Dreams shattered? Pick up the peices......begin again.

You haven't heard from me in a while because I thought.....well the main reason for this blog, my attempts to live sufficiently at most, in the woods, a long time dream....was shattered. As long as could remember, I wanted to be just like my mentor and my hero Anne Labastille, I read all her Woodswoman books. I wanted to be her! She lived in the woods with her German Shepherds, that WAS ME!!!

 I felt for so long I had moved toward this dream and in one weekend, it disappeared and I was kind of lost, and just floated along not sure where to anchor.

Well, it seems that it was a combination of situations that Thanksgiving week that now, weeks later I can observe with better knowledge at what may have happened.
The first reason was the week before our Allegheny vacation it was all over the news about a 92 year old man that was missing in Allegheny State Park. He was never found. I was there only the second week of this and knowing he was out there just hung eerily in the background of my mind.

My mind. That week, I know now, I was NOT stable. I am giving you too much information, but here it is. My calendar said that week I should have my monthly female "you know".  It worried me only because of Bears or wild animals, could they "tell"? and find me? A week or two before that I started getting these "glowing" feelings, since then I have just installed a large fan on the top of my desk for these glowing things we now call hot flashes. That week in Allegheny was the beginning of my menopause. Yep. Now that I can look back on it. That was it. So now that I have voraciously scoured the Internet on information on menopause, another symptom is anxiety attacks. Which is what scared the daylights out of me by 5 pm every evening because it was so dark out, and I was alone in the woods like a nut. hahaha

So I came home early, dreams shattered. Not sure if I could ever live in the woods alone now. And as I said, I just drifted through it day after day, kind of in a limbo, not sure what to pin my hopes and dreams on. I am a Capricorn and we always have to have a goal. I was goal-less.

So this Christmas morning I woke up and turned on my fake electric fireplace and put the Yule log on TV and sat down to read in my favorite corner of my couch. I did not want to finish reading New Passages by Gail Sheehy. It is a very good book and gives us hope for those of us in mid life. But not on Christmas. I wanted to read something more "winter-y". So I picked up We Took to the Woods by Louise Rich. Now that my panic over menopause is over. I have come to accept my hot flashes and am alot more stable and I am taking some herbal remedies, eating healthy and exercising somewhat regularly.......I started reading Louise's words. Slowly, she brought me back into her world, I could almost hear the crunch of the leaves under my feet walking in the woods, I could smell the wood burning in the fireplace. Oh how I envy her! Did I just say that? And in that quick of an instant, I had realized that I still want to live in the country, maybe not alone in the middle of the woods like Anne or Louise, but pretty close to it. One day. No more fake fireplaces I want my own wood burning stove. I want to walk through the crunchy leaves to the wood pile to gather my wood for the day. When my boys have lived a good and happy life, I WILL get a German Shepherd puppy. I am pretty sure that when I retire, I will be in a cabin somewhere......