In A Wooded Glen

For the past several days, I have been away from home attending a national advisory committee meeting. This is the same group for which I traveled to California last fall, and to New Orleans a year plus ago.

Since we meet twice a year, we try to meet once in a location where we have helped with disaster response and recovery, and once in a location near our national church headquarters. This meeting was in a wooded glen, actually at Wooded Glen, a lovely retreat facility near Louisville, Kentucky where the PCUSA headquarters are located.

The winding road that you drive along to reach the lodge is still there. This is the road that I carefully inched my way down last year in the fog.



Since I remembered this time to bring a camera along, I can show you what the place looks like.

Herewith:

The view from my room window in the early morning.

The beginning of a lovely spring sunset.

A line-up of rocking chairs, just waiting for those meetings to end.

A pair of Canada geese on a small lake.

The checkerboard sets at the lodge!

The fireplace at the lodge.

I tend not to sleep particularly well when I am away from home. So I awoke one morning at 5 a.m., and listened to the marvelous sounds of the woods around me. I watched a quarter moon and its reflection dance off a small lake, and gazed at stars I rarely see with all the light pollution in central PA.

Another view of the small lake.

I also heard an early morning bird that sounded like a poor-will's widow--but not quite. I am not adept on bird calls, so it may have to remain a mystery.

As I drove away from the wooded glen, there was a glorious sunrise--the sky all washed with peachy pink glow, and a line of clouds around the perimeter of the sky made the entire sky glow. No fog to drive through this time. As lovely as the place is, I am now (gratefully) safely home.