That last post on politics was an aberration, exactly what I’m struggling to avoid, and is no more. Back to nature, then, where more silence is probably required.

Last night we had dinner with an older couple (yes, older than I am), people of very limited means, who somehow own a piece of land way up in a canyon with a long pond and a roaring stream. There were FROGS croaking as the sun went down, muskrats swimming to and fro, and a pair of wild ducks, I kid you not, all this in a freaking desert with snow-capped mountains in the distance. I haven’t heard frogs — pond frogs, not tree frogs — for years, maybe decades. It stirred something very deep inside me that I was meant to feel. By that I mean that the experience was so strong, I took it as a message.

This very morning outside the back door

Afterwards I thought about the place. The house is terrible by normal standards: all owner-constructed and nothing built to code, outlaw plumbing and electricity, a drafty, dusty, limited, hipster hovel of a home, though filled with beautiful, special things and blessed with lots of windows. Tended with more love than technical competence, to be sure, but serviceable. Now, it’s more than possible to live that way, and I have. There can be great satisfaction in taking care of yourself outside the rules, but money can be a problem. The conditions sometimes encountered raise deep ancestral fears of deprivation in my wife, who would rather stroll on sidewalks instead of mud, but she’s an elemental nature goddess in her heart. I know she feels the pull of living in a beautiful, spiritual, natural setting. That can transmute pain that comes from living on the edge, as I know it does with our hosts. When I stand outside in a place like that, it’s like stepping out of a dream.

With me, it’s always been the land. I care about a house, but the land it sits on is far more relevant. When I picked up the paper today to look at the classifieds, I realized I would never pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a featureless rectangle of dirt just because it has a house on it. N-E-V-E-R! I wouldn’t rent that kind of home, either. Where I differ from our friends is that I don’t see anything wrong with having pros put in the plumbing, so to speak, and we all deserve a break. Considering my wife’s piano studio needs, our next place is likely to be pretty modern.

I got the message yesterday, however. And now, back to contemplation of what this means…

[hiss...]