. Cole also stayed back and enjoyed some much needed quiet while Ben and I followed Mary Polly on her bike through the campground. We took a path that runs over the railroad tracks and carves through a little forest down to the shore of the river where the windsurfers put in. The shore is littered with small clam shells which both Ben and Mary Polly love to collect. We are already traveling with a jar almost full of small shells and pieces of beach glass from previous days of collecting, but you can’t have too many I suppose. I sat on a piece of driftwood and closed my eyes, enjoying the rougher winds blowing on my face while I cupped my hands to hold the shells they brought to me. When my hands were full, we walked down to another part of the shore and watched a kite boarder put into the river. I shivered a little as he waded out into the cold river with a rope and waited for his buddy to release the kite tied to the end of it, which is much easier said than done. The kite was huge and seemed awkward to hold up, especially as it filled with the wind and became heavy enough to knock even a strong man down. After several tries, the kite finally flew up into the air and was quickly guided out over the river. His friend then slid the man in the water his kiteboard, which I was amazed only took one try. I’ve slid loads of water skis to people (mostly my father) in much less choppy water and I nearly always miss, making the poor skier swim with the rope wrapped around his arm to get his water ski. But one smooth shove of the board and seconds later the kite boarder was pulled up on top of the water and out into the river, moving quickly over the waves so that in just a bit, the kite that was so huge before was now just a tiny blue crescent amidst the massive backdrop of rock and mountain that rises on the opposite side of the Gorge.

Mary Polly soon took off on her bike and though I could have sat and watched the surfers all afternoon, Ben and I gathered up our shells and began to slowly make our way back along the path. We took in the yellow and orange poppies on the sides of the path. Such bright pretty little things. We checked the progress of many a blackberry bush. Last week on our walks, all the bushes were covered in white flowers, but now only a few flowers remain, tiny green berries forming in their places. I’ve promised that by Mary Polly’s birthday they’ll be just covered in blackberries. On about our thirtieth bush we discovered a few early ripened berries in an especially sunny corner, but they were very sour. As we were standing around with puckered lips, Ben said, Hey Mama! Look up there at all those red balls. I think those are cherries! And indeed, Ben had found a wild cherry tree. We could only reach five or six cherries to taste them and they were oh so sweet! It was just torture to have so many dangling above our heads out of reach. After standing and staring and jumping and grabbing for a while, we determined that we would have to climb the tree. Mary Polly had come back to find us at this point, and she was strongly urging me to figure out how to get up higher because it was just so exciting to have found a wild cherry tree! Oh how I wished for my sister at that moment! (And I wished correctly for my sister and not my husband because let me tell you that when I later tried to enlist Taido’s help in going back for a second round, he was not exactly enthusiastic about the project.) Anna would have scrambled up into the tree before I had finished tasting my first cherry, but in her absence and at Ben and Mary Polly’s begging, I gingerly stepped into the blackberry bushes surrounding the trunk of the tree and climbed as I high as I could into it. It was about this time that we realized that we had nothing to put the cherries in, so Mary Polly rode back to camp to retrieve her handy red bucket. She informed me when she came back that Cole was rereading Anne of Green Gables and he had just read the part where Anne says she thinks it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry tree when Mary Polly informed him that we had found one. Well, being in a wild cherry tree myself, I wasn’t so sure about the sleeping part but that did not lessen my enjoyment of the happy coincidence of finding myself in a scrape worthy of Anne Shirley herself.

Ben and Mary Polly ended up having to tromp all through the blackberry briars in order to reach the cherries on the branches I pulled down or to take them from my hands by the fist full. At one point I had one leg wrapped around a thick branch while I slowly leaned back on another one until I was bent almost completely in a backbend along the branch, hanging practically upside down picking cherries with my left hand from a branch I was holding down with my right. The things I will do for fresh fruit! You have no idea! We worked for probably close to an hour and brought back the bucket about half full. Slow going. But we might have picked a full bucket if you count the ones in our bellies and the ones that slipped through our fingers into the blackberry bushes.

Cole and Taido happily helped us eat our cherries, but I’m not sure they fully appreciated the great effort that getting them required. But that’s alright because even though we are all three covered in scratches, it was worth the simple delight of the novel experience for all of us. Ben said as we were walking back that today was his first time picking wild cherries to which I replied, You know what, me too!