I Heart Fort Lewis

... or The Day We Stole A Fern

The never ending love/hate relationship with the Army has gained a new point in the "love" category.

Fort Lewis has forest, and it's in our backyard.

This is a picture from our porch. This side of the fence is the apartment complex. The other side is the Army base.

Friday evening was lovely and we wanted to go on a walk ... so we hoped the fence to Fort Lewis and strolled in the woods of what I call the "back 40" and what the Army calls TA-East. Whatever.

It was WONDERFUL. Saturday morning we went running in it (I'll come back to that statement in a moment). Saturday evening we went for an hour and a half long stroll in it.


I decided it reminded me of the woods in some lovely Tolkein novel. Like somewhere between Lorien and Fangorn if you're an elf, but with a clearly marked path and the occasional land-nav point.

I liked it and all its completely soothing vegetation so much that I decided what I really needed more than anything else was a fern on our front porch. A fern that we would snag off some random spot on the post.

And thus, my new pet plant, Isabella.


Now, you may have noticed my statement above that "we went running." I think I deserve about 2,000 cool almost Army wife points for being brave enough to go running with PL Lt. Bushatz, who daily says something like "I totally smoked my guys during PT this morning," meaning he ran so hard/fast/much that he basically killed a portion of his platoon, a group of people who run several days a week and at least are somewhat physically fit.

I was afraid. Can you blame me?

But I went running with Luke, and it ended up not being that bad of an experience. As in, an experience I may choose to repeat.

Whoa.

I don't think we're quite to the "take your wife to PT day" yet, though. Don't get any ideas.