The human person fully alive

Yesterday we went for a family hike in the Mink Hills. The class VI road was mostly washed away. Beavers had improvised dams at several spots to keep the rush of spring melt on the land a little longer. At one fording Michael helped me pull a birch tree the beavers had cut down the hill and lay it across the bubbling stream as a make-do bridge. Clouds whipped overhead. We were trying to get to the Devil's Bowl, a rock formation that is fun to climb, but only got as far as the old small family cemetery with the weathered head stones at the junction of what are now several snowmobile trails before cold, wet feet forced us to turn around and try to get back down the snow-packed, muddy and washed out trail to our car.

Today it is sunny, milder, but that could change. Our first lamb, a black one, dozes beside its grazing mother on the hillside.

I spent Friday home, pulling together a response in an appeal of the Wheelabrator Concord's Title V permit. The state DES is being represented by the Attorney General's office and theyd sent in a motion to deny me standing, so hopefully my response will prove that I have standing in the case to appeal. This is a large municipal waste incinerator that handles garbage from around the state and many out of state haulers. We're 15 miles away as the crow flies. I'll include a link to the appeal here on the DES website. Click on the Mink Hills Center.

It's Palm Sunday. I have not been very good at observing Lenten vows to fast and pray, but I am reading a book on early Christianity and have liked a quote attributed to Irenaeus: "For the glory of God is the human person fully alive." Will try to get the kids to church today, which they hate. But they are always calmer and somehow closer to me after church.