It's a Beautiful Life with Friends

In 2021, three weeks after we moved, while the pandemic was still in full swing, I had a brief conversation with a woman in Beverly’s Fabric store (we were both wearing our masks) and somehow the magic seeds of a friendship born, began. We exchanged email addresses and slowly over the past five years our friendship has deepened. Deepened is putting it mildly, it’s like we’ve known each other forever. But we don’t see each other often. Yet when we are together it’s like no amount of time has passed, and we pick right up where we left off. 

 

Naturally this lured me into thinking that if I actually tried hard to make new friendships and put effort into it, in time I would once again be rooted into a network of close friends, like I was before we moved. 

 

Well. No. Turns out that finding new friends in my seventies is exactly like dating was when I was fifteen. What I know for sure from the last time I dated, about a hundred years ago, is that you will meet the right person when the time is right, and you can’t rush things. 

 

Five years ago, we moved to a new city, and after meeting that one first friend, for the next three years I placed so much focus and put a ton of effort on rooting myself into my new community and seeking new friendships. We moved to a different part of California during the pandemic, and I did what I always do. I joined groups, volunteered and put myself in a variety of places where I could meet people. This had worked well for me when I was twenty-five and had moved to a new city, and for the next forty-three years I enjoyed those deep roots in my community with close friendships. 

 

So, when we moved again four decades later, I joined groups. Some of the people I met in those groups I’d hoped to become friends with. But within a period of about three years, it became clear that these are context friends. People I meet within the context of things. Within the boundaries or the context of the group. The writers and book groups, UU meetings, volunteer projects. Where the boundaries and context of the group ends, personal friendship sometimes also ends. Not always, but often. But it’s okay. It’s nice to have context friends. 

 

Last year (2025) I decided to give myself a sabbatical. I did not put much focus on rooting into my community and meeting anyone new. Instead, I put my friendship energy into staying connected with all of the friends I love who are scattered all over the US and in other counties. We exchanged emails, phone calls, text messages, and handwritten letters. All of these deep friendships once began as a context friend, and over the years we have formed deep bonds. 

 

I yearn to know friends I love deeply and intimately—without context, without boxes—and I yearn for them to know me that way too. 

 

Many of those who read my posts here at Earth and the Great Sea have come to know me first as a context friend. Through Live Oak UU, SBWC, KAAN, ECC, Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers & Storytellers, Tucson Festival of Books. Writers, authors, editors, volunteers, and others I’ve worked with. Over the years and decades deep, connected friendships have formed. Y’all know who you are. I’m so thankful for our friendship. 

 

The good news is that since I moved, I've met many people in my new community within the past five years. From that one first friendship that began in Beverly’s Fabric store, I have met many others, friends of friends, and everyone is in various seasons of life. Some are young. Most are in their 70s and 80s. A few are in the youth of old age. A few (two or three) are in excellent health. Most of us are not, including me. And we are all juggling things, a partners health, our own health, complicated family situations, and volunteering to help others, which is why we do not get together often. But when we do gather for a meal, although we don’t know each other deeply (not yet) we deeply connect in the moment, the hour, the day. We are all reaching for joy together, laughing as best we can on our hard days, and living our best lives. 

 

Funny how being alive gets easier when we know for sure that we no longer need to plan and write a to-do list of the things we want to accomplish within the next thirty or forty years. 

 

Thank you for reading and wandering along with me. 

“If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves.” ―Maria Edgeworth

A Winter Solstice Love Story

For forty-three years I lived on the Central California Coast in an area that makes up the traditional Chumash homeland. In those beautiful days our solstice celebrations were rooted in the traditional ways of the Chumash. 

 

Four years ago, I moved away, away from the land and people who raised and shaped me. Now I’m living near my grandchildren on the Northern California Coast. Everything is still new for me, unfamiliar. I’m walking gently while this Indigenous California landscape in Ohlone territory teaches me who I am. 

For the record, I’m not Chumash. I’m mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca and German descent, with ties to Korean. And I hold the culture, traditions, and history of the Chumash people in my heart. This is their heritage, their life blood, and their landscape of time. And for all Native people Solstice is a time to honor the connection to our ancestors, to the rhythm of nature and our continuing deepening ties. 

In my bones I remember, and I can still hear and feel the slap of the wansaks’—a musical instrument made from the branch of an elderberry—beat out a steady rhythm and a mix of laughing voices of my friends gathered contrast with the drift of fog and the heavy surf pounding. Lanterns are lit against the darkening evening and a fire is built, where storytelling takes place. Salmon is on the grill, potatoes are roasting, and the picnic table is loaded with more food. We are honoring solstice, an astronomical phenomenon marking the shortest day and the longest night of the year. For people throughout the ages—from the ancient Egyptians and Celts to the Hopi—midwinter has been a time of ritual, reflection, and renewal. 

Solstices happen twice a year, around June 21 and again around December 21. The date is not fixed, it varies; the December Solstice can take place on December 20, 21, 22, 23. While we usually think of the whole day as the Solstice, it actually takes place at a specific moment when the Sun is precisely overhead the Tropic of Capricorn. Solstice helps us cultivate a deeper connection to nature and to all of the things that matter most to us. It’s a time for feeding the spirit and nurturing the soul. Prayers and rituals set forth a plan of life for the coming year, ceremonially turning back the sun toward its summer path. 

Throughout history, honoring the solstice has been a way to renew our connection with each other and with acts of goodwill, special rituals, and heightened awareness. Solstice is also reserved for feeding the spirit and nurturing the soul. It’s a period for quiet reflection, turning inward, slowing down and appreciating the day, the hour, and each moment. 

While we don’t know how long people have been celebrating the solstice, we do know that ancient cultures built stone structures designed to align with the sun at specific times, and in ancient times the winter solstice was immensely important because the people were economically dependent on monitoring the progress of the seasons. There was an emphasis on the fall harvest and storing food for winter. 

Remembrance weighs heavy on my mind. Tonight as we near Winter Solstice, with a December moon above me, and the only light I can see, I’m falling back in time. My memories are washing over me like a series of massive waves hitting hard, without warning. As soon as I catch my breath another beautiful memory pulls me back home. My mind floats back over the years. Memories surface—and feelings that remain untouched in my heart, in that place of perpetual remembering. All those Winter Solstice nights of long ago, when we were young, and our elders walked this good earth with us, when we gathered for a good meal together, with storytelling, laughter, conversation, dance, and songs from the ancestors. Fire offerings of chia seeds, acorn flour, and berries were made, followed by prayer and ceremony. 

Now, I’m in my seventies, nearly the same age as the elder Native women who guided me, informed, instructed and shaped me into the woman I am today. I’m honoring my Indigenous community with gratitude for their love and the gift of their time they gave me, helping me give to others. 

With the night sky, dark and beautiful above, I walk toward the sea and stand silent in respect to the ancient peoples who left the witness of their lives, visions, and the strength of their faith for me to ponder. The scent of sage hangs in the air. I fill my lungs with it, knowing it will permeate my body and cling to my soul as a reminder of what I can feel and remember when we were together long ago.

First published at Words Facing West

terratrevor.substack.com

Where have I been?

Sandy beach towels are strewn in the lanai. Unanswered letters and empty journal pages wait. Zoom meetings go unattended. No posts on Facebook, or in my online journal here at Earth and the Great Sea. All communication has been postponed. Most of the books piled by my bed remain unread. No writing. Summer is no time to write. I should have remembered that from other summers. Writing can happen only when I have time alone to allow my mind to become quiet enough to hear the end of a thought. 

Where have I been, and what have I been doing? Free fall summer. When I play along with my now retired husband who tells me every day is Saturday. “Let’s drive to Half Moon Bay!” He suggests. I push my writing notes under the bed, grab my sandals, and off we go. 

 

In September, I tell myself. In September I will begin to write a rough draft for chapter six. My writing life in grandmotherhood (and in his retirement) is returned to how it was in motherhood, writing within the nooks and crannies, before a soccer game, after wandering hills and valleys with the kids and dogs. 

 

Now it is September. The kids, 4th and 6th grade, are back in school. Although their schedule is busier now, requiring more grand mothering time, their return to structured days has brought shape, organization and a rhythm to my writing life. I’m back in the flow. 

 

But to be completely candid, I’ve had other things calling me away. Not just this summer, for almost a year now. The dust had finally settled, and I had a clear view. While plenty old enough for retirement, instead my husband is retired from being a cancer patient. We’re in a calm space where the cancers are quiet and hopefully gone for good. When did it all begin? In 2016 followed by a second cancer in 2020, and now he is well, well enough. Though I’ve not yet said it out loud, this year I began my own healing journey. I was beginning to wear down after years of being the sole caregiver. It was a slow wearing, like wind in the pines, soft waves washing up on the shoreline, a gradual altering. Now I have space and time to sow, to slow down. 

Someday I will drink my last cup of coffee after a night of dreaming my last dream. Meanwhile, how do I want to spend my time? What do I want to do? What do I need? Rest. I’ve been in the eye of the storm before. The eight years my son lived a beautiful life following diagnosis of a brain tumor. 1991—1999. In the years since, like a river stone tumbling in the raging water, my grief grew softer, and I found gold along the way, but I had to reach for it. But before I could reach, I needed to rest. 

We never know what’s coming down next. When a safe harbor appears following hard times, what I know for sure is that it’s important to take time to rest. Especially if you are the person giving care, rest. We can’t care for someone else unless we first give to ourselves. 

 

Since moving here in 2021, so near the ocean, I am in tune with the rhythms of the sea. High tide rolling in, waves breaking, wind in the pines. Fog softened mornings with the spray of sea mist settling in my hair. The fog horn on the jetty sounding, and the flapping of cormorants as they dip and dive. I have fallen under their spell. I am flattened by the sea; bare, open, empty. What a wonderful life, I think, turning it around in my hand. 

 

Patience is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. 

 

It occurs to me that all summer there have been too few empty hours in which to stand alone and find myself. Now it is summers end. The last of the summer vacationers have packed up and gone home, the beach cottages are vacated. At night I hear the return of owls. The leaves on the maple trees are beginning to fall. I listen to the wind spilling through the pines. The tide rolls in, the ocean swells and my thoughts turn over like waves on the beach.

Putting down roots

When my mind forgets things, my body remembers, and the April night air was just right for remembering. Four years ago, on April 8, 2021 we moved away from our home on the central California coast where I’d lived half my life and raised my son and daughter for the whole of theirs. We’d sold our house and had made a deliberate decision to move while we were still madly in love with our community. We had discussed the possibility of moving for years. After four decades of living a good life in a city we loved, then came the day when we just knew. We were one hundred percent sure we wanted to gain new and different experiences. We were nearing seventy, and for us, it felt like if we wanted to move, it was now or never. 

Away we went, feeling giddy and a tiny bit tragic. For better, or worse, we were leaving, and we didn’t have a new house to move into, not yet. Our temporary home while we searched for a new place to live would be a 27 foot travel trailer, on loan to us in the redwoods in Northern California. I am fascinated with tiny houses, and the concept of living with less, and this was the driver that convinced me to agree to live temporarily in the travel trailer while we searched for a new home. It was a spacious small trailer with a separate bedroom, an open kitchen-living-dining space, and a small bathroom. It would be my experiment in living tiny. I could try it out without making a commitment, knowing that after we found a house to buy, I would be able to spread out again. Which we have done, and I have written a few posts here about moving into our new place based between the ocean and redwoods.

 

Last week on April 8th we were house sitting for our family members who own the travel trailer we stayed in while we were searching for a new home to buy. It is parked in a meadow in their two-acre backyard, surrounded by redwood trees. 

When I took my dog out for a short walk before we went to bed the moonlight was bright, and I followed the tiny white and purple flowers that dotted the rain-soaked earth leading to the trailer. 

Although we had volunteered to house sit weeks ago, it did not occur to me that the time frame was exactly to the day when we moved from Santa Barbara and came to stay in the trailer. Then it all came rolling back to me. A soft mist was falling, the sky was silver-blue and I could feel myself pulled back in time. The chill air embraced me and I felt the familiar way the wind started up and then cleared. The redwood trees were still, and nothing was moving across the mountain. With the moonlight peeking out between pine trees and redwoods, I was stirred by some of the deepest waters in my soul, and this is when I understood that I had been returned to these mountains, walking this path to the trailer on the anniversary night of when we first arrived four years ago.

Growing Trust

It’s not a matter of maybe anymore. I’m downsized now, one-hundred percent moderately minimal. It has become a real thing. It’s no longer when, or if, it has already happened. That’s the long and the short of it: what I've been doing for the past two years. For the longest time I was occupied with moving, my things, with the stuff I had decided to keep, and figuring out how to arrange it into our new small space. 

Small might not be the right word to describe my new home. It’s smaller than where I lived before, half the size of my former house. Yet at 790 square feet (including the closets) it’s still plenty large. My San Francisco and New York city friends laugh at me gently and offer kind advice. Yes, my home does have generous closets and cupboard space, enough room for a moderate amount of dishes, the pots and pans I need to cook great meals, and the floor plan is excellent. It has a nice layout and an easy flow. Still, I have let go of all of my large pieces of furniture. Our large kitchen table, massive bookshelves and my bedroom dresser are gone. Those pieces were too large, the beautiful wood too dark and gobbled up too much space and light. 

Instead, we went with less furniture, just a small dining table and chairs, a small bookcase, a large comfy sofa, and a new large coffee table to anchor the room. Plenty enough for comfortable living. The hardest part was deciding which books to keep, and how to arrange things to make the space look loved and cluttered enough to feel lived in, yet keep the small open concept kitchen/living room sparse enough to offer freedom, and how to balance the old with the new and make the place feel like mine. 

 

Now that we no longer have a garage, I have given up the notion of storing lots of things, and have narrowed down my keepsakes. For me, it is much better to take stock of what I want to save, hold the pieces I’m ready to let go of, feel, remember, and then say goodbye. Memory and imagination, I’m beginning to understand, are two sides of the same coin. The longer I save something the more meaning I assign to it, and the years that I’ve saved something become almost more important than the object I’ve saved. 

 

With this move I was faced with editing my clothes again. I let go of everything I’ve been saving while asking myself what if? What if I need it? I kept only the things I wear regularly and a few things I love, but don't wear all that often.

Most of all, I have discovered that don’t want, or need, near as much as I did in the past. 

What I have right now feels abundant. I have books to read, essays to write, paths to walk, and winter soup making ahead. With all these good thoughts swimming in my head, I’m still missing not having my own backyard, and I’m still lamenting not having my own washing machine and dryer.  But we do have community washers and dryers we share with our condo neighbors, available between 8am and 8pm.

At first, I fell into the trap of thinking without access to doing laundry whenever I want, not being able to throw a load in late at night, or early in the morning, that I would need more clothes and more towels. Then when I saw my fellow condo neighbors, the ones who save up laundry, and load up all of the machines and have mountains of washing, drying and folding to contend with, that’s when I understood I’m far happier doing laundry more frequently, and owning less to land in the dirty hamper. So far, I have not once run out of clean clothes to wear. I can put my fears to rest. 

 

I may not ever get over my longing to have my own backyard again, private space to call my own. But if I’m willing to put on my shoes and walk out my front door the natural world is all around me. Early mornings are fog softened and the ocean mist is heavy. Most days I’m able to walk far, the same as I always have. But on those days when my energy is low, or my joints ache, there are nearby benches I can hobble to, with trees and birds all around. Autumn leaves falling in the wind, and pink, orange and magenta sunsets. 

There is also a farmer’s market an easy walk from my doorstep, and we are growing a small winter garden up on the mountain. But most of all, I’m growing trust. Gaining faith in the ebb and flow of life, love, relationships and material possessions. Beginning to understand how I leap at the flow of gaining and resist in fear of its ebb. True continuity, I’m discovering, is possible only with growth, change, fluidity.

The Cat who Came to Stay

When we moved two years ago, immediately, I met a Russian Blue cat. She was aloof, yet flirty at times and always sweet. Soon we began dating. From my neighbors I learned that she just showed up one day about five years ago, and they guessed her to be about ten or eleven years old. 

Our neighbor tried to give her a home but she was not interested and preferred outdoor living. They began feeding her outside and sometimes she slept in a cat bed on their patio, but most of the time she preferred sleeping in the bushes.

Kitty is well-known around here in our little, tight-knit condo village, and everyone is fond of her. Last October our neighbors who cared for her told me they were moving. They asked me if I would take care of the cat. Of course. All my life I've had cats and dogs. The majority were rescues. A black cat, a Calico. Puppies and kittens raised together. A Newfoundland and a Tortie team, and they were best friends; the cat often slept on the dogs back. An Aussie-Shepherd mix and a Tabby. A Jack Russell and a Tabby. And when they left this earth a second Jack Russell puppy and another Tabby. Ah, this Tabby girl, the cat that rescued me. We met in 2012 when I worked at ASAP Animal Shelter Assistance Program. She came into care semi-feral, both fierce and sweet. Happy to retire from outdoor living at the young age of four, she was thankful to move indoors. She taught me cat behavior, how to sleep with tigers and I followed her rules. She was a patient teacher. She raised me well. Her only agenda was me, always by my side. My best friend. A feral girl who encouraged me to claim my wild, and to lead with sweetness. She died in 2020 a few months before we moved.

But this is my first Russian Blue, and she is wonderful. After we moved here I vowed not to get another cat unless it was an older cat, and a true rescue. We are a perfect match.

We continued feeding Kitty outside, but I began leaving my patio door open a tiny bit hoping she would come in, and she did. Soon she began creeping in every evening at sunset. She walked around exploring, and then sat on the couch beside me, visiting for a few minutes and then she left. 

Each day she began staying a bit longer. When the heavy winter rains began and did not let up for days, she stopped coming around. I searched the bushes and found her, coaxed her inside. Slowly we began getting to know each other intimately. At first, I needed to keep the patio door open a tiny bit and she went in and out often, but she always came back within a few minutes. It was cold with the door open and I was deeply honored (and thankful) when eventually she began sleeping on my bed, and had little interest in going outside. Now she is retired from outdoor living, prefers to spend most of her time inside with us, and I am in love! 

Celebrating Kitty's one-year anniversary with us.

Harvest Day. Home as a Hobby and Lessons Learned from Small Space Living

Here on the northern tip of the California coast Autumn is singing its song. An onshore breeze is blowing, damp and cool, and the late September daylight shifts, flirting with me. I’m sitting outside writing in my journal with my left arm downright hot in the sun, while my right arm in the shade grows goose bumps. Cormorants are flying to the lagoon and then back again to the ocean. It’s my kind of weather with the beauty of earth, sea and air. 

 

Today I am at home resting. September is tomato season up on the mountain, and we have been in full swing. Yesterday, at my daughter’s home in the mountains with her family (a thirty-minute drive from here) we picked, chopped and roasted seventy pounds of home-grown garden tomatoes. While they simmered for hours in our make-shift kitchen in the garage, I wandered hills and valleys with the grandkids, with our dogs trailing behind or leading the way. Even down by the barn we could smell that sauce, the sweet spicy scent drawing us in. When it was done, we celebrated with loaves of bread dipped into bowls of warm sauce. Next came the canning of jars and jars of roasted marinara sauce, enough to give away to friends and fill a shelf in my daughter’s pantry. 

At the days end, before getting into the car to drive home, as always, I stood in the driveway looking up at the redwood trees. When it’s time to leave my heart’s home in the mountains, I always have the same feeling as I do when I leave the ocean, before I begin to walk the three blocks back to my place. I always linger, never wanting to leave the trees or the water. 

 

This afternoon, after resting up for a while, I was able to catch up with all of the things on my want-to-do list. I finished answering my reader e-mail. Oh, for joy, I love reading and responding to my reader email. I’m greatly honored so many have cared enough to read my new memoir and take the time to write to me. I also love the Readers Circle and the Book Club gatherings I’ve been invited take part in. Often it leaves me feeling the way I do after meeting up and reuniting with long-time, dear friends. 

 

All summer my highest priority (after my writing work is done) has been on home care. Long ago when my three kids were growing up it occurred to me that I needed to view home care as a beloved hobby, or else our home would never be well cared for. 

 

Last week I completed the number one project that has been on my home care want-to-do-list for a very long time. I finished getting my clothes closet organized and took a bag of things I haven't been wearing to the thrift store. And I’ve added more color and artwork making everything come together for us as a peaceful place to live. Truth to tell, it’s almost too small of a space, and it took me a long time to figure out how to make it come alive without feeling cramped. 

But we wanted to live in a small space—and now my wish has come true. Sometimes it takes a while to learn to grow into the things we long for. My biggest challenge is that four-draw unit that holds my t-shirts, socks, underwear, jeans, sweat pants and hoodies, needs to be inside the closet, because the chair and book shelf fills the room. This means there isn’t enough hanging space for the nicer clothes I’d like to hang in the closet. My solution was to get rid of more clothes! When we made the decision to move into a small space, I wondered how we would manage with one bathroom with grandkids and friends all about, yet it’s working out well. 

Thinking about my small space living reminds me that I love cooking in my small galley kitchen—and it’s time to start cooking dinner. We have garden fresh picked zucchini, basil—and roasted marinara sauce. While the water begins to boil for pasta, I think about patience, faith and openness, that’s what small space living has to teach. 

Happier with Less Follow along with me.

Memoir, Migration and This Wilderness in My Blood

My bags were packed and the boxes were stacked. We were downsizing and moving from the city where we lived for forty-three years. We didn’t have a new house to move into, not yet. While we searched for another home we would live in a 26-foot travel trailer on loan to us and parked on land a family member owns in the redwoods in Northern California. 

The morning our belongings were loaded into the truck, I walked through the empty house thanking the space, saying goodbye to the home that sheltered my family for three decades. And before I got into my car to make the long drive, I checked my email. The editor at the University of Nebraska Press, sent an email saying she liked the manuscript for my new memoir, We Who Walk the Seven Ways. They were  interested in publishing, and asked for revisions. 

Oh, for joy. Happiness. And crazy-making. Take on the task of revising my book manuscript when I was in the process of uprooting my life? 

Time driving alone in the car settled my thoughts. 

When I arrived at sunset I was filled with calm, strength, trust. 

The trailer was parked by the barn, in a meadow, near the house where my grandkids, daughter and son-in-law live, with other homes nearby. Still, it was more off grid than I expected. 

Multiple times each day I walked uphill to the house, downhill to the car, up again with groceries, drinking water, to do laundry, take a shower at our daughter’s place. We didn’t have trailer hookups and needed to be mindful of gray and black water waste. But we had electricity, internet, plenty of cold well water running from the tap. I gained respect for my privileges and felt positive I would become a better person, and I have. 

Every day and most nights are bookended with writing. Writing backed against hiking hills with my grandkids and the dogs, or house hunting. I reached wide to be tender, loving, with my husband, and my family. When I write, I go deep. It’s not easy to move between my mind-world and the outer world. 

After a day of writing my daughter’s kitchen is the place to be. Not all of our meals are complicated. Yet the days when we cook from scratch, gives us time to focus on gratitude. The dogs are at our feet, watchful, my grandkids help chop, mix, stir, then dash off, lost in play, then return to the kitchen. We clear the day’s clutter off the table, sit down and savor every bite. 

Some people sit and meditate in silence. Others climb Kilimanjaro. Along with my 2-mile morning walk in the redwoods, I hiked to and from the trailer often. When we first arrived, the ground was muddy with rain water. Soon yellow, white and purple flowers dotted the earth and my footsteps formed a path. The flower season was short, the weather warmed. Green foxtails appeared, and quickly dried, sticking in my socks. At first, I grumbled about daily supply hikes in the rain or heat, my arms loaded, and then it became my mediation. I enjoyed the journey, paying attention to the earth, sky. Walking mindfully, stepping carefully. 

I am thankful for love and shelter, but we are too crowded in the trailer. We brought too much stuff and it's packed into a too small space. I'd planned to bring only what we needed into the trailer. But instead we included all of the things we "might need" but never did need. My friend Stacy referred to this as a “soul polishing” experience. On my low days I cling to her beautiful words. Stripping off the old expectations, shedding, growing, reaching. I look up and see the trees, the beautiful trees all around me. 

Eventually we found a tiny place near the ocean, and for the last few days we lived in the trailer, I worked on my memoir. 

On my last day writing in the trailer, I opened the window wide. The wind played in the trees and the air was heavy with the scent of mountains and earth. I had the window open to keep me company. I was lonely. 

I love being with the people I love, and I am also happy alone, and I am never lonely. Yet for the past week I felt like poor me, I must sit down all alone and write. 

Then I started thinking about how the characters in my favorite books are my friends. Relationships I remember long after I finish reading the book. My most loved books leave me feeling the author invited me over for a long chat at her kitchen table. I favor memoirs so intimate I feel myself leaning over the shoulder of the writer, feeling her thoughts and sneaking into her life. 

Thinking about the characters in my favorite books opened the window wider for me, and I found the root cause of my loneliness. With revisions nearly completed, already I missed the characters in my memoir. 

While writing I had intimate chats, wandering back over time with Marie, Ann, Mary Lou and Irene. Dancing with Irene long after the moon was full, wearing moccasins beaded in colors of sunrise, clouds and blue skies, her buckskin dress swaying. Irene danced the powwow competitions, Women’s Buckskin style, Northern, in the Golden Age category. At seventy-five with her tight jeans, blue-black hair and flirty personality, Irene reminded me so much of my aunt Jo, I had to keep reminding myself that she wasn’t my aunt Josephine. 

I missed the flow of these women, the ones with the grandmother faces, walking the seven ways. How they made me laugh, and told me the truth even when it was hard for me to listen. While writing, I brought them all back, made them come alive again. The women who over three decades, lifted me from grief, instructed me in living, and showed me how to age from youth into beauty.

First published in Women Writers, Women's Books

Copyright © 2023. Terra Trevor. All rights reserved.

We are heading into the season I love best. Cool and steady, dependable

Winter arrived early here. We’ve had days of rain and yesterday the low was thirty-eight, with a high of fifty-eight. Soup weather. At night I hear the waves in the distance pound the shoreline. Winter beach grows wild. High tides claim the sand, fog and wind are my steady companions. Up on the mountain, a twenty-minute drive from here, frost glistens in gentle sunlight. On my morning walk through the redwoods, I zip up my jacket, and enjoy the chilly shade, and the freedom of being without a hat, without sunglasses. Patches of soft sun find me as I traverse the path, and I feel the warmth for a few moments, and then on the next stretch of the road, above me the trees are so tall I can barely see the sky. 

We are heading into the season I love best. Cool and steady, dependable. Around these parts there is strong identity with either the beach or the mountains. Folks near the sea are beach oriented, and on the mountain where I spend much time the culture is all-mountain identity. I’m both ocean and mountains, and the mountain part of me is strongest. 

 

It occurs to me that I have always been a border person, half this and half that.

 

At the moment, I have a winter root vegetable soup simmering, and I can't put the book I’m currently reading down. 

What have I been reading? Just finished “In Love” by Amy Bloom. It was a staff favorite at my local bookstore, and I agree. And last week I fell in love with “The All of It” by Jeanette Haien. 

A Space of Her Own

Early morning. I linger after my long walk. Watching the waves, I can never get enough. I'm under the spell of the tides.

I walk home past the lagoon. The water is still and warm from the heat wave last week. The wind sends a subtle scent leaking, brackish, salt and marsh. The cormorant nest is vacant now, thread bare. For a few weeks the parent birds and the grown chicks flew to the water and returned multiple times each day. The smallest chick was the last to leave and sometimes returns to sit on a branch near the empty tattered nest. 

 

This is my second September in my new home, new city and I find myself referring all kinds of knowledge. I’ve been here, seen it, been done by it. I love having a history, putting down roots. 

And by now I also know what happens to my writing life here, the ebb and flow. Summer is a near impossible time to work. 

Now it is summer's end and I'm reflecting. In June, July and August I gave myself three goals: Work with my copy editor. Deepen friendships, and find some artwork for our home. 

 

Writing Work

Working with my copy editor took center stage because my new book is ahead, due to be published in the spring. And I loved the copy editor assigned to my project by the University of Nebraska Press. We worked well together, and I greatly valued her suggestions for edits. Now the book manuscript has gone into production, it is with the typesetter and printer, and within the next three months the proofs will be ready to review. 

 

Artwork 

Slowly I'm adding framed photos, artwork, mostly prints along with a few pieces painted by friends, and I'm figuring out how to house paperwork and other business-office needed items in a creative way. This past year taught me that I do not do well with an in-box. It turns into a storage box. Instead, now I have a small round basket, that won’t hold much at all, and invites me to cull weekly. 

Deepening Friendships

I have made a few close friends and we're enjoying beautiful time together.

Without a doubt I've experienced a wealth of growth and change in the past two years, and although it hasn't been easy, moving was in my best interest. I'm feeling fully adjusted to my new community, and my almost entirely nature-centered lifestyle. It was my deep desire, yet I'm constantly surprised to have received this landscape, this gift. I spend lots of time in the mountains, in the redwoods, and near the ocean. Soup-making and salads with farmer’s market veggies and what we have growing in the family garden on the mountain. 

But I do miss city life sometimes, and that’s when I head for our nearest BIG city where I favor the Asian enclaves and I feel soul-deep at home shopping at my favorite Korean and Japanese grocery stores. Then I come home to nature all around. 

At Home

It’s been one-year since we moved. All year I’ve been watching and listening. Observing the sunlight change with the seasons. Followed the turn of leaves from yellow and gold, to bare tree branches, and I have memorized the way the sun blares in the living room window, with the patio drenched in winter sunlight. Now we have circled back to summer solstice, and the trees are leafy green again. 

 

Each time I've moved I’m fast to unpack and move in. Usually I have the kitchen unpacked and fully functioning within a day or two, and get the bedroom ready for sleep. Within a few days our clothes and towels and other necessities are placed in the cupboards and closets. 

 

But when it comes to home decor, I take it slow, and give myself time to hear the stories my new home has to tell me.  

 

The truth is we did not plan to go this small. It came down to location. We found plenty of larger places available, but they weren’t in great locations. Then when we came upon this little space in a great location, we made the leap into small space living. It was unintentional, but now that I've gone this small, I like it.

 

Although we had already downsized a great deal when we prepared to move, still, we had to let go of a lot more furniture, books and plenty of other stuff, including almost everything that was once housed in our garage, in order to fit what we love and need in this little space, and still be able to have enough floor space to move about and have room to breathe. 

 

It's not uncommon for people to feel immobilized when trying to make a new home a place that feels like a reflection of their lives, significant and unique to them, and I’m no exception. But what I know for sure is that my new small space is asking for a simple look, clean lines, pared down to essentials, while still offering a feeling of welcome, with a few baskets for organized clutter, with my comfortable furniture, and oversized coffee table you can prop your feet up on. 

 

Already I can see that the beauty is in the simplicity. The comforts surrounding me need to be focused on function, beauty and space. These days you will hear me use the word space frequently. When living in a very small space, space itself becomes the most important element. 

Walking gently this good earth

The sky is doing high drama. There is a stiff wind, scudding clouds, pellets of rain that start and stop. My mind flirts with the idea of staying dry in the house and going for a walk before it gets dark. No, it’s going to rain. But it might not, go for a walk. Meanwhile, I made a big pot of vegetable soup yesterday, and it will taste even better tonight.

A high tide is rolling in. The ocean grows wild off-season, waves pound the shoreline, claim the sand, crash over the rocks. With sunlight fading, my thoughts turn to the moon, a waning crescent. On the mountain, a twenty-minute drive from here, where my family lives, and where I lived after we moved, it’s 38 degrees, with a high of 45. 

My thoughts turn to the mountain. My shoes, on the front porch, are caked with sand from the beach and with mud from the mountains, the landscapes I frequent, and carry within.

 

At Home

This is the kind of December morning no other month can touch: the ocean tinted in watercolor pastels of low clouds, partial sun, a gentle wind, 53 degrees, and fog softened. An offshore breeze hums through Monterey Pines. 

 

Like most people everywhere, food is the mainstay of my December holiday traditions. The colors of my favorite foods, tawney yellow, slate-blue corn, purple-brown and black beans, bright-green fresh chilies, and the deep brick-red of dried chilies, keep me anchored close to the earth, and reaching for simple pleasures. Soups, stews and chili, hot, spicy and downright sincere, served with warm tortillas. 

 

Tomorrow I’m making posole, a rustic stew made with dried hominy that has been soaked overnight. New Mexico red chili, fresh oregano, cumin, and lean boneless pork, will be simmered together on the back of the stove for 2—3 hours. And, next week I’ve been invited to a friend’s home to assist with making my all-time favorite—homemade tamales. Heaven help me. I eat them like nobody’s business. 

 

Gathering with new friends outdoors, eating tamales, provides a category of cheer I have especially missed since Covid began. And the good news is I’ve begun to root into my new community, and have made a few new (vaccinated and boosted) friendships. 

Yesterday, I pulled out my small box of holiday decorations. This year instead of a traditional tree, I rearranged a corner table and made space to hold a four-foot (artificial) birch, with branches bare and strung with white lights, and I placed a pair of red flowers on the table, to increase the energy of health and vitality. 

A potted tree-shaped rosemary graces the kitchen counter. Green, fragrant and handy. I can snip off sprigs for cooking, and when the season ends, I will plant the rosemary bush in the our family garden on the mountain. 

At Home on the Mountain

A soft mist fell this morning, the sky looks silver-blue in this light, and the wind has cleared. The redwood trees are still, nothing is moving across the mountain. 

Growing up in the kitchen. In our family my daughter's kitchen is the place to be. The days we gather and the time we spend cooking dinner is greatly important because it’s just about the only time we have together after our separate work and school schedules, community volunteer agendas, house chores and yard work duties. Not all of our meals are complicated. Yet the days when we cook from scratch, gives us more time to focus on gratitude. The dogs are at our feet, watchful, my grandkids help chop, mix, stir, then dash off, lost in play, and return to the kitchen. We clear the days clutter off the table, sit down, eat slowly and savor every bite. 

 

Sunday. We are making tomatillo Soup, with chicken bone broth, sliced, peeled and roasted carrots and sweet potatoes, fresh lime juice, roasted garlic, sea salt, a couple of heaping handfuls of fresh spinach leaves, and fresh picked tomatillos. The summer garden has faded, but we still have tomatillos clinking to spent vines. The tomatillos will be husked, diced, roasted, made into a thick salsa, then added to the pot of soup. We make a triple batch of soup. Enough for both families to have a meal, and plenty to go into the freezer for another day. At the table we garnish the soup with chopped cilantro, Serrano peppers and diced avocado. But first the soup will simmer on the back of the stove. 

 

While the soup simmers, we make enchiladas with the tomatillo salsa, and fish, fresh caught Wahoo, barbecued. I fix a big pan of New Mexico-style, stacked enchiladas, along with a pan of rolled enchiladas to go into the freezer to eat next week. 

 

Monday. Today I am at home in my small place. A pounding all-day rain urges me to settle down at my desk and meet pending writing deadlines. At noon I want a cup of tea and while the water is boiling, I check my email, and receive good news. My manuscript has been accepted for publication by a university press I greatly value. 

Outside my window I hear waves, half a mile away, pounding the shoreline. The air is heavy with eucalyptus, and I hear the cormorants in the lagoon. They have become more active with winter, riding the ragged ocean tide all afternoon, diving under the surge, fishing for their dinner. In the evening they come home to the lagoon to rest. 

 

When late afternoon rolls around, with my work completed, I have the freedom of knowing we have the enchiladas for dinner. After its rest in the fridge the flavors have melded and it will taste even better. I can round out the meal with a green salad, freeing me from cooking, offering time to read. Currently I'm reading Braiding Sweetgrass. Taking my time. Reading one chapter, then closing the book and stepping outside to feel my feet growing up from the ground and let my thoughts float on air currents. I feel the rain falling on me. Then I duck under the porch roof, and listen to beautiful rain dropping on the thirsty drought ridden ground.

 

Next week we will gather on the mountain again, to make a big pot of Winter Minestrone Soup, with pancetta, carrots, celery, butternut squash, garlic, thyme, tomatoes, spinach, chicken stock, cannellini beans, pasta, good olive oil and freshly grated Parmesan for serving. 

 

Now that I’m dividing my time on this good earth in two spaces, days at home near the ocean, and days in the mountains, I belong to both the land and the sea. And I’m discovering something has wholly shifted for me. It’s my newfound understanding of home. 

Home. It serves as both origin and return, as haven. Security, and as a platform for collecting, organizing and utilizing the things we maintain and express ourselves. I need, appreciate, and love, having a central dwelling, a place to hang my hat, a stable home to return to, and a fixed address to call my own. It’s the thing I desperately missed after we moved and stayed in the trailer while we searched for a new home to call our own. Not having a home of my own was hard for me. But I had shelter, a safe, comfortable, place to sleep. All of my needs were met. But I could not enjoy it fully. Too much time was waisted trying to find things that were packed up. 

My plan was to have just the basics in the trailer. Just what we needed. It didn’t work out that way. All of the “what if I need this” items got mixed up with the necessary stuff. Instead of calm, I felt chaos. 

 

Now that I'm settled into my new home space, I have a grand view when I look back. It was all of my many boxes and boxes of belongings, the furniture stored, the stacks of stuff I had no permanent place to keep. I was not craving my own home near as much as I longed for a place to keep, use, and display all of that stuff. 

Yet now that I have released at least half of that stuff, if not more, of all those things, I feel a freedom as wide as the sky. My new home currently houses only needed items, and the things that bring us great joy. If something is going to live here, it must be an important part of the tapestry of our lives, instead of something that takes up valuable space while waiting to see if we might need it eventually. 

With less, I’m finding my center of gravity, coming to terms with myself in a new stage of life, in a new landscape. Finding myself feeling more at home, paradoxically, after letting go. 

 

These days when I pack up my overnight bag, instead of the great big carry-all, I once required, now everything I need fits inside a small tote bag. 

 

My thoughts return to the mountain. Yesterday leaves from the acorn tree blew in the wind, yellow and orange, blending with redwood giants. After my afternoon walk, I stood on a carpet with forest green fallen branches at my feet mixed with muddy earth. My shoes caked with the land I frequent, and carry within.

Winter Beach

The tunnel of winter is settling over my life, ushered in by that great official delude, the end of daylight savings time. If it were up to me California would stay on standard time all year long. The only thing good about sunlight petering out before the afternoon is done, is that I can move freely outside without a hat and without sunscreen. But since it’s not up to me, I only vow each winter to get my soup-making vegetables chopped before I lace up my tennis shoes and head outside for an afternoon stroll. 

A high tide will roll in soon. The ocean grows wild off-season, waves pounding the shoreline, claiming the sand, crashing over the rocks. With sunlight fading, my thoughts turn to the moon, a waning crescent now. Pinpointing changing seasons, ebb and tide. 

 

No matter what the clock might say, at my house dinner time falls soon after sunset and soup-making is a category of cheer I especially enjoy in the winter after the daylight stealing incident. 

 

Tonight, I’m making a pot of autumn vegetable soup with late season San Marzano tomatoes plucked from spent vines in our family garden, along with farmer’s market zucchini, carrots, butternut squash and sweet potatoes—red garnet, orange Covington, purple Murasaki. Celery, onion, plenty of flat leaf parsley. I season the soup with Herbes de Provence, and it simmers in a rich chicken broth I’ve pulled from the freezer. 

 

Winter is also the best time for re-reading. Along with the collection of new books I’ve gathered, The Hidden Lives of Owls, Braiding Sweet Grass, Reasons to Stay Alive, Crying in the H Mart, Beautiful Country, The Vanishing Half. I will also pull old favorites from my shelves, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Gathering Moss, Tending the Wild, and spend time with stories that leave me feeling as if the author has invited me over for a long chat at her kitchen table. I also favor memoirs and essay collections so intimate I imagine myself leaning over the shoulder of the writer, feeling her thoughts. As winter deepens, I will reread pages from Crazy Brave, Claiming Ground, SafeKeeping, H Is for Hawk. 

 

In the past I have always read one book at a time. When I’m finished with one, then I begin another. Yet now that I have a much smaller home to maintain, without any yard work, less household chores to do, and with few friends living nearby, I have more time for cooking and reading, and I’m making up for those lost years when I had little free time to read. Lately my new pattern is to have two books going. Something informative, deep learning, mind expanding, or soul stretching, and a mood catching book, inspirational or a quirky niche topic that grabs me. 

I don’t always succeed at managing to keep two going. Often, I get swept away and read one or the other all the way through to the end. This is what I thirst for, I realize, is for my reading life to have a natural balance, with an easy unforced rhythm, like soup-making. 

 

When my potatoes are sending pale feeders out into the world, a lone onion remains, the garlic is at the end of a long skinny empty braid, and the vegetable drawer in my refrigerator is full, with freshness dwindling, I gather the goods, and get to chopping, the scents and flavors drawing me in.

I’m pretty fanatical about emptying the fridge before grocery shopping again and starting over. A quick inventory found leeks, and my thoughts began to hum to the tune of potato leek soup for tomorrow. But then I saw we had plenty of basil and zucchini, and the next thing I knew I was transported, and began making plans for Ina Garten’s Zucchini Basil Soup, with good olive oil, fresh ground nutmeg, Parmesan and red pepper flakes. There is a bottle of good dry white wine, for the recipe-required 1 cup for the soup, and a glass for me to sip while the soup simmers. 

 

I’m both settled in, and not settled into my new home space and new community. With everything all around me starting to feel familiar, but not yet intimate, reading and soup-making keep me feeling connected, grounded, centered, while I am beginning to root in, while this new landscape teaches me who I am.

Summer's End

Sandy beach towels, from a pleasure-filled weekend are strewn in the lanai. Unanswered letters, and empty journal pages wait. Zoom meetings go unattended, communication is postponed. The books piled by my bed remain unread. No reading, no writing, no thoughts even. Summer is no time to work. I should have remembered that from other years. Since moving here I am in tune with the rhythms of the ocean. High tide rolling in, waves breaking, wind in the pines. Fog softened mornings with the spay of sea mist settling in my hair. The fog horn on the jetty sounding, and the flapping of cormorants as they dip and dive. I have fallen under their spell. I am flattened by the sea; bare, open, empty. What a wonderful summer, I think, turning it around in my hand. 

Patience is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. The shape of my life is formed by the ongoing, ever-present pandemic and the cancer my husband meets. We walk the beach in silence, but in harmony, all emotions carried out to sea. About a hundred yards from shoreline three pilot whales swim past, moving together like dancers. We stop at the cove and sit for a while, then walk home while the cormorants overhead are flying from the ocean to their resting place at the lagoon. 

 

All summer my social life has been filled with chatting with friends outside, and lots of outdoor to-ing and fro-ing, exploring our new community.

 

It occurs to me that all summer there have been too few empty hours in which to stand alone and find myself. Back in June my single goal was to turn inward and rest my spirit after our great move. But summer is no time to rest. I should have remembered. 

 

Now it is summers end, and I am filled up to the brim. The last of the summer vacationers have packed up and gone home, the beach cottages are vacated. Children are busy with school work now, and summer is spent. 

At night I hear the return of owls. The leaves on the maple trees are falling, poison oak is aflame, wild berries like ruby jewels, cling to spent vines. The pumpkins in the family garden up on the mountain are readying and my thoughts turn to possibilities, past pies to Pumpkin Curry Soup, Pumpkin and Chickpea Satay, roasted pumpkin seeds. 

 

The sand slips softly under my feet. I listen to the wind spilling through the pines. She calls me by name. The tide comes in and the ocean swells and my thoughts turn over like waves on the beach.

The Cormorant Nest

The cormorant chicks have grown up. For weeks I have watched the baby birds. I watched them being fed, and they were so small I saw only open bills poked out from the top of the nest. They grew bigger and then came the day they learned to leave the nest, fly to the ocean and fish for their own food, and return to the nest in the evening. For a while that nest was very full. Now it is empty, abandoned. 

At first, I felt that same sense of loss when the orb-weaver spider finished her cycle and was gone. 

Roots and Wings

Now it is July. I’m still watching the cormorant nest I discovered six weeks ago. It sits in a high branch in a eucalyptus tree. The nest is made from eucalyptus leaves, fresh, whole, perfect. 

It’s a large nest. From where I stand on a flat area before the landscape slopes down into ragged ivy and prolific poison oak,  I have an easy view of the nest. Multiple times each day I watch.

 

The first time I saw the chicks fed they were so small only their wide-open bills poked out from the top of the nest. Bigger now, they perch their lean black bodies forward sunning themselves. I can see the crook in their small necks reach out to feed from the parent birds. 

 

Walking along the ocean shoreline I always see cormorants. On the water they sit low, with their head and bill tilted slightly upward. In flocks they fly in irregularly shaped line, necks slightly bent, bellies hanging low, their wingbeat slow, leaden. Both mother and father cormorants care for and fee their young. I wonder which of these birds are the ones who have made their nest in the eucalyptus tree beside my home. 

 

I’m slow at feeling at home, getting everything situated and finding my rhythm in my new living space and I’m fast at feeling at home in my new neighborhood. After I visit the lagoon, every day I explore new paths to walk. Usually, I walk along the shoreline on the beach. Other days I walk the neighborhood streets and I’m in tune with the tides. 

 

Now that I’ve got the lay of the land my attention is focused on my home. We are fully moved in, unpacked, cook almost all of our meals in our new kitchen, but my home is still lacking the small yet important details. I’m listening to what this house has to tell me. Slowly I’m adding artwork. Yesterday I bought a large sea green shallow bowl to hold my long-loved, carefully gathered over years, collection of small stones. I love my new bedroom facing the lagoon and we have a solid sense of knowing this move is right for us in every way. Yet it’s not easy moving from a 1,600 square foot house and into an 790 square foot condo. We have let go of furniture, clothes, books, and plenty of other stuff, including almost everything that was once housed in our garage in order to fit what we love or need in our cupboards, closets and to give ourselves more floor space and room to breathe. 

It turns out that I’m not as minimal as I once thought I was. For me letting go of books was hardest and now I’m building a Kindle library and discovering that new beach towels can double for guest bath towels, and which other house-hold items can serve more than one purpose and are most useful to me. Now, I’m having the opportunity to delve deeper into what it means to live with less and be moderately minimal. More on this topic later after I’ve had time to grow into my new lifestyle. 

 

I love everything about my new home, neighborhood and still I am slow to settle in. I don’t have any roots. I don’t have a history here, not yet. I love this free feeling of beginning anew, anchored only in the present. But I don’t have as much free time as I would like, to be silent, to observe, to watch, to explore, to dream. Instead, I’m reaching to catch up, meeting work demands and family responsibilities. My intuition to go slow tells me I’m beginning to put down roots. The culture here is slow-paced and laid back and I’ve lost the urge to rush or hurry. 

 

What is the same? And what is different? I’m still on the Central California Coast. Before I lived 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Now I’m 80 miles south of San Francisco. Before I was 2 miles from the ocean in arid canyon area. Now I’m half a mile from the ocean, an easy walk, and the air is damp, fog softened. Before my home was surrounded by eucalyptus trees and Live Oak giving home to red-tailed and red-shouldered hawk, crow, owl, and my yard backed up to a dry creek bed. My new small home also backs up to a grove of eucalyptus and Live Oak, with red-tailed and red-shouldered hawk, crow, owl and instead of a dry creek bed, now there is a lagoon with cormorants. 

Before I had a washing machine and dryer and now, I’m sharing a laundry room with others in my condo neighborhood. Before I lived for four decades in the same community and now, I’m beginning anew. Now I am surrounded by live water, the ocean, the lagoon and the mountains are nearby. A twenty-minute drive takes me deep into redwoods. A twenty-minute drive also brings me to my family and grandchildren. 

Most days I do not drive anywhere. Whenever possible I walk. When I’m not walking, I’m watching the trees, listening, thankful for the good energy feeling this new home offers up. 

I miss my friends and neighbors that filled my life before, but I’m not lonely. Right now, I’m like the cormorants outside my window, focusing on nesting, and I’m leaning forward in an attitude of gentle waiting for this new landscape to teach me who I am.

Shedding what no longer serves, and embracing the new

We moved in last week, and I met a new neighbor this morning. Turtle Friend, crawled up from the lagoon and was sunning near the sidewalk. The lagoon is just beyond the eucalyptus and oak trees behind my home, close enough that I can see the water rippling when I stand at the edge of the trees. Bedroom window faces the lagoon preserve, and the ocean is half a mile away. 

It’s lovely here, a peaceful condo neighborhood, with kind neighbors and I’m beginning to feel at home. I’m unpacking, nesting, and I’m overwhelmed with how many things I have deemed useful, necessary and loved. Apparently, I’m not as minimal as I thought. After de-cluttering and downsizing before we left Santa Barbara, my stuff still won’t all fit in my 790 square foot condo. More giveaways and trips to the thrift store are in the making. 

 

It’s slow-going to move our stuff from the barn where it was stored in the mountains. Yesterday a load of old garage stuff from our former house in Santa Barbara accidentally was moved into our living room, and I had to help it get back up the mountain and back into the barn. Big smile. It’s only a 25-minute drive up to the mountain where our family lives. My life will now be divided between the ocean and mountains, Monterey Pine and Redwoods. 

 

I love my new home and neighborhood, it’s right for us in every way, and yet I’m feeling dislocated from myself, feeling the loss of how interconnected I was before. The friends I would see at the market, and they knew my name. 

I’m growing familiar with the new trees I drive under, learning how they catch the sunlight at different times of the day, and yet I’m lost in my new place without anyone really knowing me. Yet I have the great advantage of getting to re-know myself, without any long-held opinions from others getting in my way. 

This move is hard, disconcerting, and yet it's freeing too, very freeing.

 

Someday, maybe soon, I will make new friends who will see me in new and beautiful ways, a new community gathering around me, and they will recognize me, while my old friends who are circling with me into this new place and into a new me, form a bridge from my past to my future. 

Meanwhile, I’m behind with my writing work, overly busy getting my new paper trail in order with new medical, automobile, home, details needing to be done, the stuff of life. Still, every day I stop midstream in the middle of whatever I’m doing and walk to the ocean. I feel the wind. Cold sea air embraces me, wild and wonderful and I am restored. 

I’m holding faith, knowing I’m finding my new rhythm by observing, following my curiosity and by heightening my intuition. I know I’m on a good path because my dreams are abundant, clear and insightful.

Happier with Less Follow along with me.

Searching

May 2. A waft of morning air spilling through the tree leaves. Wind, warming up for the afternoon. What I love best about living here on this mountain is the air. A cool wind blows down the northwest rim, dark night winds sing memories back to me and the air carries the scent of pine, redwood, damp leaves and earth. 

 

We have the extreme privilege staying in a lovely travel trailer, for which we are deeply thankful, and yet we are living a bit more off grid than expected and have a bit of a walk uphill and downhill to the road and the car, with groceries, drinking water, to do laundry or use the full-service bathroom. We don’t have regular trailer hookups here and need to be mindful of the gray/black water waste. But we do have electricity, internet and plenty of lukewarm and cold well water running from the tap in the kitchen. And I’m gaining a ton of respect for all privileges I have. I’m positive I will be a better person at the end of this lifestyle change journey. 

 

Some people sit and meditate. Others climb Kilimanjaro. Along with my regular morning walk along a path lined with redwood trees, I also hike to and from the trailer multiple times each day. Lugging water jugs, my backpack and my arms filled with whatever I need to carry, I walk mindful, stepping carefully. 

When we first arrived in early April the ground was muddy with rain water. Soon yellow, white and purple flowers dotted the earth and my footsteps formed a path. The flower season was short and as the weather warmed the ground turned crisp. Green foxtails appeared, and quickly dried, sticking in my socks. In the beginning sometimes I grumbled about the daily supply hikes in the rain or heat, arms loaded and then it became my form of mediation and I came to enjoy the journey, paying close attention to the earth and sky. 

 

Although we were very lucky to have the privilege to take our time while we search for a place to live, time is running out, so please hold prayer, good juju, fairy dust, or whatever you believe in, that we find a small home within the next few weeks. Because I really don’t want to move into an apartment and we can’t stay here for more than 90 days. 

 

Love to everyone! Deep bow, and may any pain you are carrying lift and may love and joy surround you.

May 10. The hunt continues for a home of my own. It’s not going well. Each time we find something we like and make an offer we are outbid. Thankful to have temporary shelter and a beautiful sky above. Sage down, prayer up, holding faith. Learning hard lessons. Walking gently and stomping this good earth. Thankful for love and shelter. Continuing to let go of material possessions and expectations. We are too crowded in the trailer. We have too much stuff packed and too much stuff stored, not enough space and too many thoughts. My friend Stacy referred to this as a “soul polishing” experience. On my low days I cling to her beautiful words. Stripping off the old expectations, shedding, growing, reaching. I look up and see the trees... 

May 11. Another offer submitted. This time a tiny space, near the ocean. Fingers crossed! 

 

May 20. A big sigh of relief. House Hunting days are over. We will be moving in soon. Meanwhile, morning walk here on the mountain, and my thoughts float free, peaceful, easy, deeply thankful. I'm breathing a prayer of thanks from the depth of my soul. 

 

May 31. Never guessed I’d be living near the ocean again. Peaceful walk, cool sea breeze, pine trees. We are beginning to move in, painting and fixing and alternate between days at our new place and returning to the mountains and sleeping in the trailer at night. 

 

June 1. Last night in the trailer. Months in the mountains living a bit more off grid than I expected. So many lessons learned. My emotions riding air currents upon leaving, soaring high, crashing deep. The next chapter begins...