A Country Hallelujah.

There's so much I want to say about living out here in the country, where there is room to roam and skies to awe, but it feels a little bit like trying to introduce you to someone I don't know very well yet. We are still just getting to know each other, the country and I, even though there is a part of me deep down that feels like I've been a part of this place my whole entire life.

It definitely has been a bit like a reunion to me. I grew up under big open skies full of fresh quiet air. My brothers and I, we spent countless hours prowling the sagebrush foothills- picking pathways through their mazes or sledding right over top of them when the snow got waist deep.

The giddy joy on the boy's faces as they pound the soft ground out here- scanning every stick for weapon-potential and testing every tree for climbability- makes my heart ring. The note it rings is an old one, one I haven't heard in awhile... it is one of carefree happiness, inspired by nothing but God's creation.

The air cools and the toys gather dust inside. There are just too many leaves to examine and too many rocks to throw. The Summer kept us cooped, but the Fall whistles for us to come out. We follow and explore and grow more comfortable with the nooks & crannies of the land.

For me, more than anything else, it is the sky. I am enraptured by it every evening, standing on the corner of the rock trying to press every color into my memory bank for all time, knowing that the very next night will find me there once again, doing the exact same thing. What a gift it has been, to enjoy the sky again. I have always found more beauty above my head than anywhere else, and for years I could only see slivers of my love- cut through with powerlines and blotted out by neighboring roofs. To see her again- all full and unblemished, is almost too sweet for words, and yet at the same time, it makes me want to write book after book after book after book...

I want to learn how to garden. I want to get me some chickens. I want to string long strands of clear globe lights from one end of this place to the other, so that I can still go on enjoying every inch of it after the sun disappears.

Truman tumbled right off this bridge the other day. He left a little Trumie-sized imprint in the foliage right below. I don't know why I'm even telling you that. He didn't even cry. The imprint he left behind is pretty much the only way I even knew that he'd plopped right off the edge- sort of like Wile E. Coyote's outline in the dirt every time he fell off those 6,925 ft. cliffs. haha.

S'mores are the new normal. Fireside date nights are the new 'dinner & a movie'. Everything out here feels slower, simpler. I must say, however, that the scorpions have been a little hard to get used to. (I spared you all the pictures I have of these evil little tiny-devils, yourewelcomeverymuch.) We've had the house sprayed a couple of times now though, and they are becoming few & far between. For all who may be curious: Wide Open Country + Little Country House = Creepy Crawly Central Station! (Carry the one.)

I am grateful. Very grateful. I feel so lucky to be here, and so incredibly glad that I am not the one steering this ship of life. If I'd have had my way from the beginning of this recent journey, we probably wouldn't have ended up here for such a time as this. God knows more than my heart does. He is wiser than my most far-reaching plans.

Hallelujah.