The great\nassemblage commenced and somewhere in the basement of her childhood\nmemories, Danielle recalled that beginning a puzzle properly meant\nfinding the straight edges first and building the outline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that’s what the\nfamily did, and, as they searched for pieces, they talked and talked.\nThey worked together. Their hands bumped into each other as they\nreached across the table. Crater Lake begin to take form with\nastonishing speed. As the image became clearer, one of the boys said\nhe’d like to see it. Danielle said it was a plan for next summer.\nMaybe they’d rent a motor home!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two hours later,\nCrater Lake in all its magnificent splendor materialized in front of\nthe family. They all high fived and then ate pizza. The girl wanted\nto tackle another puzzle, Mt. Hood, but the rain had stopped and\nDanielle wanted to get on the beach. She suggested it and the kids\nwere game. They bundled up and walked out of the cabin, down a path\nthat ran through the golf course and into some sand dunes. They\ntraversed the dunes and emerged on a beach littered with driftwood.\nAmong the driftwood stood at least a dozen forts of all shapes and\nsizes. One of them was even a two-story mansion. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The boys saw the\nforts first and exclaimed their shock and joy. They began running\ntoward them and the girl gave choice. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Danielle realized\nshe hadn’t seen her children run since they were toddlers. It was an\nawesome sight. She started running toward the forts, too. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The kids ran to\nevery fort and ducked inside, darted out, fell down, laughed, and\nmarveled at the ingenuity of of the structures and how some were\ndecorated with kelp, crab pot floats, fishing line, feathers, shells\nand rope. One fort even had a little tin box with paper and pens\ninside that invited visitors to leave a fort message. All the kids\ndid. They thanked the fort builders and wished everyone a Merry\nChristmas <\/em>and there wasn’t a single typo!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Danielle joined\nthem in their fort adventures. She left a message, too. It said\nsomething about starting over, right here, right now. She threw in\nthree exclamation points for good measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The oldest boy\nsuggested they build a fort. What a perfect activity for Christmas\nDay and it costs absolutely nothing in Oregon! So the family found an\nold blown-out fort and began building together, hoisting,\ninterlocking, steadying pieces of wood so that the structure rose and\nbecame sturdier by the minute. As the family built, the talked and\nworked out architectural issues. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n A kind of a corral\nfort with an arched entrance resulted from the labor. They made a\nbench for someone to sit down inside. They draped the fort in kelp\nand tucked feathers inside the slivers of the wood. The girl gathered\nsome white rocks and designed a walkway leading to the fort. The\nyoung boy found a washed up shore pine and planted it in front of the\nfort. It was a natural Christmas tree harvested from the ocean.\nDanielle etched a message in the sand near the tree: Decorate me!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The family stood\ntogether in front of the fort, sweating, tired, hungry, thirsty,\nbeaming. They needed a family portrait. But there wouldn’t one\nbecause everybody forgot to bring their phones. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The great assemblage commenced and somewhere in the basement of her childhood memories, Danielle recalled that beginning a puzzle properly meant finding the straight edges first and building the outline. So that’s what the family did, and, as they searched for pieces, they talked and talked. They worked together. Their hands bumped into each other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5791"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5794,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5791\/revisions\/5794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}