Go Big or Go Home

     In order to get the ball rolling on my one year adventure of going outside every week, I decided to start big!  What is bigger than camping?  Roughing it!  Living off the land!  Surviving by my wits!  My oldest daughter, Daisy always says, "Go big or go home!", so I took her advice and went big and stayed home.  She and I were going camping in our own backyard!!!  (In my defense, I did try to find an available campsite but it being Memorial Day weekend made that impossible.)  I spent the evening preparing good camping food like potato salad, cowboy caviar and corn on the cob.  Then it was time.  My husband had set up our tent in the field alongside our house.  He had lovingly run an extension cord into the tent for a lamp and Daisy's computer so we could watch old episodes of Friends on Netflix.  The good news was the cord had room for my electric blanket too!  Daisy and I headed out on the 100 yard hike to get to our home for the night.  We made beds with layers of quilts from the house and snuggled in.  We spread out our buffet and began to enjoy the great outdoors, just like Laura Ingalls and her family had done so many years before us.

     At about eleven o'clock we decided we wanted to get my youngest out of her bed and bring her out to join in the fun.  Ginger was fast asleep when I went up to her room.  Soon she was back to sleep in our cozy tent between us.  I don't know if it was all the fresh air but I fell asleep much earlier than I usually did.  I surprisingly slept great out there until a nightmare woke me up.  It was 4:07 a.m. and pitch dark.  I was terrified.  I knew there were animals that frequented our woods but I wasn't prepared for how vulnerable I felt hearing them while I lay in a flimsy tent.  The girls were sleeping soundly next to me. I kept hoping they would wake up and beg me to go inside but they didn't.  I could hear our ducks stir occasionally in their pen nearby.  It sounded exactly like an intruder heading our way.  I prayed for daylight.  By 5:03 the sun had come up and with it came some peace.  Now I just prayed to go back to sleep.  That didn't come that easily so instead I reminded myself of the mission that made me decide to be out there in the first place.  I wanted to experience life in the outdoors not just be in it.  So I closed my eyes and focused on the sounds I was hearing.  It was amazing how differently the sounds made me feel now that it was daylight.  I could hear a variety of birds.  I loved the way one would say something and a different one would answer.  The first one called out and was answered by a bird that sounded like an old fashioned sprinkler.  That sound reminded me of sweet childhood memories of growing up in Arizona spending lots of time outside.  The hot weather meant long days of running through sprinklers and going down the Slip and Slide.  I never shied away from the adventures that the outdoors brought back then.  Laying in the tent I couldn't help but reflect on how much I had changed since those days.  I was grateful already that the idea of this blog had forced me outside.    It was nice to hear the sounds of birds and of our farm animals waking up, which I normally wouldn't have noticed.  The chickens started to move around and spread their wings to sunbathe.  One began to lay an egg.  I could barely make out the stirring of our two goats but I strained to hear them, wanting to be aware of when they started their day.

     Eventually I fell back to sleep and didn't wake up until 9!  It was already hot in the tent and the lack of indoor plumbing was rapidly becoming an issue.  I headed into the house excited that we had lasted the night out there and hadn't given up.  As soon as I walked through the door I was greeted by a blast of central air conditioning.  That's more like it, I thought.  After all, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Outside of My Comfort Zone

     I have been contemplating writing a blog for some time.  I had  the idea that it would chronicle my transformation from city girl to country girl after we moved to New York from Massachusetts.  Only that never happened.  Not the transformation and not the blog.  Sure I can now identify many chickens by breed and I know more about goats in rut than I ever wanted to know, but inside not that much changed.  The idea of a blog was still there though.  I started thinking about what I like to read and then inspiration struck!  I love a good memoir, specifically a memoir where the writer details making a lifestyle change or embarking on a personal pilgrimage of sorts.  Wild by Cheryl Strayed, The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball, and Life From Scratch by Sasha Martin are a few of my favorites.  So I began to wonder what I could change about the way I am living my life and what might happen if I did make a change.  The answer was clear.  I needed to step outside my comfort zone and outside was the magic word.

     I made the decision to go outside at least once every week and blog about it.  Walking from the house to the van was not enough.  I needed to go outside and have an experience.  This may not sound like much to most people which is why I need to explain myself.  I hate being outside.  Like all capital letters HATE.  I love the great indoors.  I love climate control and staying clean and sitting down.  When I have a choice between an indoor and outdoor activity, zero times out of 100 do I choose the outdoor option.  So this new plan of mine is going to be a challenge.  

     In a huge burst of excitement I shared my idea with my 15 year old son, Harper.  He knows me well enough to know the difficulty of what I was about to do; writing on the computer and spending time outdoors.  I don't do either one.  He smiled and said sarcastically, "That will be a walk in the park".  With that, my blog was born.