We journeyed into the wilds of Wayne County, to within a mile of the Alabama frontier, to-day, to gather Christmas greenery for the church. There is a spot above Buckatuna Creek where the land rises swiftly up to a ridge, limestone outcroppings and boulders crowning the hill-crest. Because of the steep hills and the presence of limestone, cedars, sugar maples, elms and the like grow abundantly here. The sugar maples were in full fall colour, very lovely. Down below the bluffs the creek meanders across a bottomland laced with large oxbow lakes. We walked out onto a neck of land between two of them and saw two good-sized bucks flee across a beaver dam. Quite a few wild ducks also flew up off the water. Aside from the occasional roar of Highway 84, the area is wonderful, and feels (if not sounds!) wild and remote. We gathered some big boughs of magnolia, holly, cedar, and a great ball of Spanish moss to use for hangings. I also plucked up an armful of a remarkable limish gray-green, beard-like lichen that grows on limbs out over the cypress ponds. I've never seen it away from oxbows and open sloughs and such, and am not sure of it's name. I picture an Ent having a covering precisely like this lichen, and much hope that Mr Peter Jackson found a similar sample for reference in constructng his Ents.