Little tent in the big woods

I make a rubbish pioneer woman. If I lived in a little house on the prairie 100+ years ago, my children would've surely been eaten by locusts and blizzards by now.

Chasing rain fairies. 

Since fortune has returned me to the land of carving one's destiny from Earth using only bare hands and duct tape, and I am doing my best to wade back out into the physical world without injury. Last weekend for instance, I returned to the mountains for the first time in many years.

And I am pleased to report that it all went wonderfully. As I discovered, the trick to happiness in the wild is this: go with contemporary pioneers. These are people who can tie knots in their sleep, assemble tents blindfolded, build campfires in hurricanes, and send even the most rabid of imaginary bears whimpering back into the woods with a mere nod.

I had forgotten how rain sounds on a tent flap, and the shape the mist takes when it munches up pine trees from top to bottom. I'd forgotten the smell of rich, black mountain dirt, strangely simlar to that of a new baby. Meadow flowers are taller than I had recalled, and brighter. Mountain streams are colder.

Ana tells me she wants to move to the mountains where the rain fairies live, and she never wants to return home. I seem to remember having this same thought years ago too, long before a fear of bears and tent-failure set in.