Headed south

The boyfriend and I are headed out to Tennessee this evening for a hiking trip. I've spent most of the last six weeks ill in one fashion or another, and here is the usual pattern: (1) Get sick. (2) Be sick for a few days, start to feel better. (3) Spend the weekend sleeping in a tent in the unseasonable cold, and/or hang out in a canoe on the water all day in the unseasonable cold. (4) Get sick again.

Repeat two more times.

So, I do realize that I'm opening myself up to yet another relapse, and possibly another two weeks of illness. But whatever. It's fall, the leaves are glorious, and I just want to get to the mountains.

I'll post on the trip when I return, of course.

Nature, red in tooth and (Enum)claw*

Did I get to this before Kristy?



*Yes, I've used this before.

Held by the Taliban

This series of articles has had my rapt attention all week. Unfortunately, I'll be waking up in a tent on Thursday morning when the last installment appears. Urgh.

For the google

I saw two turkey vultures at the zoo this weekend. I wonder if they have anuses.

Just getting the new place broken in.

Full circle.

Funny how a blog can seem like a home, a room, or a locale. And Dog knows I've had enough of them. And for the sentimental or ritualistic of us, it may be difficult to just keep one. Blogs for me tend to correspond to distinct periods of my life -- Trailheadcase started because I'd just moved out west a few months before, and was coping with that. Mountain Time started when the former Mr. T and I bought our house in Montana. And ended when he left. Then came a series of limbo blogs.

I suppose my blogs are a little bit like chapters in a memoir, in that sense. But Trailheadcase isn't as much of a niche as Mountain Time. It's more my alter ego. So here we are, albeit at a new address.

It's been since August since I had a blog, and it's starting to make me nuts. I've become a Facebook junkie, but 140-word chunks don't always do it for me.

And I'm entering a new and distinct phase of my life. My divorce is over, the feelings faded into indifference and even gratefulness, and I feel the possibilities stretching out before me like an endless summer prairie.

I told someone the other day that I finally have the freedom now to just live. I have no external pressures on who or how I "ought" to be. For the first time in my adult life I am completely and consistently comfortable in my own skin. That doesn't mean my life is tranquil. I'm in a relationship with someone just as intense as I am, I have a 7-year old who isn't over the divorce yet, and, well, there's always the dog.

So I have things to say. As usual.