This is the second time I’ve noticed a snake climbing up the wall outside of my glass door! This photo is taken from inside my bedroom!
I also noticed some bluebirds swooping down and a small bird bleeding on my patio.
I went outside to take this picture….
Here’s the dismount…. I saw him later crawling through my garden.
I just realized this past week my new life theme: “Quit trying so hard!” After struggling my whole life for more, I find great relief in simple contentment, my own version of living in the present.
Acceptance releases everything to be what it already is!
If you pay attention to the messages from our culture, you find a constant barrage of: You can do better. You SHOULD be better. The sky is the limit. No matter what your age, do more! To that I say, why? Yes, I understand why younger folks might benefit from hearing that theme, but get real. With my lung and brain limitations, this is as good as it gets, and I would like to feel good about that.
Another theme I hear all around me these day is the comfort so many of my friends find in their families, especially their grandkids. That is wonderful for them. Mike and I have never been big on family and neither one of us were into kids. Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw in Denver ages ago: “Thank you for not breeding.” I remember thinking, “Wow, nobody ever thanked me before!”
Mike and I have been environmentalists forever. We believe in building native gardens and solar homes, using fewer natural resources and living a simple life. We find daily meaning and satisfaction living close to nature and we each have our own ongoing creative projects.
The one desire that keeps coming up for me, is a strong ‘need’ to spend some time on a beach somewhere near the ocean before I die. I have spent a few of my most glorious days on earth on the beaches of Cane Garden Bay, Tortola (BVI), on the Kona Coast of Hawaii and at Pattaya in southern Thailand back in the 1970s. So I say, take me away now to any isolated, beautiful beach! I have some purely intuitive urge to go back to where we all came from.
In the past year or so, in times of pandemic and forced introspection, those are the best times to re-think your dreams. I meet many down here in rural southern Colorado, who ended up here because in their 50s or 60s they spent some time reviewing their life, and decided that they were finished with cities.
I have found this place to be a magical alternative to city life.
My husband Mike had been dreaming about just such an existence for decades when we moved here in 2014. I was a bit further behind him in dreaming big enough. I couldn’t visualize it like he could. I worried about the isolation. I had never lived so far out of town in my past. It was a new experience for me. But it didn’t take me long to appreciate the morning silence, the birds, the plants, the beautiful weather, the snow…
Only certain types of people appreciate these qualities, mostly the quiet types who find it easy to entertain themselves with numerous avocations. I was never a big shopper. I didn’t go to bars or restaurants much. I have always found my own mind fairly entertaining with the assistance of books, movies, etc. And we are total weather watchers.
Watching the ever-changing clouds and weather over the Spanish Peaks is a lovely pastime.
So you see, the kind of people who move here and stay are very self-selected. They have chosen to check out of “normal” American life. Buying the next cool thing isn’t their thing…
Not that we aren’t always re-thinking our dreams, and we know we have the freedom to follow new ones here.
I stare across the room at a still life I’m perpetually creating with some of my favorite things I have collected from my travels around the world…This is my latest creation!
Sometimes it seems like I was born with a lot on my mind. Starting with the “terrible twos” I have been perpetually asking why. I think too much, I worry even more, and I can still never figure out what may happen next. I guess I was raised to expect the worst, or else this is simply the human condition – more brains than we know what to do with!
So on this blissfully relaxed snowy day, miles from almost all human beings, I wonder what might happen if I stop thinking and worrying and embrace the peacefulness of this moment in time.
Should I risk this level of non-vigilance? What might happen if I stop thinking for a while? What if I feel as free as the falling snow for just one afternoon? There’s always tomorrow to get back to my worries…
My intuition told me to go back and look at some previous photos from six years ago, when we were building our passive solar home in the foothills of southern Colorado. Sure enough, December 17th six years ago was the day we put decking on our roof.
Unless you’ve built something yourself, you may not appreciate the idea of “drying in” your structure, but this is major, especially in the middle of winter in Colorado.
I remember when we drove up here, there were workmen all over the top of our house in very cold weather, working their asses off! Our contractor brought all his friends over to work on a Saturday to get this done. What was amazing was how comfortable they all seemed up on that roof! A snow storm came in later that day…
But the roof got covered and we were halfway to being dried in.
We got so excited about the smallest progress back then, after taking five months just to get approval from the county and our slab poured properly for passive solar heating! They forgot the insulation for the slab at first, but Mike got on them for that!
The windows came next! It was finally looking & feeling like a home!
But there were still a million more details to work out…
but we got her done and moved in on the first of August 2015.
Then we rested while staring out at our spectacular view, for months, none stop! We cannot get enough of this even years later. The silence is magnificent!
Adventures of the NEW Old Farts 