Evolution of Self

Over a year since my last post.  I hadn't even thought of this blog in forever, and yet tonight, on the first day of the new year, I find myself unable to sleep and needing to clear my head.

So what's been going on since my last post?  Quite a lot.  I've done a lot of hunting, done some serious packing in the mountains, made some new friends, learned a lot, went back to school, and finally got tired of life in Boulder among much else.

While any of the above topics could make a lengthy blog post by itself, the major topic on my mind tonight is that I seem to be having a major shift.  For years, decades in fact, I've fantasized about a log cabin in the mountains.  I've always loved the West.  I still love it dearly, with all my heart.  But, having lived out here for many years now, my perspective has shifted.  I find myself fantasizing more and more not about living in a lonely cabin in the mountains, not even about a sprawling Western ranch, but instead about a lush, green farmstead in the East.  Weird. 

I grew up in East Texas, which gets about 40 inches of annual rainfall.  It's hot and humid in the summer, quite mild (but still humid) in the winter.  It's flat.  There's not an abundance of large wildlife.  There are no really large tracts of wild public land.  But it's green.  Where I grew up, the trees are tall and thick.  The lakes are muddy, but abundant. 

Where I live now in Colorado, we get less than half that amount of rain.  At about 15 inches annual, the short grass prairie is one step away from sandy desert.  It's sunny and dry, which makes for a very pleasant climate, but it makes for a very hard living if you don't depend on food and water being trucked in from far away places.  It's gorgeous here, of course.  The hunting and fishing are good (though, unless you live in a pretty remote place, you still have to drive to get to them.)  There are thick forests up in the mountains, but the soil is thin and rocky, the weather harsh, the growing season short.

It's very clear to me now that I suffer easily from cabin fever.  During the hunting season I'm good.  There's plenty to get out and do.  But during the rest of the year, I find myself going stir crazy, even when the weather is nice.  I've noticed that when I close my eyes at night, I'm no longer drifting off to a log cabin hidden deep in the mountains.  I'm not longer visiting vast cattle ranches on the lonely plains.  Instead, I'm on a quiet but thriving farm.  The farm is a patchwork of thick hardwood forests full of birds and deer, open meadows with waist high grasses, and old apple orchards filled with pink blossoms in the spring and crisp, sweet fruit in the fall.  Instead of a cabin, I see a quaint old farmhouse with a wraparound porch.  There's a big red barn, a huge vegetable garden, chickens, goats, a few dairy cows, a pig pen full of happy spotted pigs, a big old draft horse, a barn cat and a border collie.  There's a nice pond out back stocked with fish where I go skinny dipping in the heat of summer.  There's a root cellar, and a pantry full of home-canned produce.  There's a big stack of firewood I cut from my own woodlot.  There's an outhouse, a well, a stream full of trout, a big compost pile.  The whole place is alive and green in summer, bursting with flowers in spring, painted in deep reds and yellows in autumn, and of course at least a little snowy in the winter. 

Sometimes I really miss the tall trees.  I miss walking in the rain.  I miss thick, rich soils that support an abundance of lush growth.  I miss hardwoods, good for building and burning and smoking meats.  Often I find myself wanting to settle not in a cabin in the mountains with nothing to do 9 months out of the year, but instead to be part of an active, living farm.  I love pigs.  I love cows.  I love dogs and cats and goats and chickens and horses.  I love canning and growing.  The problem with the west is that, if you strip away the modern infrastructure, it's one hell of a hard place for a human to live, and is best suited for a nomadic lifestyle, just like the hunter-gatherers who once called this place home.  I want the safety and comfort of a farmstead.  And I want the responsibility that comes with it.  I need projects.  And I need companionship of animals rather than people.  I still want self-sufficiency, but I now realize I can be much more self sufficient on a farmstead.  I can produce far more on far less land, and I won't have to range over wild, rugged terrain to do it. 

I'm torn over this evolving perspective.  On the one hand I still feel like my heart is here in the West.  On the other, I find myself longing for a life like the Amish, only without all the religious bullshit. 

I feel a little better writing about it, but it just isn't enough.  I think I need to take a vacation, a roadtrip out east.  I haven't done that in probably 15 years.  I've always loved the Deep South.  Tennessee and Virginia were some of the pretties places I've been.  Even being from East Texas, I remember being struck and by how tall and thick the forests were in Missouri. 

Could I ever really leave my beloved Rocky Mountains?  It's hard to imagine myself being a resident of Tennessee or Virginia or Georgia.  But it's easy to imagine myself on a lush farmstead, too. 

I'm moving next month.  I'm moving out of town and renting a small house on 4 acres.  I'm already halfway packed.  I'm getting dogs, chickens, pigs.  I'm going to try my hand and being a farmer, or as much of a farmer as I can be considering I work a full time career and I live on a semi-arid plain at the foot of the mountains.  I'm taking this time to experiment, sort some things out.  I'm curious to see where this will go.