Lig’s Programs

We spent most of the day Saturday attending various programs that Lig presented at Grayson Highlands, and they were all great.  First off that morning was a program on moths.  I’m going to tell you, when I first heard that was the subject of the program, I thought, What on earth?  But she did her usual excellent job, and left us all wanting to know even more about moths, and isn’t that the sign of a truly great presentation.  She had collected this tub of moths = there were all of these egg cartons in there, and the night before she gave a program she could hang a black light down inside a hole cut in the top, and the moths would come in & sort of get trapped down in the stack of egg cartons, or maybe they just went in there to hide?  I’m not sure.  But as she took the egg cartons out one by one, in some of them would be all different kinds of moths.  Some flew off before we could capture them, of course, but she had these little plastic cups with magnifying glasses built into the lids that we could really examine the moths in while she talked about them – before we let them go, of course.  Very cool.

Then that afternoon we went on the Creek Critters hike with her. Actually the kids went with Olivia. The adults hung back & helped me on the first leg of the Wilson Creek Trail, which is rated as STRENUOUS. This is surely the first time I have walked a strenuous trail as an adult, if ever, but my friend Kirkie told me recently that she could do anything she wanted to do as long as she did it at her own slow pace, so that became my mantra for the weekend. And when we finally caught up with Lig and the kids, they were having so much fun, and the adults joined right in – getting in the creek to hunt salamanders (Lindee actually found her first salamander in the wild ever, so she was fired up), wading, and even some going swimming. What a highlight to our weekend!