I have spent the morning doing one of my favorite things — having a penny shopping spree. Well, not so much a spree, I spent a nickle + shipping, but every once in awhile I go to amazon and by chance, when doing something like buying dog food, end up with a review of a book on the same page that entices me to visit the book’s actual page and then to the other books by the same author and all of a sudden I fall in love with a new — to me — writer. Today it was 4 books by Alice Steinbach, starting with Without Reservation: The Travels of An Independent Woman, and one book that caught my eye and sounded like something I would love, Tales of a Female Nomad: Living At Large In The World, by Rita Golden Gelman. All of these books were a penny each. This is one of my favorite types of books to read, and I, like most everyone else in the world, fell in love with Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love a few years ago. But I do not long to travel, no, I am an armchair traveler. I decided 15 years ago to leave the world and stay at home, I chose a life of silence and solitude, reading, writing, study, prayer, contemplation, and it is the life that is right for me. The funny thing is that I find that these days people look at my life as far more dangerous than these women adventurers and nomads who cross continents and find themselves in foreign lands. They see me as having chosen a lonely existence, cut off from much needed stimuli and relationships with other people and the outer world. People try their best to convince me of all that I am missing, when, in the end, my life is so full there isn’t enough time to accomplish everything I want to on any given day. The question posed most often is, “Don’t you get lonely? to which I can only honestly reply, “I might, if I had the time.”

This is not a post about a woman with a basket full of mental health diagnoses that caused her to make a choice to leave the world to survive in peace. It’s true enough but it is only part of the story. No, today I really wanted to write about the beauty, the glory, the adventure, of being a woman who has chosen to become a nomad on her own acre, to become a wanderer in her own forest, an adventurer who travels breathlessly around a small section of ground just to discover the world that is teeming with life under her own two feet.

A week or so ago my dear daughter-in-law who is just delightful, full of zest and energy, and enjoys, with my darling son, traveling and having fun and seeking out new adventures posted something on Facebook. She wrote that she couldn’t understand people who never left their own neighborhood, she wrote that if you lived in New York City you wouldn’t just stay in your own location but would wander “all over Manhattan.” I certainly understand her feeling, especially at 30, but twice her age, this was my response…

“Or you would circle the wide wide world that is your own back yard and you would learn every single tree, and wild flower, sometimes known as weeds, and you would discover how, even on a square foot of your property, there are so many miracles and wonders that you could spend your whole life time and not discover them all. And then there is the whole business of the lusciousness of kissing pug noses and planting gardens and reading amazing books and learning how to cook new things. No, I may not often go farther than my own little acre but there are wonders enough, here, for me, for a lifetime.” And that is exactly how I feel.

Today I am going to get a lot of work done out in the garden, and there are still things to unpack, put away, and arrange here at the cottage, it will take a long while to settle in. I am about to make a late breakfast, brunch really, having just had a glass of Kefir and my coffee so far. I am going to make something I saw on my favorite new cooking show, well, new to me. I don’t watch much tv but I love the cooking channel and PBS and a few other shows. My “new” show is The Pioneer Woman’s cooking show (and I bought her penny books too!) and I am about to make an easy dish that she makes for her family for breakfast. You melt butter in a skillet and toast your bread in the skillet, then cut a hole out with a glass or other implement and drop an egg in and fry it in the bread. Now this is a very old fashioned way of fixing eggs and I’ve read about it in my favorite old books by Gladys Taber but I’ve never made it myself. And if you only use a toaster you don’t know what you’re missing making toast in a skillet. Yedoggies it’s good!

So off I go into a day of adventure on my very own acre. My Magic Ship is gone, but there is still magic everywhere here. This is a dazzling life, and I am so happy to be home. There is so much work to do,  and a rich and textured life here. Tonight I intend to knit or crochet while watching a movie, and then having a nice long spell to read before going to bed. But at this juncture I have miles to go before I sleep so off I go into the day ahead. There are so many adventures to have right here at home…