For the Feast of All Saints

Fun and educational!

Spooky things

Halloween is creeping up, and I’m afraid my 7 year old is going to collapse from nervous excitement before it gets here. Every day he has a different costume idea.  Every day he is jumping around in the persona of some superhero or another.  I’m about ready to ban him from trick or treating, so that the hyperactivity can simmer down without being fed candy.

If there were a reason to ban trick or treating in our family it would be this craziness both before and after the main trick or treating event. Plus, my kids have bad teeth already.  But I'm not going to ban trick or treating, because I'm feeling defensive of Halloween lately, after hearing attacks on it from some of our new home schooling acquaintances. Since we’ve resumed homeschooling, we have fallen in with some evangelical families. Just like some of the families we knew in Virginia, these families don’t do Halloween. They have Harvest fests and chili suppers (some of our friends in VA had a Reformation Party to mark Luther’s nailing of the 95 theses on October 31), but no scary costumes, no skeletons, no bloody props.  At the Christian bookstore I peeked into the other day, looking for secondhand home school stuff, I was offered a tract called “Say no to Halloween.” I didn’t take it, or I’d quote it. (A p.s: Melanie of Wine Dark Sea shared this link about the problems with celebrating Reformation Day.)

I don’t have any great love for Halloween. Theoretically, I'm opposed to all the sugar and artificial colorings, but in practice I have a hard time staying out of the goodie bags. I don’t love really gory displays of dismembered corpses and scary clowns that some neighbors set up for decorations, but I can't help driving by and recognizing in myself that perverse urge to scare the kids like my dad used to do when he would drive by old cemeteries and slow down, telling us to look out for ghosts or men with iron hooks for hands. I get tired of listening to my kids whine and beg for costumes and décor and candy.  But I like the chance to visit with the neighbors.

I’m sorry I’m not more confrontational sometimes.  I should just speak up when I'm told that Halloween is pagan, and say that we are celebrating Halloween because of All Saint’s Day (although my kids are in it for the candy).  Do I need to reply that the dates chosen for Christmas and Easter also coincided with pagan celebrations?   I was happy to see in our diocesan paper a short defense of Halloween.  I suppose the author also received one of the tracts.

It is disconcerting to be warned about the potentially detrimental effect on the soul that dressing like a mummy and pretending to be a witch can have.  Costumes and decorations have become more gory and scary. But are kids really welcoming the occult - or do they just want to impress their friends and get the most candy.?


I don’t remember anyone being against Halloween when we were growing up. On the other hand, we didn’t see as many gory or skanky costumes either.  We dressed up as things like hobos, old ladies, gypsies, and baseball players because we could put those costumes together with odds and ends that were lying around the house.  My mom didn’t have time to sew after we hit and certain age, and costumes at the store were cheapy plastic, and mostly characters from Star Wars. One year my friends and I got creative and wore garbage bags and said we were the California Raisins.  The scariest costume I ever wore was a black get-up with my hair ratted and my face powdered white.  I was Death, and my friend, dressed in a thrift shop bride dress, was The Maiden.  I guess since she came up with the idea, she got to be the pretty one.

What I wonder is if the explosion of Halloween commercialism, including the increased gore factor, is what really started the evangelical humbug about Halloween.  Or maybe their voices were out there, but there just weren’t enough of them to be heard back when I was growing up.

It would be nice if the commercialism would die back a bit.  I’m not going to buy lawn décor for Halloween, and as a matter of stubborn pride, I don’t like to buy costumes, except the occasional prop.  I'd be happy to boycott sexy costumes for preteen girls.  And 20-something guys who dress up as mass murderers are definitely creepy. 

But I like sitting out in the driveway with the neighbors, adult beverages discreetly poured into plastic cups, comparing notes on the best get-ups. I applaud the parents who dress up with their kids, although I’m not going to do it myself.  I’m happy to give an extra handful of candy to kids who show some creativity and dress as “cereal” killers and million dollar bills. 

The Halloween party poopers are right to notice that there are some really scary people and things out in the world, but trick-or-treaters don’t really qualify, do they?  Especially if they get a lesson in sharing their candy (or paying their taxes, as I like to call my share of their collection), and then get hauled off to a Mass and a cemetery the next day in honor of the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. Maybe if more Catholics, including myself, were a little better about pointing out the connection between the celebration and the solemnity that follows, those little Ban Halloween tracts wouldn’t be making the rounds.

Briefly noted

Some Halloween fun: a Chamorro ghost tale about the Taotaomo'na. The new spin in this story is that it hunts out foreigners. What we've been told and read in our Folk Legends of the Marianas Islands book is that this spirit protects the woods.  One story is that if you want to see one, you rub dog doo in your eye.  If you don't want to see one, you let the steam from rice come in your face.  They don't like perfume, and if you do something they don't like, they pinch your arm hard enough to leave a bruise. Someone else said you have to ask the taotaomo'na permission before peeing in the forest. Or at least say "Excuse me."

A video of Guam. Not sure why the reverse footage is included.  Both of these works I found on the website of the University of Guam's student newspaper, Triton's Call. But for mi familia, this is what we're looking at.

For those of you who have heard that the brown tree snake is a problem here (they have decimated the bird population, including the flightless koko bird.), here's a photo to show that the boys are doing their part to rid the island of these imported pests.. Just helping out the USDA which is paying big bucks to trap them with mice in little cages.

This is my friend the cane toad, another foreigner.  Taotaomo'na doesn't need to pinch him because his relatives are squashed all over the roads. We've been having great lessons in anatomy from the roadkill. 

Does this count as school work? I sort feel extra credit is due to the 7 year old for the artistic photography.

Below, another son hard at work at homework, beneath his father's handiwork: lofts a step above college dorm room quality.

We recently puppy-sat for this little poodle.  I have harbored prejudices against poodles, a prejudice rooted in my family's deep suspicion of small dogs.  But this little guy was awfully lovable. He hasn't replaced our labrador in my heart, but we all felt a little bereft when his owners came home and took him back. It was gratifying when we saw him on a walk the other day, and he scrambled over in excitement to see me. I was glad he didn't puddle on my shoe.

Although this is more than seven quick takes, here is another attempt at catching the sunset from across our front yard:

See Jen at www.conversiondiary.com for more.

Not that far away

News travels slowly here.  NPR only broadcasts briefly, our Wall Street Journal subscription was too expensive to forward, I can’t seem to stay awake for the news on TV. I know, it’s all on the internet, but I only catch glimpses of it. 

And I did catch a glimpse of the news about Kadhafi’s capture and death.  I wish I could feel more of a sense of victory but after Bin Laden’s death brought little change, it seems precipitous to hope that change for Libya is coming.  Kadhafi’s successor might be a worse despot. The regime change in Egypt, too, seems to be even less tolerant of Christianity.  The persecutions of Christians in the Middle East seem far away.

But after reading Persepolis, a graphic novel about a young girl experiencing the tumult of the Shah of Iran’s rise to power in 1980, these events seem closer.

After the moral soul scrubbing of reading Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer, I meant to stay away from novels for a bit while I worked on that weak will problem.  I went back the A Mother’s Rule of Life, which rubbed me the wrong way when I first read it, and braced myself to make a schedule and to again rededicate myself to setting priorities, like going to bed at a decent hour instead of staying up late reading.  With homeschooling, I have more time for prayer with the kids and more motivation to stick to a schedule, but I also have a greater temptation to give myself chocolate+coffee breaks and social media breaks and turning off the brain breaks. Then suddenly it’s time to run to soccer practice, and the kitchen’s a disaster, and nothing is planned for dinner. 

But in the name of previewing some literature for the older kids, I gave myself a novel break to read a graphic version of King Lear by Gareth Hinds and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. And I think I can make an argument that both of these “novels” are a kind of lectio divina. 

Lear needs no excuse. Hinds retains Shakespeare’s language but places it in word bubbles above sketchy drawings of the main players. In the interest of space and illustration a couple minor characters and a few speeches were cut, but I was happy – excited even – with the book.  I’ve been trying to get my older boys to read a few classics in between homework, practices, and ipods, and this was a great intro to Lear, if they can’t see it performed. The illustrations give expression to lines that might be difficult to interpret on a page of text.  And it was easy to keep track of who is who.  Some of the subplots between the brother-in-laws were still a little confusing to the boys, but the duplicity of Regan and Goneril was obvious.  And the tragedy of Lear’s descent and the blinding of Gloucester were movingly conveyed by the illustrations.  But of course the real power is Shakespeare’s wordsmithery.  I had forgotten how despicable Regan and Goneril are in their grasping for Edmund, and how tragic the ending is. Shakes lets you believe that Lear and Cordelia might survive, that good will win out in the end, but then kills off the characters who could redeem the treachery.

Here you have food for meditation on the nature of parental duty, on aging and death, on loyalty and truth, on the brevity of life and what makes it worth living. And Shakespeare makes it all seem so dramatic and important – and beautiful - as if all of life were concerned with these Big Topics. Hinds's illustrations don't distract from all that.

Persepolis is quite a different creation, but it also set my head spinning. Its form is more like a traditional comic book: black and white drawings in little squares for distinct actions and conversations. But this story of a 12 year old girl living in Iran in 1979-1980 is incredibly moving.  Genre-wise, it’s really a memoir, not a novel, but the form removes what could come across as melodrama in a traditional memoir.

The story reminds me a little of Reading Lolita in Tehran.  An educated family in Iran is thrilled when the government is overthrown, but then overcome with disbelief at the fundamentalism of the Shah.  Why don't they leave? It’s a topic that fascinates: how does such an evil regime come into being? Why do people accept the dictator’s decrees? They live in fear because their friends and relations are killed off.

But Marji retains a spunky, free-thinking attitude. She wears tight jeans under her burkha. She sasses her teachers. She questions the propaganda.  Her parents are upper-class, communist-leaning, idealists who believe the regime is going to get better. But it doesn’t.  Arrests, death, and exile follow

.

Both of these books raise the question of whether a graphic form traditionally used by “comic” books is effective for tragedies.  I suppose you could argue whether Persepolis is by classical definition a tragedy or not, since Marji escapes the country and flourishes in France, but she loses her family and her homeland, along with whatever innocence she had when the Shah takes over.

I lay down in bed after finishing the book with my mind replaying the events in the life of Marji’s family and thinking about the tumultuous experiences of the people of the Middle East today.   We have it so good; we are so blessed.  But how easily it could all be lost.  The news is often grim – and here we are on an island much closer to places like North Korea that could easily erupt into violence.  But these stories of perseverance in the face of tragedy provide hope at the same time that they taunt “this could be you. . . . What are you doing to help?” 

Reading for confirmation

My neighbor stopped by today to borrow some books. Her daughter and my two older sons are in the confirmation class at the base chapel together.  While our last church had a 3 year confirmation program for high schoolers, this chapel has the superfast confirmation for eighth graders.  One of the hazards of moving is making sure you don't miss any sacraments.  So this program was supposed to be a year, but the archbishop for the military is coming in January, so it is being shaved down to a 5 month program, minus holidays.  Not ideal, but I feel like the boys have a pretty good grounding in the faith, and we're doing a little catechesis of our own at home on an irregular basis.

Meanwhile the neighbor's daughter is a little more precocious.  She is frustrated in the class because it rehashes all the catechesis that a regular participant in religious ed. should have picked up years ago, but because stragglers show up for sacramental classes, I guess the thinking is that basics like the parts of the Mass need to be covered AGAIN.  Meanwhile, she's being pressured to accept for life a faith that she's not sure she is ready to assent to.  From what my neighbor has told me, I guess after being a quick learner of all the Bible stories and faith as a child, as a preteen she is beginning to question the contradictions in the stories, the corruption in the history, and the apparent conflict between science and faith.

Since I'm not her mom upset by her doubts, I think she's showing a lot of maturity for an 8th grader. Questions about God's existence and Christ's divinity haven't come up at our house. If our boys have them, they aren't asking us.

Anyway, her mom and dad have a pretty good grounding themselves it sounds like, but her mom asked if I had any books at home to loan her. I sent her home with a stack, but I'm not sure any are just what she needs.  The one that came to mind first was Augustine's Confessions, maybe because St. Monica was just in our reading book.  Too hard for an 8th grader? Or will she relate to the story of another young adult's questioning, rejection, and final acceptance of the faith of his birth.

Since the Thomas Dubay book was written for someone seeking to deepen his faith, not accept it, I didn''t send that. But before I had finished Thomas Dubay's book, I had picked up a couple other books on faith at the libary.  I skimmed 15 Days of Prayer with Thomas Merton by Andre Grozier. I meant for it to be a part of this prescription for change, and the book is intended to be a guided meditation book, something to spend some time with, not to skim.  But while quotes from Merton provide plenty of substance for meditation, the questions this book asked were rather bland.  “Think about a time you felt… What do you remember about… How did you feel when….”  I should just read more Merton.  He is a fascinating figure, but I seem to only find books about him at the library and not books by him, except the Seven Story Mountain.

Perhaps what interested me the most in the 15 Days book were the last couple chapters about interreligious dialogue.   I also happened to pick up off the library shelf a book on the same issue, God is Not One by Stephen Prothero, out of curiousity.  This book is a comparative religion survey, meant to be an unbiased look at the teachings and characteristics of the major world religions.  It might actually be of interest to my neighbor's daughter if she is sincerely wondering what other religions teach.  Prothero begins with an argument against the idea that most religions are similar and share the same God, the God of Abraham. He also rejects the idea that all religions are different roads travelling to the same location – some sort of metaphysical state of transcendence.  He argues that it’s a fallacy to focus on similarities between world religions in order to downplay religious zealousness or superiority and to encourage tolerance. But instead, downplaying differences encourages misunderstanding.

Rather,Prothero argues that even though major world religions share the qualities that make them religions (ritual, community, creeds, metaphysical longing), at heart they are quite different. They are like members of a family who outwardly resemble each other, but whose personalities and talents are completely different. So while Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship one God, Prothero argues that because they worship in different ways, profess different dogmas, and describe God differently, it is a falsehood to claim that they have much in common.

So rather than diffuse radical fundamentalism by saying all religions are one, Prothero proposes to move toward understanding the differences in each religion by studying what each religion believes is the primary problem of human existence, its solution, its techniques to reach the solution, and its exemplars. It’s disingenuous to say that it doesn’t matter to true believers what god you worship because true believers are convicted.

I only skimmed the book, but it’s provocative.  Prothero does seem to evaluate fairly and without prejudice each religion, and seems to have genuine respect for believers. I would guess he’s an agnostic who appreciates the willingness of believers to ask big questions and seek their answers. I agree with him that it is important to understand what other believers profess and how they worship and live in accordance with their faith. 

I’d like to be able to hand a book to my older kids and say, here read this, and then ask them how they would defend what we’ve been trying to teach them.  But I’m not sure if they are quite ready for that challenge.  I remember being in high school and sitting in the library reading books about the Dao and Buddhism, maxims of Marcus Aurelius and the sayings of Confucius, and wondering what the Jewish holy days were all about, trying to figure out what my own answers to the big questions were.

Now I can't lay a finger on what convicted me about Catholicism. Reading magazines at Crisis and First Things at my grandparents' house probably had something to do with it. The example of my parents.  The Christian emphasis on love and serving your neighbor matched well with all the novel reading I was doing.  Confirmation retreats.  Lots of little pieces.

So a prayer that my sons' and my neighbor's daughter will pick up and put together some of those little pieces, too. At least my neighbor's daughter is honest about it and doesn’t want to be a hypocrite by taking the sacrament just to make her parents happy.  My husband and I sat down with our boys the other day and asked them some questions about confirmation and what they would say to an unbeliever, and they were able to parrot back the idea of a First Mover, and the idea that the order of the universe suggests an Original Designer, but from our conversation it was hard to tell if these arguments are personal to them.  At the cusp of adolescence and young adulthood, they seem ready to start taking ownership of what they believe. It’s an interesting age. 

Island Fair

This past weekend we were able to experience a little more of Chamorro culture on Guam at the Micronesia Island Fair.  I was expecting something a little more extensive, more like a county fair, but it was not quite that large. There was a plant booth, but no animals, other than the carabao available for $3 rides.  The other booths sold arts and crafts, food, and books about the islands.  The kids were disappointed that there were no carnival rides - I wonder if there are carnies on Guam. Since the event was small, we were able to linger longer at the booths selling shell crafts, coconut candy and oils, wooden carvings, and other crafts.

Coconut candy in a biodegradable container

Shells for sale for those who aren't divers

Watching the dancers

A man carving a walking stick in a hat that reminded me of Don Quixote's helmet.

A handmade proa - a traditional boat like a canoe that can be sailed.

Workers constructing a new proa

We also enjoyed the interactive children's booth, where an organization that promotes the teaching of Chamorro culture in the schools taught us some weaving skills and coconut shredding.

Learning to weave palm fronds

My oldest learning to shred coconut from a man in native dress - or undress.

Completed slipknot bracelet

Coloring pages that teach Chamorran for Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas.

The dancers' ornaments

Orchids for sale.

The best part of the day were performances by dancers from some of the nearby islands, which include Yap, known for its stone money, Palau, famous for coral reefs, Pohnpei, Kosrae, and Chuuk.

More photos at the local paper's website.

On Motivation and Prayer

Some time ago I posted about Walking the Literary Labyrinth, a book in which the author talked about “providential books.” The phrase felt familiar at the time, but I couldn’t think of a particular example. But I just finished a book that definitively belongs in that category.  I want to go around proclaiming it as a great book, but I don’t know that it would strike anyone as particularly brilliant. It’s just that I’ve read it at a time I needed to hear what it had to say.

Is it also  providential that my mom sent Thomas Dubay’s Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer to me just when I was ready to put aside the youth fiction and turn back to some spiritual reading? (after being disgusted by Dork Diaries, which my daughter snagged at the library.  I have to admit I found Diary of a Wimpy Kid somewhat amusing, but this knock-off was bad enough that I want to flush pages down the toilet and pay the library fine, so they wouldn’t have it on the shelf.)  I’ve been stuck in a malaise for some time, in need of spiritual renewal, which I suppose my mother intuited, because its message was just what I needed to hear.

With our recent move, I’ve been focused on material things, organizing, furnishings, schedules, etc, to the detriment of my soul, or at least to its neglect. I’ve had this nagging feeling that I need to be doing something, to living my faith more radically in some way – not necessarily selling everything I own and heading out to proclaim the gospel, but something akin to that.  On the other hand, I’ve found it hard to feel rooted in the faith when feeling rootless in the world, although I suppose that is just the time to turn to God as a safe harbor.
   

Now that we finally have found a home and are unpacked, I can read this book and focus on making some of the changes it recommends – which are simple really.  Dubay writes for the person who recognizes his or her life does not live up to Christ’s call to “be converted and accept the gospel” (Mk 1:15), who sees that change is needed but doesn’t have the motivation to enact it.  Dubay quotes St. Bernard’s famous saying that “There are more people converted from mortal sin to grace, than there are religious converted from good to better.” So this book is directed to the person stuck in venial sin who repeatedly gossips, is lazy or wasteful, overeats, is habitually late, or simply puts little energy into the state of his soul. 

Sounds familiar.

Fr. Dubay even accuses that person of confessing these venial sins and then falling right back into them, as if true penitence and the firm resolve to amend their souls was absent at confession.

Uncomfortably familiar.

Like the person who knows all the healthy foods to eat and has access to them, but still binges on junk food, the person who knows what a saintly life looks like but doesn’t change has a greater culpability than the hardened sinner who doesn’t know any way out of the dark depths.  I cringed as I read this.  I’ve read plenty of books about saints and theology and prayer. I shouldn’t be so halfhearted in my attempts to become more loving, more forgiving, more prayerful.

Describing conversion as a change from vice to virtue, Dubay writes, “from the point of view of attention to and intimacy with God, supreme Beauty, supreme Delight, conversion includes a change from little or no prayer to a determined practice of christic meditation leading eventually to contemplative intimacy, “pondering the word day and night, ‘ leading to a sublime “gazing on the beauty of the Lord” with all its varying depths and intensities.” (Ps. 1;1-2, 27:4)

So basically, the real goal is to move from moral mediocrity to moral excellence, which requires developing a deep prayer life and turning away from the little sins that distract us from this goal.  These little sins all signify a deeply rooted selfishness and egotism. In other words, a lack of real, selfless, sacrificial love.

Dubay's prescription is to offer a list of motivations to prayer. When people pray, they learn to love truth and goodness. "When we come to love objective truth and goodness, we have made progress toward conversion from our radical 'I-ism'. This fundamental transformation is completed with the love of beauty, first the beauty of God, and then the beauty of man and the rest of creation Altruism and egocentrism are opposites.  . . . When honest men love objective reality, the way things actually are, and then go on to pursue the goodness of all the virtues and are sensitive to genuine beauty, they are like a starving man sitting before a banquet. He immediately sees the answers to his needs. When people who love truth, goodness and beauty hear the gospel, they spontaneously love it. This means of course that they immediately see its attractiveness and splendor, how it magnificently fulfills their human aspirations and needs." We naturally want to overcome mediocrity, and are drawn to the unity and beauty of  the gospel.

Just a few pages into Dubay’s book, I was convicted with guilt for the selfishness and lukewarmness and laziness that Dubay describes. I also recognize that desire for beauty that Dubay says is the beginning of conversion.  I just struggle with moving out of the inertia of selfishness.

My husband and I were talking about selfishness, and he commented that it’s a part of being human, like having hair. We’re all ego-centric, we all have a deep-ingrained selfishness. The manifestations I see in myself: Ignoring my children’s requests, ignoring my husband in preference for reading or blogging or whatever distraction is at hand, a messy house indicating misplaced priorities, wanting to talk about myself, a fear of getting asked to do stuff,  but also a desire to do stuff just to gain recognition, envy, etc. I won’t list all my confessional items, but you get the picture.

So I know, and have known, I need to break these bad habits, and to silence that voice that says, hey, those aren’t really anything to get worked up about; why bother. It is going to take a sharp tool to uproot that vice.  This is where I wish Dubay’s book were a little more inspiring.

Rightly, Fr. Dubay points out that love is the inspiration for change, and that love for God is nourished with prayer and contemplation.  If my love for God were more intense, I’d have more motivation to shut my mouth or turn off the negative voices in my mind. For example, married couples don’t get married believing that they’ll grow more selfish and demanding. They believe they’ll become more selfless and giving. But so many marriages don’t improve as time goes by because people forget the intoxication of early love that encourages selflessness. Dubay even writes that "real love is uncommon in our world because full conversion is uncommon." I certainly see in myself the tendency to become more protective of my time, more stingy with my affection, more demanding of my own desires, instead of more willing to make sacrifices.  My kids probably will remember me as being a grumpy, nagging mom, not a calm loving mother, unless I can kick myself into gear, beginning with spending more time in contemplation  But what will make me pray?

Dubay's list of reasons that compel a deep conversion includes contemplating the shortness of life and endlessness of eternity, studying the "sheer goodness and beauty of the saints," describing the joy inspired by deep conversion, envisioning the evangelical effect of becoming a person infused with real love, the improvement of human relationships especially within families when spouses are of one mind about the nature of real love.

But we slip so easily back into egocentrism, just like the Hebrews complaining to Moses, and the lukewarm Christians scolded by St. John, so Dubay also exhorts his reader to be specific and persevering.  People spend billions of dollars and hours of time on physical beauty; we need to spend just as much energy on our spiritual beauty.

Actually, that image of what my kids will remember is perhaps one of the biggest motivators for me. I want them to see me as someone who was joyful and generous. I want them to recognize the beauty of creation. I want them to see how acts of service bring joy, to see the face of Christ in the people they serve, to feel the person of Christ acting through them when they serve another. And getting down on my knees more often is probably the only way to move from someone motivated by selfishness to someone motivated by love.


As I'm typing this up, I'm aware of how often I've read the same advice. I've written this advice down to remind myself before. And I've failed to persevere time and again.  But here we are in a new place with a new routine. So here's to a new start.   

Not quite a walk in the woods

The trail was easy to follow at first, but my Tevas were not comfortable once they got wet and muddy , and we were heading downhill.

In honor of Columbus Day, our family went exploring.  We didn't discover any new lands, but felt like we were in the wilds on our hike, known as a boonie stomp in these parts.  This is because you literally have to stomp through the boonies to get to where you are going, in our case a couple of waterfalls on the east side of the island.  Taking a hike here is not like the kind of walk in the woods you do at a nice state park, or even a small wildlife refuge, where you walk along a well marked path with a clear idea of where you are going and what you face along the way. Instead you look for an opening in the brush and head towards water.

You know you are in the boonies by the deserted cars.

We weren't sure if this guy was friendly, so instead of cutting across his property, we walked through the creek.

Some friends who lived here a few years ago gifted us their “Best Boonie Tracks on Guam” book. Though printed in 2004, we were able to find the dirt track it described as the head of the trail.  But the rest of the directions were a little vague and in some cases, downright wrong.  Nonetheless, we were able to find the falls, if not climb down them, and enjoy the surroundings.

Trying to decide which way to go according to the book.

An abandoned structure. Is the carabao skull to warn away the taotaomo'na, the ghosts of the wild?

My 7 year old wondered if this used to be a daycare.

While walking through an abandoned structure, I wondered if this was what it was once like in England, when novel people set off across the countryside on an amble of a couple hours. Only hotter and more humid and buggier.

What looks like tangerines in the back are kalamansi, which are bitter when orange, and lemony when green.

Bananas or plantains?

One of the falls. The pool at the bottom was too shallow for jumping.

Excuse the bad date caption. I just loved the expression of our youngest hiker. 

Adventurers trying to figure out a way down. Only these two made it to the bottom.

Although the trek was only about a mile and a half, according to the guide book, it took us nearly three hours, including stops to play in the pools.  We made it back to the car in front of a torrential downpour, and only were lost once for a short time.  No one fell or was injured, other than a few sword grass slices, and we all enjoyed the adventure of exploring and the slight adrenalin rush of not knowing whether a mad carabao was going to rush us, or an angry boonie dweller chase us off his property.

I think we will have to have designated boonie stomp clothes and shoes: the mud refuses to be washed out of the white t-shirts the boys had on, and the shoes, although hosed off, are still tinted by the red clay.  

Must have been a wild big wheel ride.

According to the guide book, we still have a lot more waterfalls to discover, some mountains to climb, and some caves to explore, including a couple with ancient paintings and a replica of the cave where a Japanese soldier hid until 1972, apparently unaware that the war was over.

Scenes from our first boonie stomp, with just the older boys and me, when I led us all astray on the way home. Fortunately, we could just look for electric lines to lead us back to the road.

Although the trail was more discernible here, it split into multiple tracks, probably for mountain bikers, so we got a little turned around.

Colorful dirt. The blue isn't as vivid in the photo as in real life.  

I think this is bamboo orchid.