Run Away!!!!

Just a dusting but...

Bye, bye hammock

Winter showed her first flurry which meant it was time for me to move on or get snow tires.  I moved on.  Back to Nashville to fix a couple of things on the Pork Chop and to get rid of a bunch of stuff.  Seeing my friends down South is wonderful but I miss the friends I made in NY already. (Sigh).  I started this journey in order to find some answers but all I seem to have gotten thus far are 500 more questions.




What do life and love mean when you're over 50?  I'm learning to break many of my "rules" and to practice "flow" both of which are quite easy on a mountain with a handsome man while playing mountain mama.  Oh, it felt good to hang out on a hammock for a few hours a day and just be, and for breakfast to take 3 hours from starting to heat the wood stove until rinsing the final dish.  It felt good to pretend to love without expectation.  It felt good to imagine life permanently out of the mainstream.  But was I just kidding myself?  Was I just living out a brief fantasy and believing it could somehow be my new reality?

Cut with a chainsaw and chisel

My 10 day stay in NY lasted nearly 3 months.  For as much as I tried to let things flow, just be there and enjoy playing music and the company of a nice man, I was constantly battling the need to stick to my "plan" to the timeline I'd set for my journey.  Sort of reminded me of how my dad would torture us kids by driving straight through to where we were going on our family "vacations".  I frigging had nowhere to be but where I was!  My concern over my "future" caused me to miss being fully present for what I was experiencing on the mountain.  Now don't get me wrong, I was more present than usual but my old pattern prevented me from living in the moment completely.

People in, bears out

Home sweet home!

Life on the mountain was straight forward and unencumbered by materialism.  Looking at these pictures, the way my friend made the frame for this door with the materials at hand and even the fact that I lived in a tent for 2 months, it was crazy!  It was so simple!  So real!  It was another world.

Love on the mountain was spacious.  I know that sounds like a strange word but that's how it felt.  Love felt big and carefree the way it should.  At least it felt that way when I was in the moment and wasn't worried about "where we were going".

On the mountain I lived a peaceful, beautiful and intense world and I miss it.  The intensity of the mountain was nothing like the intensity of returning to a busy city.  I was caught off guard by the sensory assault.  The cars, planes, lights and people rushing here and there...it feels so unreal and yet it is our reality.  Strange.  I don't think people realize how quiet the world really is, though even the mountain wasn't immune to the hum of humanity.  I found the city quite abrasive initially and yet, it's amazing how easy it is to slip back into and accept the constant barrage of noise.

Michelle and Coco

Crow Design

Vajrayogini

Yet, reality does call me and I must begin to think of how I am going to support myself.  It just so happens that by going with the flow and staying in NY longer than I thought I "should" have, I may have found a new career.  During the last month I was there I met a fine artist named Kelli Bickman who is starting a fashion line.  Check it out at---

www.1111style.com

I'm traveling, she needed a sales rep and things just fell together quite organically like the cotton fabric she uses to print her designs on.  I've never been an outside sales rep but there are a lot of firsts these days and so why not?  If I had stuck to my plan I wouldn't have this opportunity.  The worse that happens is nothing and the best thing that happens is I've found a great job with a great person who makes some pretty damn cool clothes!

 P.S.
Thanks for the photos Kathleen :-)