This road changed my life, it was at this spot, on Route 30 that I looked up and saw an old white farmhouse sitting up on a hill overlooking the town of West Hebron. The farmhouse looked old and grand, it was surrounded by four beautiful red barns and pastures.  It seemed a different world then, it was only 2003, I called a realtor on the phone and asked her if this old farm was for sale and she said it wasn’t. Two weeks later, she called me while I was on vacation in Wellfleet, Mass and she told me it had just gone on the market. I bought it over the phone and upended my life and my work. I have learned recently that only dreamers and wanderers on the hero journey buy properties like that any longer.

People don’t really lunge after their dreams, there are too many lawyers, journalists, politicians warning them to be careful, go slow, be wary, mistrust everyone. Times change, I’ve changed. I hope I will always lunge after my dreams. If I had not pursued this one, Maria would not be in my life, I wouldn’t have this blog, or A Dog Year, or Dogs of Bedlam Farm, or Soul Of A Dog, or Rose In A Storm or Second Chance Dog, or Lenore Finds A Friend. I will still be living in New York or New Jersey, a soul-sucking life, a loveless life. I wouldn’t known Simon, the other donkeys, Lenore, Red or Frieda. I wouldn’t have had my Spectacular Crack-Up, taken off my mask, met my magical helpers, be a photographer or have so many wonderful friends.

I have a hunch I would not be alive at all, I was living so self-destructively I think I would have found a way to leave the world, I think I was trying.

We all have to make our own choices, follow our own dreams, take our own plunges off of our own cliffs. I hope I never listen to the lawyers and journalists and Armageddon-peddlers warning me not to live my life. I hope I will always be a dream-chaser to the end, chastened and humbled and awestruck by the crisis and mystery of life, always around the corner.