Only the shadow knows...

Today is the day.  By tonight, we will have moved into “Flame” – our chosen name for our 1967 Airstream Overlander 26’.   Mother Nature chose a socked in chilly morning for our maiden voyage back to our property… hmmm.  Good thing silver looks good against any setting. 

The dogs are restless this morning, tearing up and down the living room, into the kitchen, out the front door into the mist and back again.  I wonder just how they will tear through a 26’ trailer… More w-a-l-k-s will be called for.  This younger one, the one I will call the “baby dog” until his last breaths (which actually better never come cause I don’t want to be in this world without him but we won’t go there now…) needs lots of activity.  And now, you might think otherwise as he has settled in on the leather love seat next to me – and I am next to David – as I write and David watches a video on steel shipping containers.  Why pack when we can educate ourselves about what is sure to be our first ‘outbuilding’ on the property and will serve as both David’s office and his workshop?  True to form, we will wait until the last minute.  Thankfully, Joleen is coming for 5 hours to help us clean and get out of Dodge.

Back to the shipping containers… we visited the supplier in Denver the other day and picked a relatively new one in forest green.  Not much else can go up as quickly or as economically for the square footage.  I have been somewhat obsessed with shipping container structures ever since seeing the one below.  

Not sure if we will achieve this goal but it’s pretty dang cool.  Who knows, I might even convince David that we should ultimately live in one.  He is not “enrolled” right now, but I can be pretty convincing.  Or rather, I can be like a pit-bull and never ever let go.  Just ask my close friends. 

We plan on adding a small shed as well for my office that can serve as a ‘writers retreat’.  Given that we both home office, working side by side in our snuggly trailer probably wouldn’t work for our multiple daily conference calls.  I suppose we could take turns talking, asking the listener on the other end to hold for a second until it’s our turn to speak.  Although hosting my radio show while sitting next to David as he works might not be the best plan.  Live on air, I could say “shhhhh” to my guest, “it’s not my turn to talk.”  David and I work well together but that might test us beyond reason.  And, this will be the arrangement until we can get our first outbuilding to the site – thus the want of a ready to go structure like a shipping container.  Stay tuned!

So this morning, I stall in getting started with packing.  We still only have a carload full of stuff but it is spread all over this giant house.  We have piles of laundry to do and are taking full advantage of having washer and dryer on site.  Maybe at the trailer, I will learn to do laundry the old fashioned way.  Hand me the washboard, pappa, I am going out to do me some cleanin’.  I have always liked drying clothes in the sun, so this part of the transition will be smooth. 

Tomorrow, I will continue my morning writing routine from Flame.  We will nest, we will “unpack” – and very happily, we will have drawers!  Drawers, after having no drawers for quite a while, are very very exciting.  Under each of the beds (yes, we will be sleeping in twin beds across the aisle from each other a la "I Love Lucy") there are 3 drawers!  Did I mention how excited I am about drawers????  Very.  We will find homes for each one of our remaining objects as well as some of the new things we have accumulated.  I will pack up some of the breakable artifacts we excavated to wait until the one day they can have their very own shelves to reside.  Shelves: another step in development, coming at some point in the future!  Until then, these objects will wait patiently, wrapped in newspaper in one of our friend’s garages.  There aren’t many of these things – I carried out a clay horse head that my mom made in the 70’s.  We found a giraffe sculpture from when I was a baby which was in 3 pieces and collected over the 3 days of sifting.  I scrubbed some of the soot off of it and David glued it together last night.  And, we have the bag full of framed pictures (thanks again to Joleen) that won’t have a home in the trailer.  We need to limit breakable objects, for when that beast of a truck hauls our precious cargo in Flame, the road will be rocky. 

I am ready for this next phase of our adventure.  I am ready to start living on the land and seeing how it goes.  There are still many things to work out and we will check them off the list one by one.  For now, these crazy ranging dogs will need to be on leashes.  I will not tolerate them running off.  My heart can’t take it either.  ASAP, we will get an invisible fence up and running and train these monsters on their new roaming area.  Dogs need their freedom, and I need my peace of mind. 

We need to relate to our property as the vacant, scarred but healing land that it is – and we will nurture it along in its process as much as possible.  We will create places to gather whether by building decks, rock gardens or simply placing benches where we can sit and gaze at the grand view that still remains.  We will settle there as much as possible.  Hopefully we won’t have too many screaming moments where we wonder, “what the heck are we doing????”  Certainly, it would be easier to rent and settle there.  We don’t know what we will do once the summer is over.  And, this is our nature.  We are adventurous souls embarking on a new phase of the journey. 

We will see what happens and where we are mentally and emotionally by the first snow.  We don’t know what is around the next corner.  None of us does, capiche?

Only the shadow knows where this crazy ride will take us.