Part one.
Our intention was to be here forever. We were building what was to be our forever home.
When I married Bob, I thought I was also marrying the mountain. The two were close to one.
I have since learned there is a connection between man and land, but the two are not inseparable. It is a connection created only in the minds of those seeking something solid to hold. A meaning and importance, connection and definition.
But the land does not define us. We only use the land to describe ourselves, find meaning in a more universal sense, one that others can comprehend and characterize. A false and temporary explanation of self. The exterior as a mode of classifying the interior. As a shell that does no more than contain and protect that which lives within.
We are both learning to re-write these labels, and learn who and what we truly are, not based on the walls we built and the mountains we climb.
How do we, then, define ourselves? Somehow we feel lost without the label.
But I am not the mountain.
I am not my husband, not my son, not my dog or horses or job.
I am me.
Of course that’s too ambiguous.
How do I define me except in relation to all these things?
And how when these things are all changing?
Will I remain the same?
Do we ever?
For now I don’t know who or what I am.
And now I recal the words of Cyndee sharing the image of the horse running free, when all four feet are in flight, above the earth, ungrounded, unbound, exhilarated…
Gin Getz 
It is difficult to define who I am because that seems to always be in flux. That’s a good thing though, it keeps life from getting dull. Love the picture!
Ha, no doubt, Sandy… not dull, never dull… used to wonder what it felt like to be bored, but glad it’s not something I’m familar with, and imagine – you too!
Now we are opening the door to deep philosophy. Who are we? I think that part of the answer is: consciously the sum of personal experiences and relationships all modified over time as we go through life; unconsciously the larger sum of centuries of cultural experience plus instincts gained over millennia. What you are seeing is described by Lewin’s Equation (Behaviour is a function of a person and his/her Environment). Remember that you are the Person, not the Behaviour – all that thoughts and deeds provide are a mirror to look into as Environment prods and provokes – your symptoms to decode the reality and complexity of self. It isn’t meant to be easy!
You are so right, Julian – it is NOT easy, but how shallow our lives would be without. Your explanation, the philosophy you share, I agree with, and believe a good look inside ourselves support this. Who are we? Each a delicate balance of essences we are born with, combined with experience we go through – some being our choice, but then the next question raised – are all? I think not.