Bear Lake, Cancer and Rabies

Last week we encountered a dead weasel during a little walk at the cabin. Afterwards, dear little seven-year-old Hansie sighed, "I used to think life was just perfect. Until I learned about rabies and cancer. ... Like, when I was a baby, I just thought, 'Life is going to be great!', but then ..."

Cancer and rabies.

I know. 

Poor boy--leaving his own little Eden.

I can relate. Just before this particular Bear Lake trip in fact, I happened to be looking through some old blog posts--mostly of Bear Lake trips from years ago. Hans was still a baby then (blithely unaware of rabies). Everyone was little really. Partly, looking back, I wondered how on earth I did it--packing and cleaning and adventuring with so many small and needy people. But also, it seemed like everything was so utterly simple then! Reading through those posts I could see that in many ways we were still in our innocent Eden phase. What did any of us know about ... cancer and rabies then?

In any case, here we are--a little more thickly entrenched in the realities of a mortal journey (and probably the better for it).

(And I was about to complain about the fact that my camera battery died only half-way through this trip [and then Daisy's died shortly after] only ... there are still roughly six billion photos between our cameras so ... perhaps it's just as well!)