Okay, do it

  September 14, 2008 – It is raining, heavily. The sheep are in the pole barn, the cows are under the feeder, the dogs are dozing in the farmhouse. I am writing, planning to go to Woodstock, N.Y. to the Dog House Gallery to see some of Ellie Steffens’s paintings, some of which are oil paintings of some of the animals of Bedlam Farm. Tomorrow, I hope to finish “Soul of A Dog,” and send it off to New York, and the first reporters descend on my life for the book tour for “Izzy & Lenore.” I am feeling lucky, challenged, eager to move forward with my work, my photos and my life.
   I’ll be posting every night on the book tour to the Farm Journal. I’m bringing my camera and computer. You get asked a lot of questions on a book tour, and I have to begin preparing myself to answer them.
   Each book is an expression of a point in life, and “Izzy & Lenore” is one of the most important, to me. This passage began with “Running to the Mountain,” which seems to have been written a long time ago, and I shake my head when I think back on that little cabin, and my labs, Julius and Stanley, both dead now.
   A lot has happened to me since then. I came up here seeking things, and some I haven’t found, and some I have found. This life has been rewarding, painful, challenging, important.
   Our world is not supportive of change or risk. We live in a security conscious culture, and once you learn there is no real security outside of yourself, life begins to make sense, at least to me. We make our own security, and are responsible for our own lives. We are as happy as we wish to be. Or as sad. Or as honest. Or afraid.
  So I might as well life my life, and perhaps, you might as well live yours, although that is not for me to day. I will be busy furiously sending signals to the world, as I am meant to do.