What a Magical Place!

The last two Saturdays, I've had the privilege and pleasure of going to Arusha National Park. This park, which is located on Mount Meru, is covered in lush, thick forests. I love it so much! I love the dappled sunlight piercing through the layered canopy of forest. I love the carpet of clovers and moss under the cool shadows of mossy trees. I love all the bushbuck and duikers that you can see scampering quietly and delicately through their carpeted home under the knurled trees, with their rich red coats sometimes speckled with beautiful white spots. The best word to describe this untouched forest is MAGICAL. The fresh air, the cool temperature, the trickling sound of a pure stream, the dappled sunlight on the forest floor, the padded footsteps of a forest animal, and the louder but still peaceful sound of a waterfall all contribute to the magical reality of this forest. The mad rush to see all the animals you can that you find in other national parks fades away in the Arusha National Park, forcing you to enjoy the extravagance of raw nature.

Above all the spectacular places in the forest, the Miao waterfall is my favorite place to be. The small trickling waterfall falls into a stream that turns left right in front of a perfect lawn of grass. This allows you to sit right in front of the waterfall without sitting in the stream. This perfect grass creates clearing in thick forest. Once you have reclined on the grass for a while, soaking in the beauty of your surrounding, you sit up and dip your feet into the very cold but crystal clear stream. After wading around a little, you have the picnic that was packed for you. You eat in silence still awed by the beauty God chose to put in nature. After awhile you decide to take a little walk with your guide (well, your supposed to have a guide :). You are overjoyed to find another trickling waterfall like the first. As you continue on, you find yet another waterfall! This one falls over an overhanging cliff and flows into another stream. You find a spot to sit down. You notice speechlessly how the sunlight is piercing through the thick canopy and lighting up the smooth rocks and churning water. By this time you’re just bubbling inside and running over with joy. You can’t soak it all in at once. Its too much, to saturated! You suddenly burst out singing because the waterfall is loud enough to drown out your voice. As you hike back to the first waterfall, pack up the picnic and drive away in the car to enjoy the forest more your are so aware to the REALITY of God's nature. Its real! Out of the fake man-made devices and feelings of the city you find the beautiful reality of nature.

Here are some photos, but no matter how skilled the photographer or writer is, pictures or words cant describe the wonders of nature. So go see it for yourself!

(The pictures of the bee-eaters are not in the forest, but they are in a part of ANP)

A Real Adventure

(This story is a couple of months old, because I have not been able to access my blogger acount for a couple months).

The other day, we went out to Massai land on the piki pikis. This was the first time we had gone on a safari with piki pikis. On the way there the three dads rode, and the rest of the families went in the car. It was like 200 kilometers to the place where we were going.
While we were there, me and sky decided to hike up onto this really cool hilltop where I had been before. On the top of this hill it isn’t covered in bush, but in that really cool terrain of golden meadows and patches of dark green and lush forests. The other cool thing is that it was kind of a new thing for me and sky to get to go alone in a place like this since there were buffalo up there. My dad said that the Massai couldn't believe that he let us go up there alone.

Once you get to the top, you come to kind of a flat valley between three higher hilltops. So we were walking along up there, making quite a bit of noise, when Skyler said, “what’s that?” It was a hartebeest, coming right out of the forest and he hadn’t seen us yet! Hartebeests are like wildebeests but they're all tan and gold. This was a big lone bull so he was really big and muscular. We quickly got down in the long grass to see what would happen. To make a long story short, Skyler and me stocked him all over the place, but he had really good senses. The closest we got was about 50 yards. Oh! But it filled my heart just to be up there in the fresh air! Sucking in nature, with hearts pounding as we scan for buffalo, and crawling through long grass for hundreds of yards trying to get close to a wild bull hartebeest. No tourist vehicles, not tame animals, just Skyler, nature, and me.



Man, I know, without a doubt, that being in nature and interacting with it and all its tricks like that is part of who I am. That is where I find peace and satisfactory joy, not sitting at home, typing this blog, and worrying about all the projects I am behind in for school.

Anyway, the homeward journey was another adventure. Skyler and me got to ride on the pikis for a while and that's where the fun began. The first part was rocky, so that was hard in itself...but then the rain came. Puddles started to form with rocks buried under them. It was hard to stay on the bike going through some of them, but I was ok. The cold of my soaked clothes was getting to me when I herd the first astounding crack of lightning (there had already been thunder and lightning but, when the lightning is so close that the sound of thunder is at the same time as the crack of lighting it gives a sound that is unearthly!). The first time that happened, I felt it in my bones, and my helmet shook. I was immediately thinking about what my reaction would be if I heard another one of those. I thought I might drop the bike out of shock if it happened again. Everything sounded deathly quiet compared to that strike, as I clutched to the handlebars in anxiousness and held on for dear life. I can’t describe how small and helpless that lightning crack made me feel: so cold, with nowhere to hide, totally exposed to nature with no defense. I love that raw power of nature that God created, which tends to put wimpy little humans into their place, haha!

And then the hail! The hail was soooooooo painful, it was coming down really hard and it stung like crazy. I mean, on a piki even the rain can hurt, but these were huge drops of hail. We soon had to pull off the road and get under some small bushes. Then the car came behind us, and we told them how we couldn't ride because of the hail, but by that time the hail was pretty much gone (the storm was still raging though). My dad explained that it was best to ride it out, and that there were some river beads he wanted to get across before they flooded to high. My mom said, "Oh! Get chase in hear!" because we were all shivering like crazy!!!!! But I said, "No! I wanna ride!" Even though I was really shook up I wanted to keep riding for the adventure, and I new that I would regret it later if I didn't. So we climbed back on and continued into the unceasing rain.

We soon found the flowing spots that my dad wasn't so sure about but we went through them without too much trouble. The scariest parts for me was going through puddles that had jumbles of rocks in them, throwing you all over the place, and then going up the steep rocky road on the other side. And oh the cold! The experience would have been a ton more fun to experience at that moment if it wasn't for the bighting cold that made your hands hurt when you weren’t even doing anything with them (just having them attached to your body hurt)! But of course the cold makes the story much more macho and exciting. Besides it was part of the experience that made it so raw! But man, we went through some crazy puddles and rain-soaked sand. One of the puddles was a little over waist deep but you couldn't tell that it was that deep from looking at it. So when you went in, you and the bike just plunged into the depths (or so it seemed) of this puddle and water was actually shooting over our heads as we road through!!!! I eventually dumped the piki in a big puddle and it was time to let someone else have a ride, and time for me to heat up in the car.

While we were out there having a cold blast, my dad was inside telling my frightened mom, "Thos are boys becoming MEN, Tammy!"

What a weekend! Out in the bush is where I would choose to be any day, whether stalking elusive hartebeests on gorgeous hilltops, or reeling at the shock of the raw power of lightning.

Praise the Lord for his nature!