Spontaneity

September 30, 2018

Bohemian Grace II

Coyote Road

Fort Sumner, New Mexico

Spontaneity

It is the spontaneity which wears thin with the years. I am not the same person I was eleven years ago, though I certainly aspire to be her. I am the same in so many ways but the joyful flow of words is altered, strained by the struggles I have allowed into my life.

Might I have taken a different path? Perhaps, I sought it for certain. If I have never looked for the easy way around I have always tried to keep my feet on the best road I could. In so many ways I have succeeded at that but the effort to maintain my balance has still taken its toll.

I remember a moment, many years ago, kneeling in front of the stone hearth on my front porch and questioning my logic. I was building a fire to heat my morning tea and asked myself a question. Would I take another step towards work and worry if I knew the world as it is would soon be altered? If the conventional structure of our lives was to be shattered what good would it be to try to stay abreast of it, at the cost of my very happiness? Why make such a sacrifice as that if in the end it would not matter in the least?

I chose to stay the course, just in case it did matter. I see now where it has, and it does, but the cost has been exorbitant! The gentle flow of my voice from that time, some eleven years ago, is now strained by concern. If I can still attain that same peace of mind I had then, it is fleeting. Rather than being in such a moment I am yearning to return to it. Am I close to meeting the goals I have chosen? Yes. Has it been worth what I sacrificed to get there? I am not yet sure.

What that the alternatives would have come at a cost also. I might have followed a gentler path but it would have been a spare one. If I now have the shelter of my camper to rely on, and a fleet of reasonably trustworthy vehicles, I may not have. There was no assurance at that time that I would still have my Nogal House, but I do. I might have remained there and kept the windmill in repair and the garden would have flourished. My immediate needs would have been met but with far less opportunity for experience and adventure. It would have been a very simple life. I would have recorded every moment.

There is no changing the past. I cannot go backwards and see where I might have gone, or alter those choices. What I can do is to reaffirm the ones I made and to fill in the gaps where they seem to have gaped. I cannot remove the scars or callouses, but I can try to avoid causing more. I can still practice the methods of life which I know to be the best and avoid the negative ones. I can, as I did yesterday, take the road deep into the lush green beauty of the river valley and then walk the parameter of the lake. I can breathe the cool freshness of the fresh fall air, and savor the moment to its fullest. So I can also remind myself of the things I hold most precious and reaffirm them in every way possible.

There is no room or reason for regrets. The simple practices of reverence, my morning prayer, kneeling before the fire, walking my water to my door, are all a constant part of my existence. I have not forgotten those promises I made to myself some forty years ago, nor those from much more recent times. I am still that same woman, just a little wiser for the wear. I am not sorry for choosing to follow this path but I am more cautious and mindful of the things I might sacrifice to stay on it. Wisdom puts spontaneity in balance, but neither choice requires relinquishing ones happiness.

Footnote: September 30, 2024: I have lived my entire life wondering when and if the world as we know it would come to an end. The fact is that in so many ways it has. The simplicity that defined my youth, complicated of course by war and threat of annihilation from a nuclear bomb, no longer exists as it was then. We have ‘progressed’ in ways that I saw coming even as a child and had so much fear of. I fled even then, going west in hopes of finding some vestige of the simple life that I read about in books written in the early 1900’s, those written over one hundred years ago now. I dreamt of the cabin in the woods and the simple homestead life, even if it had its challenges. I replicated that image in so many ways. I need but ownership of my land and a functional water well and I can provide for everything else. I am as close, and as far from having that as I was when I formulated that dream. What I am doing is living my life as I envisioned it would be, all those years ago. I am home to stay. What else is there I could even ask for?