Dream more while you are awake:
It started out simple enough. Pack a lunch. Toss some PJs and a toothbrush into a duffle bag but leave my map home. I am home. How many times have I driven by this homestead since 1972 when I left Utah headed for a job in Idaho on a forest fire watch tower?

Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day:
Driving south from my farm, 4 hours to McCall, I drive the main road that connects Northern Idaho to Southern Idaho where most Idahoans live—a two-lane highway with hardly any traffic. I’m not exaggerating. It’s Tuesday morning. The road is mine, all mine.

No one is in charge of your happiness but you:
Two hours south, I crest the top of a pass and see the town where my daughter was born in 1979. White Bird, Idaho. Population: 150

You already have all you need:
From the top, I can also see the abandoned ranch house I fixed up when I was 7 months pregnant with my daughter. I’d been living in a small 14-foot travel trailer, so I pulled it close to the back door of the house to serve as my cook shack because the kitchen in the house lacked a stove, BUT down the hallway in the house, I had a working toilet and a BATHTUB!!!!!, something I’d been living without for several years. I put a mattress on the floor of the “master” bedroom, found the perfect cardboard box for a nightstand, and I was home. Home. That summer I grew 80 tomato plants and 100 cucumber plants to sell to local women for canning. My reputation as a gardener grew along with the abundance in my root cellar. I put up hundreds of quarts of fruit from the trees planted around the homestead—all 500 jars processed on a wood cook stove. I was falling in love with Idaho.

The best is yet to come:
Continue reading →