Covered in sawdust and gear grease and dressed in baggy shorts not long enough to hide skinny white legs sticking out below, scraped up knees and all. Skin like rawhide and at times, admittedly, a personality to match.

This is no hot date.

These are two videos I took yesterday of us at the mill for anyone curious what our hot times look – and sound – like. In this case, loud. Yes, we wear ear protection. Bob is already hearing impaired. I can’t afford to be too.

My cinematography sucks, but that’s not what it’s about. It’s just an attempt to show you how it works.

There’s a sign I found a few years back that I just had to have and hung at the entrance to our ranch.

“Beware of the wife,” it reads, and if you know, you know it’s no joke. Depending on what mood I’m in, how tired I am, how late it is, and how late you are.

Still, I’ve been told more than once,”She cleans up well.” I think that was a compliment. I think?

In any case, this week found us dirtier than usual, arguing out of short tempters and frustration, not with one another but from working with rotten wood, in the heat and wondering why we’re doing this – and how the hell are we going to make it work. And of course, taking it out on each other. That’s the downside of partnership, of working with the one you love. They get the brunt of it, whatever “it” may be. We both are guilty of this. And working alongside one another as we’ve done for over twenty years, when the going gets rough, you can’t just walk away.

I wouldn’t want to if I could.

The comfort in commitment. The joy in being able to make each other smirk and smile, laugh and long, even during a downright dirty day. That’s good stuff.

Comfort in commitment… above and beyond love, and that’s the absolute essence. There’s commitment to habit and routine as well.

This is mine.

Early morning.

The alarm rouses me before the roosters. Right now that’s just past five. Slowly outside shapes emerge in shades of gray. Colors are slow to awaken. It’s a while still before sun graces the top of the farthest hill I can see from this little land tucked in as womb along the untamed river.

Now is the quiet time after frogs have settled and before robins wake. Even the dogs still sleep. The only sound is the river, humming as a steady wind. It is a time of tranquility, as if life on hold, the pause between the inhale and the exhale. It is a time to get in yoga and meditation practice, sharing the mat with two dogs and two cats. It is a time to softly putter about the cabin, often lit only by the setting moon or a single flickering flame. Time to get the wood stove going and the kettle on, coffee ready before Bob wakes, then time to write (often by candle light) before heading out to care for chickens and horses and walk the dogs.

Comfort comes in the familiar, in sounds like rain on the metal roof when I’m still in bed and the ticking of the cast iron woodstove contracting, a signal for me to put another log on the fire.

I like routine. It’s a safe place. In a world filled with chaos and conflict and unknowns, this is my solid ground, my foundation, a cradle that gives me some sense of stillness and calm. A time to be and breathe before the dirt and grease, sawdust and sweat, grit and grind.

The quiet before the noise.

(If you saw that video of the mill, you know what I’m talking about.)

Late afternoon.

Taking a break, laying back on lush grass, together with a couple of dogs.

Long golden shadows. Big cumulus clouds like plumes of smoke growing and gathering. The air is perfumed with blossoms of wild madrone and apple. Oak leaves suddenly full and waving in the wind as abundant undergrowth comes to life. The first of the turtles and gopher snakes cross the dirt road. Wild geese have come to rest among chickens and horses on pasture of the greenest grass I’ve ever seen. The puppy plays with the big old dog (funny because the big old one was the young one just a few years ago), and mama hen pecks in the grass with her five little chicks around her.

Sawdust and the sound of the mill feel far away. This feels like a dream. A dream I didn’t know was in me.

Get real. It’s unreal.

Who’s to say what’s real?

Living in a place which most days feel pretty dreamy, we’re often told this isn’t real.

Okay then, what is?

“It’s not the real world,” they may say of this kind of life, this place, how folks like us chose to live.

I get it. Growing up in the suburbs just outside “the” city, I didn’t know a life like this was possible, didn’t know this world existed.

“Grow up and get a real job,” you’re taught.

“Wake up and get real,” people tell you.

“C’mon… get over it… join the real world,” is what you hear.

Took growing up for me to figure out what “real” really was.

Am I living a dream? I dunno. Pinch me. I’m awake. Seems pretty real to me. And at the same time, sure enough, this is a dream come true.

Guess you gotta start by having dreams. Boy, did (and do) I.

I dream. Then get to work. Hard work. Willing to live with dirt and bugs, blood and bruises, and regular cold and wind; live in cars and tents, mud shacks and mobile homes in someone else’s back yard; live without indoor plumbing, central heating and heaven forbid, luxuries like hair dryers, coffee makers and cell phone service. “Live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later,” we once read. I am willing to try.

That’s what dreaming has meant for me. That was the price I paid. And I wouldn’t change a thing.

Everyone’s got their own price, their own path, their own definition of what “living a dream” might be. I don’t know what that means for you. I just hope you’re living it too.

If not, there’s still time.

Who says you’re too old (or young or poor or whatever the excuse)?

I don’t ever want to stop growing up. And I don’t ever want to be stuck being grown up, either.

Growing up doesn’t mean to me now what it meant when I was young. Maybe because now I’m easily as old as what I thought grown ups were supposed to be, but I sure don’t feel like them. Then I thought grown up meant boring and stuffy and sensible shoes, clean jeans and finger nails and well groomed hair, sitting at a desk all day and raking leaves on weekends; cocktails promptly at five o’clock and nothing much gets done after that. No thanks. That’s not for me.

As a kid, too, I remember thinking that being grown up was some required state of feeling like you know it all, losing that sense of curiosity, wonder, and awe. I haven’t felt that, and hope I never do because the moment we feel we know it all, have all the answers and/or have the right to speak our truth as if it were “the” truth, we start closing. We stop seeing. Stop hearing. We lose our sense of wonder and we turn into old farts. Not the most eloquent choice of words, but you get the point.

What makes life living more than curiosity, wonder and awe?

And of course, love.

That’s the magic of life. The hot and spicy. The zip and zesty. The fascination and enchantment that makes life worth living.

That childlike sense of openness.

The beginners mind.

Finding magic every day.

Making magic, too.

The ability to laugh at dumb jokes. And laugh at yourself.

The reminder to smile warmly at strangers, and enjoy watching kids and puppies play.

The nudging to just let it go when you’re cut off at the end of a passing lane or that parking spot you were vying for is taken before you can back in.

It’s taking time to smell the roses, watching baby geese take their maiden voyage, laying back in the grass or against the front steps with your eyes closed and listening to crickets on a still summer eve.

It’s listening to the same old stories from an old man or same old jokes from your partner, and still chuckling every time.

It’s having your breath taken away as a pair of red tail hawk do their courtship dance overhead or watching thunderheads build for the first time this year gracing us with an unexpected blast of thunder so sudden the puppy barks.

It’s accepting that you’ll never know it all, control it all, or do it all, but having fun trying, maybe failing, and trying again.

If missing out on any of that is what growing up means, I’m glad it didn’t happen to me.

Growing up is a work of art, fluid and ever changing, like an endless emerging of butterfly wings.

It’s not a place we get to – you know, as in “being there.” Rather, it’s an evolution that lasts as long as we are blessed to live our one wild life.

Now it’s the end of the week. We’ve kissed and made up. And washed up. Even got a little rain to keep down the dust and water the garden without moving a hose.

Now we’re back out there, getting ready to stack the next load of boards and beams for Bob to take to Colorado. All the bells and whistle and gears and grease are doing what they’re supposed to do. The broken rototiller remains broken but we borrowed the neighbor’s working one. (Thank you, George.) The garden shines and grows, somehow joyously. And looks like we finally figured out a floor plan we can build in one season with the material we’ve been working to amass.

Keep on keeping on.

It’s what we do. Would I want it any other way?

I choose to keep living the life we live and love doing what we’re doing, with wonder and awe, feeling fulfilled and full of joy by doing what we do, together.

All of it. The ups and downs and ins and outs and round and rounds and all.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin