Monday, March 3, 2008

The fabric of our lives

Some people in life are blessed with a personality that lives to be fascinated. Further blessed are those fascinated by simple things.


This weekend was a great retreat with my church people. We went to a state park out near Williamsburg. The house in which we stayed was right next to a COTTON FIELD. Having lived exclusively in Ohio until recently, I was fascinated with the cotton field. Since it's March, there wasn't any fresh growth-- just leftover dead and dried plant matter from the harvest. But mixed in with the plant matter was cotton: big clumps of cotton, just sitting there.


I'm no stranger to farmland, now. I grew up a brisk walk away from corn and soybean and dairy fields. But cotton! It's like I could dump out a bag of cotton balls in a field, come back after a rainy day, and find what I saw this weekend. Blows my mind. It's not food growing out of the ground, it's clothes. er... sort of.


I took a walk in the cotton field, just admiring the different soil and plant life. It's interesting how different things can be on the earth in such a short distance. I'm only two states away from the ecosystem I knew by heart, but here-- new things. New animals. New plant life. New soil (it was kind of sandy).


I was pickin' cotton. I got down, turned around, and picked a bale of cotton.








And then we got down, turned around, and picked a bale of hay.

1 comment:

TRD said...

The plantations are definitely something to see. They are all scattered out there along Route 5. I have driven by them plenty of times and have just not had the time to actually stop and go check them out. I have been meaning to...I think I will try and make an effort on my next weekend off.

How long did you stay out there for?

Rob