Tag Archives: Get outside

Dating the Wilderness

Have you ever vacationed in a cute little quaint town and thought I could live here? Perhaps you idly checked real estate listings. You looked at job postings for your profession. And then you realized that half the charm of the place is that you are on vacation. The novelty is that you don’t live there. You don’t have to rise with your alarm every morning and go to work. 

She found that often, when she put down roots and lived in a location, she overlooked its beauty. Why? Because she was so busy working and being dependable and trying to fix things and well, just engaging in basic survival, she didn’t have time to enjoy the place, to explore, to seek out the beauty and revel in it. Happy are those people who can live and love and recreate-daily- in the town they call home.

She loved to go to the wilderness, to climb every mountain, to see beautiful places and feel the sheer power of Nature. She loved the solitude, the being alone. She loved jagged, sheer cliffs and sandstone monoliths, and columbine and evening primrose and penstemon. She loved to feel the health and vitality that came from spending every day and quantities of minutes outside, breathing deep, testing her mettle, shedding her worries, actually enjoying herself. But did she want to live here in the wilderness permanently?  To settle down, build a brick and mortar structure and try to make a home and scratch a garden out of grey granite? Maybe what she really wanted was to go steady, to see the rocks and trees and red sandstone and river and night sky and 360 degree views every day. She didn’t want to become fixed in one place. She wanted to be in the great outdoors every day. Yes, she loved the wilderness and the wilderness loved her back, with wildflowers and solid, dependable rock. The wilderness expected nothing of her, and she took nothing but fresh air and inspiration and beauty and memories. She took a few chances. She explored with inquisitive caution.

Mostly, she just wanted to date the wilderness – and she wanted the dating phase to last forever.