Into the Wilderness

This was happening while I was writing…

Written at 1:00 A.M.

I’m back in Georgia.  There’s ice on the balcony, but the driveway is clear.  My big fear was that I would have to park the car below the house and crawl up the drive with my belongings strapped to my back.  Neighbor Bob sent me emails while I was away, warning of ice and impassable roads and I was expecting the worst.

The drive was painless-ish.  It takes eight hours, and along the way I usually ingest nothing but three jumbo cups of rotgut, Gate Station coffee and top it off with a fountain Diet Coke – nothing like caffeine and chemicals to keep one focused on the road.  Fiona (who gets car sick) threw up in the first half hour, and barreling along at 70 mph I had to reach into my laundry bag and pull out a pair of dirty yoga pants to mop it up.  By the time I arrived I was jittery and covered in coffee: I somehow lost my grip and tossed a full cup of Best Bean onto the driver’s side door and my lap.  Once again, the yoga pants doubled as a cleaning rag (I may have to throw them away).

Last night, I sat in my favorite chair with a fire in the fireplace; a fur, lap blanket; and my thoughts.  I asked myself, “Why am I here, in the mountains?  Is this where I need to be?”  For so long, everything I did had no meaning – all my actions were born of happenstance and luck and the thickness of inebriation.  These days I try to understand my actions and make the right decisions when a decision needs to be made.  It’s unnatural to me.  I’m like a toddler learning to look both ways before crossing a busy street…

But it is Lent and I am in the wilderness, so it’s natural to think about the strongholds on my psyche: the temptations that impede my happiness.  It is natural to question my motives for being here.  I’ve decided I’m in the Georgia mountains, because I want to be.  This is not some self-imposed test.

And at 7:00 A.M.

Holy shit… I woke to a complete white out.  There is probably three inches of snow on the ground and I cannot imagine driving down the driveway.  I didn’t go to the store yesterday (too busy patting myself on the back for my sound decision to live in the wilderness), so I don’t have fire starters or a lot of fresh food.  I do have canned soup in the pantry and I suppose I can burn the yoga pants and the chainsaw-carved, bear sculptures…

Isn’t it funny how this kind of thing happens just when you plan on being fabulous and enlightened and right?  When I reread my earlier musings, I sound so smug. Now we’ll see how I like the back of beyond and whether this self-imposed isolation was the right decision after all.

It’s kind of gorgeous…

Oh Lord, what’s Fiona going to do when she sees this?