My new neighborhood... on a storm day... at dusk.

After living on the mountain for six years, it is taking some getting used to, living down here in civilization… in a housing tract… with street lights… and traffic noise… no absolute quiet or absolute darkness at night… no big owl hooting far off in the trees as I fall asleep.  I miss the drive down to work reviewing my day ahead, consulting my spirit guides.  I miss the longer drive home, listening to NPR, watching for golden eagles.

But there have been a few consolations….

Two years before I moved I found a set of wind chimes—big, serious wind chimes—at a curio shop far out in the desert while on my way to Randsburg.  I paid $60 for them—even though I knew I would not hang them until I left the mountain, as my lease with the Forest Service prohibited doing so.  Made by Grace Notes Chimes, Inc., they produce a gorgeous pentatonic scale when the wind wafts across them.  If you click here and then click on “Listen to the Chimes,” you can listen to them as you read the rest of this post.  A week after I moved in, I pulled them from the box where I’d kept them, waiting, and hung them on the back patio.  Their music has been the score for this period of transition.

On the same day I hung the chimes, I set up my composter, which sat empty far too long up on the mountain.  I realize this isn’t something most folks would get excited about.  But I love to play in the dirt.  And knowing that I am just weeks away from planting some fine elements of dinner (which have grown in soil nourished by my tea leaves and strawberry tops and banana peels) gives me a whole lot of goodness to look forward to.

And today I rode my bike to work for the second time this week.  The thirty-minute uphill ride in crisp morning air is just what the doctor ordered for my lungs.  And it’s all downhill on the way home.  Now, instead of filling up twice a week, I’m filling up once every two weeks.

Bestest of all, I can see my kids and grandkids more often.  A couple of weeks after I moved in, Ezra stopped by on his way home from work.  I made him dinner.  That went a long way to taking the sting out of moving away from my raccoons and bluejays.

And oh—my new home is very near the reservoir in Ontario.  A few mornings ago, as I walked outside to take the trash cans to the curb (another novelty, not having to pack out my own trash), I heard a Canada goose fly by overhead.  (You can see and hear one here; scroll down and click on "Sound," then scroll down again and click the first tab for "Honks... and Flight Calls.")  I haven’t heard one in the sky for over a decade.  I took that moment as a blessing, and later that afternoon as I was on my daily walk around the neighborhood and saw a goose floating languidly in the reservoir, I took that as a blessing as well.  A goose is a far cry from a golden eagle, perhaps.  But both are just as wild.