We’re feeling rich on everything right now, fat on life, wealthy with time.

With the end of the fire season, we rolled out of the Methow Valley of Washington and moved back to Idaho for the winter!  We arrived at the strawbale house two days ago with the Airstream and raft in tow.

The house itself is nearly unpacked, it feels huge to me.  Our bedroom up in the loft boasts more square footage than the entire Airstream.  This is a one room house and only about 800 square feet or so but the spaciousness is luxurious!  Mostly, I like that we don’t feel a need to fill it up.  The scant amount of furniture we had in the Airstream is now the furniture we have in the house.  We bought a couple of tables from a thrift store to use in what will be my studio work space.  But besides that, the house feels like the inside of a drum into which a few seeds have fallen — it’s so easy for us to shake and bounce around.  I like how the space holds a touch of an echo.  I’d like to keep it that way.  The way the light flows through, in and then out again, feels clean, resonant and sacred.

It’s amazing what I grew accustomed to this summer.  You know, it was basically a communal living situation for us on base.  We had the Airstream (which is still unfinished and the further completion of it will be attended to this winter in a serious way) but we shared a public bathroom and mess hall with everyone who lived on base.  I should add, sometimes there were people OTHER than smokejumpers living on base.  Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night or arrived home late from the studio to find a handful of crews sleeping on the lawn in front of my Airstream or behind it, or beside it — they too, used the facilities as I did.  I got used to a lot of things this summer and some of those life details I liked and some of those life details I tolerated, but I learned about myself and others and friendship and humanity.  It was a great time.

Here, at the strawbale house, it is a heavenly novelty to have a kitchen of my own, pots and pans of my own, a full pantry for food storage instead of a single kitchen cupboard and a shelf in a walk-in fridge.  It’s a novelty to not have to carry a basket of shower implements across a football field length of dewy grass to a public washroom on the other side of the base every morning.  I don’t share laundry machines with anyone.  I don’t keep my towel in a locker.  I can walk around in my undies all day long if I want and how about having my own WIFI connection in my living space so I can actually sit down, any time of day, not just while I am at the studio, and answer the emails that have been rolling in (and mostly unanswered) since the start of August.

How about that?!!

I am slowly righting this ship of life and it’s nice to see things so orderly again…which isn’t saying much because I am generally a very untidy and disorderly person and many of you would be driven fairly insane by the delicious wake of glorious chaos I leave most everywhere I go.  All this is to say, I loved living on base with Robbie in our Airstream this summer.  Now, I’m thrilled to have a place of my own again.

The studio is almost set up.  I’m already romanced dumb by the pounding of the whitewater on the river below the house.  It has been sunny and hot and I’ve grown some new freckles on my nose.  I’ll keep setting life in order here and in the meanwhile, we are packing and preparing for my elk hunt which will commence in a handful of days in the very wildly beating heart of Idaho.

I love this life of ours.

I hope this season you are making your way through is rich as the red leaves on the trees.