On Monday, I was in Bedford, NY taking my 12 year old daughter to a poetry class given by a hip slam poet. The class was near a tiny chapel of a church dating from 1851 and a mill waterfall, both of which you can see below. The weather was pristine, magnificent, and sublimely perfect.

While she was in the class, I went on a river walk at the nearby Mianus River Gorge Preserve, with another mother who had kids in the class. We were talking too loudly, and disturbed a huge heron, who took off flying low, trying to avoid encroaching trees. Neither of us got a picture of him – it would have been a spectacular shot – we were just too surprised, unprepared, and fumbling. The river had some remarkably queer light as you can see in several of the photos below; it was a specter both fascinatingly surreal and inexplicable. (Do any of you know what makes the water look like this?) And the ferns were so bright in the sunny, wooded glens…

My daughter really enjoyed the class so we may be back! On the way home she was delighted by her first glass soda bottle, and next door to the deli where we obtained that, we stopped in a store called Remember the Cook to ooh and ahh over a dark blue china pattern we both liked (see the teapot below.) The town of Bedford is charming on a triangular green with a diminutive post office, a quaint library and fire station, and the enormous Presbyterian church seen below. Then, on our way home, we stopped to appreciate the “Bedford Oak,” which the sign says dates back to the 15th century!

This was a fun excursion and it felt like a picturesque mini vacation, enjoying somewhere we had never been before.