Perhaps I have become a minimalist in my old age or some transformation has overtaken me that I have yet to identify, but I have claimed a new home and while I appreciate the old one, I am immensely happy with the new.

I was born and raised on the east coast. My father was an explorer of sorts, with little concern for comfort or luxury but an insatiable appetite for experience that was instilled in him from his childhood as a missionary’s son living overseas.

I spent countless hours camping and hiking, from my early childhood through my teens. It was my favorite pastime to be outside and while other teens were at the mall, I would load my dog in the car and go to the mountains and hike to the highest point I could find and spend hours just sitting and looking out over the landscape.

It was a gift my father gave to me. An appreciation for the world we live in.

A teacher, Dad didn’t have a lot of money, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him from showing his children everything he could and he made the world our classroom.

When school vacations came around, we threw a tent in the car with sleeping bags, some canned food and some dry staples and off we went, his heart filled with adventure and his wallet often filled with nothing more than a hope and a prayer.

We scoured the east coast, exploring  all day and at night, camped at state parks where it was free or inexpensive. 

By the time I was 9 I had learned about Paul Revere’s ride, the Liberty Bell, the Salem Witch Trials, The Mayflower, the Statue of Liberty, the White House, Lincoln, Gettysburg and the Civil War, Jamestown, Kentucky race horses, Monet and Renoir, from being there and seeing them.

I had been to the Air and Space (where I tasted astronaut ice cream, yuk!), The Natural History and all the Smithsonian museums and attended countless multicultural festivals and symphonies.

But we didn’t just head to the highlights, we stopped everywhere in between.

We caught lobsters in Massachusetts, ogled Pandas gifted to the U.S. by China, pet the calvary horses at Arlington Cemetery, and reindeer in the Appalachian mountains.

I learned woodland survival skills, how to find and identify medicinal and edible plants, how to treat a snakebite and the simple stuff like how to build a lean-to and a fire. 

I still have fond memories of running down the roads in Connecticut, scooping up salamanders by the hundreds and putting them in buckets with my little brother, flipping rocks in creeks to see who could find the most crawdaddys, staying up late to try and catch fireflies or the occasional Luna moth, and waking up to a trail of hoof prints from curious wild ponies, left in the sand around our sleeping bags on Assateague Island.

My love of the forests and mountains was unrivaled.

Until in my pre-teens, we made a trip out west, seeing Texas, New Orleans, the Mississippi, Mexico and everything in between.

It was my first time away from the east coast and it affected me deeply.

Always used to seeing dense, lush forests and mountains with streams and rivers and rolling green hills, I was shocked at how absolutely beautiful I found the flat, dry, wide expanse of the midwest.

There was a freedom to it and an openness I had never experienced before. In some way, I imagined it being like Africa, just a wide open world with no boundaries or cluttered, cumbersome civility.

It unraveled the microscopic, compartmentalized perspective I had always had of the world, but never realized I had.

And I felt sorrow seeing it disappear in the rearview mirror and promised I would be back.

In my teens I joined with a teen church group headed to the Navajo Nation in Arizona and spent a glorious two weeks working in the July sun to replace a roof on a church, just so I could see it and experience it one more time.

And again, I promised I would be back.

As an adult, I was ecstatic at the chance to return yet again, not knowing or caring what Clovis had to offer, as long as it was in the southwest.

And I have not been disappointed. 

When I drive just a click outside of town and see a hawk perched on a fence post out in the open, I often pull over to the side of the road and watch until he stretches his wings and rises in search of prey.

And on occasion I have poked my head into an abandoned house or two, thrilled to be greeted by a pair of amber eyes in the rafters framed by a seemingly all knowing face twisting around to look down at me.

The sparseness of the land spotlights the beauty and exposes things, like birds of prey, that I always knew existed on the east coast but only caught fleeting glimpses of as they sought cover in the trees.

The sunsets and the storms, unmarred by mountains and trees, surround you, making you part of them.

I’ll not deny, the wind gets to me, and the mud after the rains is not exactly my favorite either, but I will gladly take 10 windy days for one day of pure sunlight and endless earth that extends further than the human eye can fathom.  

The surreal green that rises from the ground and the flowers that spring out of the dry grasses after only a brief rain shower and the colors I took for granted and never appreciated before.

I hold dear those childhood memories of mountains and forests and meadows and rivers but I am making new ones from mountains of clouds, the smoothness of dry playas, the glistening gold of rippling grass in the morning sun and a world bathed in the color of the setting sun.

And I’m learning, maybe less is more.

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