An early morning walk

Sometimes I just feel like being alone.

Not because I hate myself, not because I’m depressed, but because my head is crammed so full of stuff that I need to drop all my masks and boundaries and wariness and let it all out in a slow and quiet explosion. This is why I love getting up so early.


In the morning, on my walk

At 6 am, the world is dark, damp, and still. The people are asleep, but outside everything is awakening. The first rays of the sun are brightening the horizon, the birds are beginning their morning-song, and the only things stirring are animals nibbling unobtrusively at the grass.


An apple on our mostly-wild orchard

I go out and have a quiet walk. My feet get soaked, and my jeans get smeared with mud, but the serenity seeps inside my head. I slowly turn my focus from the internal to the external.


A butterfly in the foliage, complete with muscadines

I see things that I don’t normally pay attention long enough to see.


A wary-looking turtle on my woods path

I like to touch things, linger over their scent, drink in their colors.


An overhang of roots and plants above WNC's red, red dirt

This is a good time to go to my in-laws’ garden when we need to cook something that day. I have a goal, a purpose, a direction…at least for half an hour. Plus, the garden is a riot of textures and hues that delight the senses.


Gerbera daisies, in a beautiful color combination


The garden and all its tasty glories

Whenever I see a wide open field, or a sweeping expanse of a hill slope, something inside me is released. I want to spread my arms wide and run into the wind with my hair tossed and twisted into live snakes. I am alone, and it is enough.



I want to buy an RV and set out across the country by myself in a nomadic life, and I want to throw it all to the winds and go find a job teaching English abroad for years in a country where I don't speak the language, and I want to get a small sailboat and hover around the islands of the Caribbean, fishing and diving for my dinner, picking fruits and living off what I can barter for…I want to have a microhouse deep in the wilds of Wyoming, or a motorcycle, a tent, and a thousand European highways.

I want great things and a never-ending wonder of an existence…but after I take my walk, I am mostly contented to be where I am. Myself, in my house, with my husband, in our orchard.