We just got back from a long weekend in upstate New York. While we were there, we visited a piece of heaven.

New York is filled with all sorts of beautiful places—lakes, gorges, wineries, etc—but when we are there, we tend to hang out with family and not do much else. Which is fine with me because I’m not a touristy, go-go-go sort of person.

But my husband’s sister suggested that we take the cousins to a park for a picnic lunch. The park was close and we could just sit and visit while the kids played, she said. It was no big deal.

“Sure,” I said. “Sounds like fun,” though I was probably thinking something along the lines of, Can’t the kids just have a picnic lunch in the back yard out under the trees? I mean, how great is this park anyway?

Well. It turns out the park is really, really great.

It’s only about ten minutes from my in-law’s house. Ten minutes! In all my years of visiting upstate New York, not once have I been to this park! Heck, my husband had never been to that park!

Once we were there, it was only a five-minute walk up a rocky gorge to get to paradise.

A waterfall! A swimming hole! A creek! Smooth rock ledges! Blue sky! Moss! Ferns! I was dumbfounded. The kids were not. They shrieked and stripped down to their swimming suits and jumped in the icy water and shrieked some more.

We ate our sandwiches and potato chips and peaches. We visited. We wandered around with our cameras and took pictures. We dipped our piggies in the cold water. We sat quietly, just studying the tumbling water, the floating leaves, the gorge’s walls, the rocky formations.

My husband told his niece some tall tale about a thief who snatched away little girls who wouldn’t stop eating peaches.

She didn’t buy it, not for one minute.

My daughter stole my sunglasses.

And then she put them on my husband.

Eventually the children got brave and started jumping off the rock ledges into the deeper water.

And soon after that they turned blue, and we packed up and headed back down the gorge.

“We are going to come here every single time we come to New York,” I informed my husband. “This is the best place ever.”

This same time, years previous: lately, our life, washing machine worship and other miscellany, apples, kill a groundhog and put it in a quiche, SOS!

In our church, kids get to pick a mentor when they enter the sixth grade. The pair stays together until the kid graduates from high school. The goal is simple—to have another invested adult in their life—but profound. My son and his fun-loving, high-energy mentor have done all sorts of activities: swimming, hiking, biking, sledding, and they’ve attended sports events and movies. Most recently, they went to a trout farm to go fishing.

“We’ll come over to your house afterwards to cook them up,” the mentor told me. “But I can’t promise that we’ll actually catch any…”

But they did! Four whole pounds worth!

Back at our house, we had a full-family adventure on our hands: fish cleaning, fish grilling, and fish eating.

Our landlocked, fish-deprived kids were in fish heaven.

They thought it hilarious when the fish would slip out of their hands. They were intrigued by the eyeballs, the teeth, the guts.

Our Fresh Air girl wasn’t so sure about all the fishy hoopla. She was grossed out by the guts and the slippery-slimy fish, but she did eventually touch one.

I left the grilling of the fish up to the mentor and the kids.

They seasoned the fish with salt and pepper and lemon before placing the whole fish on strips of bacon on the grill.

“It’s fun to leave the heads on, don’t you think?” Mr. Mentor asked, and we all agreed.

When the fish started flaking off the bones, it was done.

I have no good pictures of the finished fish. The kids, so excited to eat, kept picking at the fish, stealing bites.

Mr. Mentor showed us how to peel the meat off on one side and then, by gently lifting the tail, to remove the bones all in one piece. It was like a magic trick.

The kids tasted the crispy tails—“it’s like chips!”—and marveled at the falling-out eyeballs. We talked about how lots of people (mostly in other cultures?) will eat the fish heads, but no one was brave enough to do a taste test.

Grilled Trout with Bacon
Mr. Mentor’s method

cleaned, fresh trout, however many you can catch
bacon slices (1 or 2 per trout)
fresh lemon
salt
black pepper

Season the trout with lots of salt and black pepper and dribble with lemon, both inside and out.

Put a piece of tinfoil on a medium-hot grill and lay the strips of bacon on the foil. Put the trout on the bacon. Close the lid and grill till crispy brown on one side. Flip, taking the bacon with the fish, and grill on the other side. When the fish flakes, it’s done. (At least I think that’s the process. I didn’t grill the fish, and I wasn’t even watching very closely.)

Serve with lots of fresh lemon, salt, and pepper.

This same time, years previous: getting my halo on, how to can peaches, story of a broken butt, a bout of snarky, sanitation and me, orange-mint tea, Friday snark, last year’s fresh air experience, kill a groundhog and put it in a quiche, fresh mozzarella, on drying food 

She’s leaving tomorrow, heading back to her home in New York City.

We will miss her.