Living My Fantasy

For the past four months I've enjoyed a life-long fantasy of living on a lake.  While it wasn't quite my exact fantasy of being able to walk out my back door and jump off the end of the dock, it was pretty darn close.  A very short walk and I was at the boat slip where my kayak was waiting for me.  And my longer walks wound through tall pines and mountain "cabins" (even the multi-million dollar places are called cabins).  Fantasies, however, never include mosquitoes, crowds or v-boats.  Reality does.

A friend of mine has an incredible outdoor living space, complete with Bali bed and a dining area that invites long, slow Sunday mornings with fruit salad and the New York Times.  It has become one of my fantasies.  When I found a place in the foothills with six different outdoor living areas, that fantasy roared to life.  Now I'm half-way into the reality of it and a wonderful reality it is.  Last night I sat on the porch looking at the milky way with no city or neighborhood lights detracting from the show.   And this morning, I sit on my front porch writing this.  However, my body aches from the last several days of moving and the pod I see in front of me is a hulking reminder of the work still to be done. And, when that is done, there are flowers to be watered and someone planted two trees that will eventually obstruct the view so they need to be moved.

Fantasies are almost always static things ... air-brushed, two-dimensional moments in time that we frame and look at when where we are is too messy or uncomfortable.  Fantasies are powerful things.  They call to us and give us the energy we need to change and explore.  But, expecting a fantasy to be perfection leads us into an endless chase since there are always those pesky mosquitoes.  Better far to see the perfection in mosquitoes ... and what a challenge that can be!

Bottomline note to self:  fantasies are not reality -- there are always trade-offs.  The grass may look greener on the other side but once we're there, the greener grass is suddenly still on the other side.  Stop where you are and savor the grass beneath your feet ... whether it be green or California "gold."




About the image:  Seduced by Spring.  This is one of the series of photographs I shot that convinced me that I had to move back to the Sierra foothills.