Isolation

The summer is coming to an end. A few short weeks until September arrives, and with it, the start of our fall hunting routines. I'm excited for grouse season, garden harvests, our first frosts, the equinox, duck camp with the whole Williams clan, and the mister and I's birthdays. We turn thirty this fall you know!

This evening, as the mister was off working yet another night shift, the girls and I went for a walk. There is rain coming in for the next couple days, and the evening was dim with the first light layer of clouds drawn across the sky. The warm breeze off the ponderosa pine and bitterbrush hills, combined with the somewhat dim lighting and a hint of humidity in the air, reminded me of some lonely late summer evenings nearing the end of my masters. How great it is to live in the same habitat that I fell in love with tracking my beloved gophersnakes. How unfortunate it is that that habitat is so dang far from home.

I'm feeling lonely these days. Life with a little one does that, I know. I've been here before. That's the nice thing about doing this whole little baby thing for the second time. Not only is it easier the second time around, but I know that it was harder last time and I still got through it. I am a Katy after all. I get through things, it's just what I do.

Speaking of getting through things. I'm in a season of life right now where close friends are hard to come by. Well, I have them, but they are just far away, and in vastly different places in their lives. My old friends that is. Oh, I've got friends here, a couple are even good friends, really nice people, but they are new. You know that feeling of having known a friend close to forever? Yeah, that kind of friend is somewhat lacking from my way-out-west-in-a-different-country life.

Also lacking even around here is friends who have the same family situation as me. A part of that right now means having a toddler and a little bitty baby. Part of it means trying to homestead. So when a family with two littles around the same age as my girls moved in just down the road, and seemed to be living a minimalist, earthy lifestyle on a seriously renovated bus, I was pretty excited. They move away tomorrow. They were just here for a very short time, and we only got to see them a couple times, and really barely met them, but they made my heart yearn for that not-alone feeling that comes from having people around you striving for similar goals. Having friendly close-by neighbors, especially ones who are in the same life stage.

I'm rambling, but them moving away, or really the dream of what they could have been in my mind now having to fade, has had me sad at the what-might-have-beens, and somewhat irked anew at the unfortunate realities of life where we are, and the demographic split we exist perched between here. There really isn't anything for me to do, except maybe venture out of my comfort zone to stop by and gift them a farewell present from the gardens, and focus back on my little family, our gardens, our animals, our property. After all, even this loneliness is only a brief season in life. I have to believe that...

Now the little who isn't quietly sleeping on my front right now wants to play make believe, so I'd better go play L's house with her, where she is L (her friend at daycare), and I am L's mom... After all, I do love my life, even when it's feeling too isolated.