Here I Am

Ian and I spent our annual summer vacation last week on Orcas. It was a different week than the blazing hot, incandescently bright, gloriously rural summer week I spent with Spackle in July--because for one thing, it rained. A lot.

Rain is, in general, a welcome thing for a day or two in the summer, in part because endless balmy sun is hard for Seattlites to take, but mainly because plants get dry here in the PNW, where we let our lawns go dormant and water our gardens with carefully placed and monitored drip hoses. We have water everywhere, at least in Western Washington, and we're still conservative with this important resource (to a neurotic fault, Ian might say about me, at least in the context of travel dog water).

Rain was welcome for us on Orcas last week for the above reasons, and it also gave me a chance to make sure that Orcas, even with less-clement weather, is where I want to live out my life.

It is.

There is no question.

In fact, I had an interesting psychological experience one mid-week evening last week. I had gone to the outhouse and was sitting musing (among other activities), looking through the open door at the deep, bluish-gray clouds wisping up Crow Valley and over Turtleback Mountain, and marveling at the quiet, twilit beauty of it all, when a vision washed over me. In my vision (which was very true to life), I was in a small, cramped room looking out through the open door at Life, in all its glory and wonder and capacity for boundless joy; and all I needed to do to become one with that glory and wonder was to step with intention through that door and into that Life. Oooh! I though, excited. Okay! Well, what do I want to take with me to my new life? What do I want to leave here??? I finished my business as I dithered, not wanting to enter the new Life with any old Problems, but as I was standing to go, the door suddenly began to swing shut. My hand shot out to stop the door, my heart pounding with adrenaline. "No, no!" I cried, leaping outside and raising my arms to the heavens. "Here I am! Here I am! Here I am!!!"

Here I am.

Here, I AM. 

It's such a simple phrase, three words, corpulent with meaning. Already I AM, I am MYSELF, on Orcas Island. My body feels full of fizz, just thinking about it :-).

I stood and drank in the moist indigo salt air for some time, arms outstretched overhead, repeating my phrase over and over. I finally went back inside, aglow with delight and belonging, and related my story to Ian.

"Wow!" he said. "Sounds like quite the exciting trip to the loo!"

Anyway, new title for the blog, but I thought I'd give you all a break and keep the same url. As I will be "here" wherever I am in the world . . . I may end up tying Dilettante Traveler in with this blog, too.

Enough chatter: Look here for more pictures added to the album, beginning with the one below (note: somewhat misty photos of men actually at work, after solo goose, are from Burke the Builder's iPad, and are somewhat in order, but not with the rest of my pics).



Seriously, we are racing along with this house-building thing.

Status right now: septic drain field installed; footings done; foundation walls completed and waterproofed; slab prep going on (probably be poured next week); backfill happening when foundation walls are dry/cured. Burke the Builder keeps sending us snaps from his iPad, and I'm getting more and more jealous that I can't just wander up and meander through after everyone's gone home for the day.