Sunday, January 1, 2006

WISHES ON WATER

It used to be the best part of a ski trip to the Sierras...the hope of being "snowed in".  One year I was stranded with an x boyfriend and another couple, who thought they could get us back together with a day ski trip.  A blizzard arrived and we were stranded in a cabin for two days.  I was one furious bitch to say the least, and there is NOTHING worse than being stranded in a cabin with an x you don't like. 

This time around I can say with great pleasure that I am temporarily stranded at Ebets, and if they could just permanently keep the road home closed I could stay here forever.  It has been a nice New Years here in Folsom, and the weather has actually been fun.  We have hiked around the lake and above the River - eying all the water with curiosity and trepidation.  The air is crisp and I enjoy the peaceful company of my dearest friend.  She is Norwegian born (still a citizen of Norway) and we both love hiking in the outdoors with our dogs.

There is a quiet connection with her, sometimes I think it is culturally as our two cultures are very similar.  We share clothes and shoes and a love of big dreams.  She desperately wants me to be a famous writer and is forever researching ways of making that happen for me.  A weekend with her and her family is nourishment for my soul.  I am the 'authentic me' with these people.  My own family doesn't know me this well. Chris and Ebet jokingly refer to me as 'wife number two' and have collectively been there for me going on 16 years now.

The wind howls like the Hounds of Baskerville behind me as I sit in the office of their beautiful Swiss-style Tudor home in the hills above Folsom.  Outside the office windows, the winds blow by at 50 miles an hour reminding me of how swiftly life passes by.  2006 is the year to make my changes...thank God 2005 has come to it's stormy close.  I always look forward to the New Year with its new hope and uncharted direction laid out before me like a blank canvas for me to fill.

These howling winds blow out the old and carry in the new as the first day of the New Year comes raging in to California.  It's a sweet metaphor for my life.  Do I have a New Year's resolution? ...More like a new itch.  An itch is much easier to scratch than a resolution is to conquer.  I have a giant size itch to scratch this year.

Tomorrow the roads will be clear when I must leave this sweet retreat and return to that from which I came.  The itch seems small and easy to overcome from this house upon the hill, but back home, back in that life I long to move far away from, the itch seems as tall as the hill this home rests upon.  I often wonder if the barriers I feel are just chains created by the shadows of my mind, or are as real as they seem...?

Being lost is a difficult road, because hind-site is always 20-20.  This lost period could be a steadfast path of its own leading me to the great unknown...or not.  I have never traveled through my life without a map before, without a clear direction and a plan, a destination just around the corner.  This time, I have started across a path for destinations unknown and have thrown away all map or detailed plan.  Either I have become insane, or something is calling to be out there in the world of the great unknown.  A call so loud and strong that I must follow it.

There are no easy answers, no permanent escapes from problems or life's struggles. I cannot wish an island escape like the characters in TV's Lost, instead I must travel back upon the road I came and continue on my journey - back in my own version of 'It's A Wonderful Life" and my own Bedford Falls.  So Santa Rosa here I come...right back where I started from...

Until next time-

C