I now walk Into The Wild.

I suggest you listen to this while you read on.



It seems Act 2 of this blessed life is upon me. After a long year of celebrating life and freedom I've relocated to the beautiful country side of the Appalachian Mountains in up state Pennsylvania. I am now the proud caretaker of the Squirrel Inn founded by a dear family friend, Mazie Burkhart. She passed away and named my father executor of her will. She wanted her property to live on and be protected from the evils of the gas industry and since my father knew the property better than anyone and lived down the road she left my father in charge of everything.  On the sprawling 160 acres of pristine Pennsylvania hard wood forest there's a small house,

a rustic back woods hunting cabin,  

 a 2 car garage with workshop,

and a small barn*.

My family and I had the delightful duty of cleaning out the house after Mazie left a lifetime (including her ancestor's) of possessions behind. Mazie was a rock/gem collector (had her own rock/gem shop in Williamsport for years) and the property shows it. There are small rocks and stones, some even cut and polished, strewn about her gardens and window sills. She was also quite the carpenter. She left a few pieces of her work behind including an octagon table with granite top. One of the benefits of this process was getting to claim small things like that table for myself. After weeks of boxing countless antiques and nicknacks, we moved the boxes and furniture out, now awaiting estate auction.

And now the settling in is underway. My cats and I have been living here for a few weeks now. They spend most of the day sleeping in the closet while I make myself at home in my new house. As I've been unpacking, I've been re-evaluating the "stuff" that I've moved along with me and have found much of those things getting packed right back into boxes from whence they came. So many unnecessary material objects, accumulated over years of living, moving from place to place, always acquiring more and more stuff. It dawned on me after I moved the 3rd Old TV I'll probably never plug back in, I really don't want any of it. I want to live a completely different life than the one that all that "stuff" represents. So to the estate auction that life goes, awaiting a new life with someone else.

Which leaves me here, staring out on a new horizon, mind and heart bursting with excitement at all the possibilities (the possibilities!!!), awaiting whatever the new day brings. I guess you could say I'm being borned again...

"You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, 

there is no telling where you might be swept off to."

Special Thanks to my brother Jason for all his help moving

and sharing the first Hookahs with me.

*The barn was used to house a horse during Mazie's late 70s. She took care of the horse all by herself including shoveling manure and carting it away in a wheelbarrow across her proprety to "the dump". I find it very impressive that a woman of her age could perform such a grueling physical task. She was always doing things like this up to her dying days. I guess that's saying something about the mountain air.