04.08.15  We are just about to leave for our month in Santa Fe.  As always, I have been suffering such angst as I am about to set sail.  Anne Morrow Lindbergh once wrote:

“Is there anything as horrible as starting on a trip?  Once you’re off, that’s all right, but the last moments are earthquake and convulsion, and the feeling that you are a snail being pulled off your rock.”

There has been so much to do to prepare our home for a month-long vacancy (and I’m not even counting the travel days).  All the trees and bushes will be leafed-out by the time we’re back, so we’ve had to cut down and buck up the dead Firs, while there is still open space in the woods for them to crash to the ground.  We’ve abandoned all hope of getting the road fixed before the big rains.  Don’s pick ax, which he uses to clear the culvert for raging water, is stuck in the hillside.  It’s yellow handle makes it look like a caution sign at the jog in the road down to our property, but no one will be here to resume the work of diverting water.  And the kitties.  They know how to take care of themselves, as evidenced by the feathers and squirrel tails left on the porch, and they have that big lake for water.  But, still.  Don gives them a snack of cat food at night up in the garage, and then puts away the food so the raccoons can’t come in through the cat door to eat it.  Each early morning in the dark, they are waiting outside the door for us to go back up to the garage and set out more food for the day.

i started this blog, way back when, with the Winston Churchill quote, “We shape our dwellings, and then our dwellings shape us.”  Well, we are off!