The grey morning

Every now and then, I'm overcome with an urgent desire to escape to somewhere wide wide open. So wide that life just falls out of the sky painting the world more vivid.
Many years ago I made a living from being in the great outdoors. Not really a living now that I think about it. Probably just enough to not die.
But whenever I really think about it, I remember how happy I was in those spaces and how my dreams were fresher.
Once I applied to work in the States, in the Outward Bound programme. I'm kinda glad I didn't actually do it, but I do wonder how life would have been different if I had been accepted and done it.
And would my life be any better than it is now? Because in all honesty, my life is pretty good here. I have a job that I quite enjoy, I have some good friends, and I meet a lot of pretty interesting people. I have a very decent apartment with all the home comforts you could hope for, and I still have money to spare at the end of the month.
But beneath all that is a constant shifting of discontent.

I put it down to a lack of wide openess.

I miss being able to walk outside into a wet garden looking at the dripping moon in the black sky.
I miss short drives to empty beaches.
I miss long drives to mountains asleep on their backs, where night fires warm more than just our cold bodies. Where morning wakes you with an icy bite on the nose and the delicous heat in your sleeping bag keeps you in for just 10 more minutes.
I miss clean places. I don't mean cleaned places. I mean places that are just perfect without any intervention.
I miss blowing smoke out into cold fresh air on country roads late at night.

I still have a dream that someday I'll be able to live in a place like this without having to worry about how I'm going to survive or justify it.
Linford Detweiler captures the sentiment of this silly persistant dream in his latest letter. I'd like you to read if you have the time.

Letter

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