Trick or Treat

Today I learned something really cool about God's timing. I walked to the library and ended up spending a good hour or so sitting in a comfy chair reading the part of the first Harry Potter book. After I realize how long I had sat there and wondered why the heck I had wasted so much time, I brought the book back to put it away and Adrienne was there. She was working at one of the tables, and I sat down and talked with her for a good 20 minutes or so. It was a really really neat talk, and I am glad I was there. And then tonight at the Ablaze bible study at church we talked about the Holy Spirit, and how he works in our lives, and orchestrates things. Oh, so true.

And today was, afterall, Halloween. Halloween is great until you get to be about 13. Trick or treating is one of the greatest things ever though. Mom spent the day making Elly a costume, and it was beautiful. She was an Indian Princess. She had a fringed dress with beads and bells and embroidery. It was so neat. In her headband she had a feather from Dad's turkey that he got last spring. She wore a beaded leather belt too, and just looked so cute.

I picked up a book while I was a the library called Hitch and it is by Jeanette Ingold, who also wrote Mountain Solo and The Big Burn, two other books which I enjoyed immensely. I wrote about The Big Burn when I read it last year. Hitch is about a seventeen year old boy from Texas who joins a CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] crew in Montana during the Great Depression. It weaves an amazing story about these boys who mostly joined because they had to; they desperately needed a job. How for six months they learned, lived, worked and built together. In the book there are some great moments where their work goes beyond just a job, it's not about politics, it's about what people really need. When the main character, Moss, reflects on how different it will be when they all leave and won't be together anymore, it sort of reminded me of my own summer at the ranch. Granted, we weren't working during the Depression, we didn't help rebuild a piece of land, a community, a country...But we lived and worked together away from each of our own personal lives, just sharing that time, together. And it didn't last either, but it prepared us for things we'll go through in the future. Just like in the book, where the author subtly hints to the coming of World War II, that they were preparing for something more, and these boys who would be the men to fight it.
It's a good book.