Whatever comes next, it needs to be outdoors.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is my (possibly former) drive to move to the mountains. I suppose I’ve been trying to get to the root of it. To understand it better, so that I can try to make the right choices to get me where I want to go. Is it really the mountains that call me? If so why?

Now this may not appear related, but I swear it is. I’ve been re-reading one of my favorite books “How to Survive without a Salary” by Charles Long. In one chapter, discussing needs vs wants, he talks about learning to look at needs differently. The consumer-based approach, he says, starts off immediately looking at the solution – the item, easily purchased at a variety of stores, that will fill some supposed need. For his conserver-based approach he recommends taking a step back and figuring out what problem that solution was to be the answer to. “What objective must be accomplished? What function has to be performed? Often you can then come up with a more creative (and cheaper) solution to the problem.

In my case the solution was move to the mountains. My reasons to date, have mostly consisted of an insistent “it feels like home.” Valid, but I think I’d like to dig a little deeper before picking up house and home, leaving some family, friends and my only source of income.

After a bit of soul searching, I discovered that part of the objective has been a bit of escape. My experience with CFIDS left me feeling still somewhat of a prisoner in my own home. Even though I’ve left that particular home behind (and especially that couch, oh how I despise that couch in that dark, nearly windowless living room, where I spent so much of the last 7 years!). Escapism is nice, but the catch is that your problems do tend to follow you after a bit. Not really a good reason, by itself, for a move.

Then, a week or two ago, I joined a group to take a walk around the Mason Farm Biological Reserve and unearthed another part of the objective. I absolutely adored wandering around the reserve! In this place that I think of as so flat, boring and dry – I had much the same experience as I do in the mountains. The meadows, the woods, the marsh, the sky, the wind, the trees, grasses and plants, everything just teeming with life! And despite a long drought and hot, seemingly endless, summer.

The more I thought about it, the mountains do whisper to me, but I think that may be because I of how strongly associate the mountains with my time outdoors. So much of my recent life was spent locked up indoors, often in the dark, alone. Even before that life revolved around offices, classrooms, gyms & stores. Coincidently, the times when I got to be outside were almost always in the mountains, whether on vacations or in childhood. Its nature that actually calls to me – that makes my soul sing. I can, oddly, feel almost as free in my yard, hanging laundry out on a line, listening to the birds sing, watching the squirrels caper around, as I do sitting on some beautiful vista to which we just hiked.

So its isn’t exactly the mountain vista that calls to me, but rather the desire to be able to live more of my life and do more of my work outdoors.

Sourdough starter, take 2

I’m giving that sourdough starter another try. This time I measured my flour out by spoonful, carefully making sure the flour was a more fluffy consistency. I still used tap water, rather than filtered water, because the starter called for warm water.

That was on Saturday. By Monday my starter had bubbles all over and seemed puffed up. If I hadn’t learned from last time, I might have thought it was done. Sure enough, the bubbles died off in less than 12 hours. Just the starter’s bacteria developing. So I’m back to waiting, feeding, and watching to see if there are any more changes to my eventual dough.

Maybe by the time my starter is ready, it will no longer be too hot and humid to want to run the oven. I wonder which will come first this year, cool weather or November?