We've been going nonstop recently: the ice skating party, the big hike, the swimming party, and the fairies in the woods.

Yesterday, I took the kids to Camp Long in West Seattle for the Arts in Nature festival. Wow. This is how Seattle used to feel. It was so small time and earnest and funky and in the woods. Camp Long is a huge park in the middle of the city that makes you feel like you are in the wilderness. It has meadows and ponds and twisting paths and David decided he had to run down all of them. Festival, pshaw, lets grab a stick.

I was not so happy when both kids went up a climbing rock which had no railing at the top. Did I mention I'm afraid of heights? They weren't, but they also weren't completely safe getting down.

The festival itself was delightful and quixotic. We saw acrobats hanging from rings, an improv sound group that had really kid friendly lateral thinking warm up exercises (move one hand in a two beat and say a three beat), but then had adult level group poems, a cellist around one corner, a woven blue web through this patch of trees, and cloth blue and orange mushrooms which I recognized from an art installation a friend had done Rose's school.

We were going to watch a dance by fairies, but they took too long getting their wings on, so we banged on drums and made masks. It was magical.