This land is starting to take hold of me.  As much as I long for the lushness of Pennsylvania, I think I’m starting to bond with this land too.  Lately I’ve been feeling an increasingly strong need to get out of this town, where nature has been too domesticated.  I see myself living in a little cabin amid the rolling wild prairie, with its sagebrush and yucca, coyotes and pronghorn, under the vast skies.

I want to be able to set my bare feet on the wildness and to feel it flow through me, and to learn from it.  And I need privacy that town life can’t give me.  It’s such a deep, aching need, much like what I felt in Longmont when suburbia was threatening to do me in.  I want to understand this ecosystem and participate in it.  I want to know the plants and the animals and bugs and to feel the energy of the land.

I feel like I’m turning a corner and entering some new phase of my life.  I’m about to enter (or have entered?) the second half of life, so it seems right that this is a time of transition.

Mentally and emotionally I’ve already moved into the next phase.  I understand that my life will only be meaningful if I pass on what I’ve learned.  It makes little sense to accrue knowledge if you aren’t going to share and apply it.  I’ll have to become a teacher as well as a learner.