Little Pine State Park, Waterville, Pennsylvania
Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the plunder. ~ Genesis 49:27 ‘Benjamin the aggressor’ – It’s difficult for us to imagine sweet little Benjamin (son #12), Joseph’s baby brother (in fact the baby of the entire family of sons), as aggressive and ravenously violent, but if you read Judges 19-21, you’ll most likely feel differently. Those two chapters contain horrific content, a bit reminiscent of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah – – only much worse. King Saul, the man who relentlessly pursued David trying to kill him, was from the tribe of Benjamin. As was Ehud the judge (Judges 3). But not all Benjamites were so violent, for from them, we have Queen Esther and her uncle Mordecai and the great apostle, Saul/Paul (Philippians 3:5). You may recognize some of their territorial cities – Jericho, Ramah and Jerusalem. In Moses’ blessing (Deuteronomy 33:12), he says, “Let the Beloved of the LORD rest secure in Him, for He shields him all day long, and the One the LORD loves rests between his shoulders.” (I capitalized Beloved, Him, He and One to help gain better understanding.) When I first read that, I was confused because the two blessings seemed so different, and while that’s true, they’re prophecies that come from two different perspectives of time. God’s Time. While the tribe of Benjamin started out extremely violent, nestled within their territory was Jerusalem. The place where God would make His home on earth until the Holy Spirit was sent to indwell those who choose to love the Father. We all begin as God’s enemies (Romans 5:8-10), but once we become His adopted child, we become His Beloved (Colossians 3:12) and His Love (the Holy Spirit) rests between our shoulders. Isn’t that just the most amazing and incredible thing?!?
They were eventually absorbed into Judah, just as Simeon was.
By the way, the boundaries for each tribe were set up when, “Joshua then cast lots for them in Shiloh, in the presence of the LORD, and there he distributed the land to the Israelites according to their tribal divisions.”
~ Joshua 18:10
Because we had no need to leave this place until 1:00pm (check out time here is an extremely unusual time of 3:00pm!), and it was a beautiful morning, we went to the lake (manmade by the earthen dam here) closest to our campground to kayak.
I was really glad I always keep a t-shirt in the back of the Jeep! And my pants zip off into shorts!
Blaine originally thought that we’d be able to navigate the small creek that flows to the dam, but we soon discovered that wouldn’t be the case because it was so overgrown. Darn!
Still, it was a gorgeous morning with the temporary fog, and the quiet and peacefulness, and the beauty that surrounded us on every side.
We walked across it our first day here.
On the way back to the dock, we watched an eagle soaring around us. And then watched as it landed on the remains of a dead tree in the water. And watched as it picked a fish as big as he was out of the water and hold it on that tree! How exciting!! Unfortunately, we were too far away to take a picture, but we had our scope and binoculars with us and watched the entire thing. He hopped with the fish in his talons to the top of root end of the tree and held it there. We wondered why it wasn’t taking off with it or eating it, and then the fish dropped into the water! Did he drop it? Did he not like it? He looked down for a second and then took off, flying to a tree branch alongside the water, where he sat for a while. We began paddling over for a closer look at him, but he didn’t wait around for us and flew even further away.
We went back to see if we could see what happened to the fish. There was nothing on the dead tree to indicate anything had happened there, but we did eventually spot the fish well underwater, but not moving. It’s like it was caught in the vegetation. Assuming it was dead, Blaine reached under with his paddle and lifted it up. Sure seemed dead to us and had a few holes in him.
Thinking to help out Mother Nature, we placed it on the dead tree, and once we did, we saw it struggling for breath. I felt really bad, but it wasn’t going to recover from its wounds, and maybe the eagle could still retrieve it for the family dinner today.
We kept an eye on him (as well as a second eagle joining him in his tree perch) the entire time we spent putting the boat back in the Jeep. He never returned. Maybe some other carrion bird will discover it. Or maybe someone else will paddle around here today and discover it and wonder how in the world it ended up on that tree. 😊
It was time for us to move.
Small, curvy, beautiful, slightly mountainous roads for 74 miles, provided very little opportunity to drive in a straight line.
By the way, it’s not in the giant barn. It’s a small building just down the street. : )
Ives Run COE, Tioga, Pennsylvania
Blaine got us into this site for just one night. We have to move to another spot tomorrow, and after walking over to it, it’s obvious there will be no satellite TV for the next 11 days. Good grief! Maybe someday, we’ll get all our media working together.
The next day, we sat around and waited for the people in our next site to move. Blaine walked out a couple of times to check on them, but we didn’t end up moving until the afternoon.
Probably one of our shortest drives ever! 😊
Sunday, we worshiped online with our home church, and then we walked around the campground/Park before calling it a day and resting.
It’s supposed to rain off and on for the next two days, so it’s a perfect time to tackle one of our annual projects.