Comfort Zone

Test the limits of your comfort zone daily. Stop and ask yourself “Am I going crazy or am I growing wiser?”

Bring only as many new things into every day as you can balance with comfortable routines. Stretch, smile when you would like to slap someone, expand. A heavy silver fork and the “good” steak knife with your dinner. The Delmonico is a splurge, but the potato salad is simple and divine and will be even better tomorrow once it has had time to meld. I won’t be reviewing any movies tonight. I’m not that kind of person at this stage of life. I am eating alone and reveling in the sounds of cello, birds and Alice being pissed off that the world for intruding her airspace. Every dog bark brings a response reminiscent of the Disney movie, “101 Dalmatians”; the scene where the dogs pass the word about THE PUPPIES! I doubt that is happening here.

Speaking of comfort zone, I am resigned to the next leap,to do what I investigated nine years ago when I bought this property…log it. The earth is ledge, granite ledge to be exact. Someone came here a couple hundred years ago and cleared this rocky hillside to create pastures. The stone walls that mark my boundaries are witness to their labors. It’s time to challenge the ground again. The trees will only grow so large before the thin soil on this glacial plain begins the process devouring them to build more soil.

Because of the contours of my plot and the position of the house, there is only one way to accomplish this. Nine years ago, I thought it could be done by obtaining permission from my easterly neighbor to bring the equipment up his driveway. I proposed an equitable split of the money and the firewood. His wife opposed my offer. An alternative route has presented itself, the original logging road. I’ve filed all the paperwork and now will live with the mess the operation will create, returning the land to its former state is not pretty.

After seeing Monson, a town that disappeared, I was inspired to take my patch of earth and sky back to an earlier era.

It is the summer solstice. That requires thought. It’s cold; New Hampshire summer cold. I wish for heat but relish all else it has to offer in  sounds, brilliant green, and splashes of floral color. The natives ignore the temperatures and come out in sandals, shorts and T-shirts when folks in Houston would be wearing fur coats.

Time to test the limits of my comfort zone. “Am I going crazy or am I growing wiser?”