Each day, I feel closer to saying goodbye to my beautiful farm, to letting go of it and setting off with Maria and the animals on a new adventure.  The farm is letting me go, and I am letting it go and this is not, I know, easy or simple for either of us. My very soul is in the ground here. But I am restless, eager. I want to understand the mysteries of life and I think the choice thrust upon most of is is to seek that path, or the other path. To fear the mysteries of life and run, crossing to safety wherever we can. We either dare or we don’t dare, and there are so many voices telling us why we cannot, should not, must not dare to answer the call to life. It is, after all,  terrifying.  I understand it, I don’t judge anyone who chooses to avoid it.

For me, the rewards have been great – love, light, feeling and emotion, a different kind of creativity, a deepening spiritual connection to the animal world that is bringing me new understanding of life and death every day. All of this is beginning to infuse my writing. It was so often missing before. If the rewards are great, so is the fear, loss, pain and suffering. But that is a struggle story, and I have become allergic to that. Yesterday I sat with my friend Warren Cardwell as he lay dying and never once did he suggest that death was unfair, that he was not ready, that he had suffered too much or suffered at all. I have no complaints, he whispered to me, I lived my life. No reason to grieve that life, I thought.

A beautiful epitaph, one for me to live up to. When I came to Bedlam Farm, I set out on the hero journey. I was seeking love and connection. I was seeking to free the artist inside of me. I was seeking a deeper understanding of the world so I could write my books with more depth and feeling. I was seeking maturity, clarity,  integrity, authenticity. I am not there yet, no human gets there, I think, but I know it is time for the next step, the move to the next place.  Life is short, life is precious. Yesterday I cried over an e-mail I got from a wonderful woman was terrified to adopt a child until she read the blog and thought about fear and challenge, and she decided her love was more important than her fear, and she loves her new child deeply. How humbling and shocking that message was.

So I will keep going. The people who love the farm are coming, they are near, I can feel them. I am shedding the fear that breeds caution and gloom and struggle. I see the light everywhere, and it is calling to me, as it did yesterday on the way to my balloon ride and I looked up and saw the light rising over the Champlain Canal and jumped out of the car to capture it.