Simply Mountain People

It’s hard to not feel sentimental at the start of the new year. It’s a time when I get to reflect on who I am and what I have accomplished in order to set new goals for myself. I decided to start 2015, the year of The Bus Life, by quitting my job at Color Me Mine, a cute little pottery studio where I have worked for the past seven years. I’m looking forward to a life of freedom without being tied to a steady job. With this opportunity I hope to rediscover a bit of myself. Maybe I will find it in me to start making art again, or maybe I’ll discover some new passion.

My thoughts lately have been directed towards the simple life of being a kid. I had a great childhood which I quickly forgot as teenager– I wanted to grow up fast and find my independence. After a few years on my own and falling in love with an easygoing hippie, I’ve realized that growing up isn’t as great as I thought it would be. Looking back to when I was young I can remember waking up in the morning, stretching my arms out wide, and thinking to myself, “I have an entire day ahead of me, what am I going to fill it with?” Every day was an opportunity to recognize beauty in the moment and to find new adventures– whether it was collecting treasures off the street and dragging them home in my little red wagon (aka: collecting garbage from the gutter) or making plans with my best friend to run away from home and live in the fort we had built in the field across the street from my house. I remember thinking that every day was the best day I would ever have, and that there was no way I would forget each moment as vividly as it happened.

I get to feel this way again.

The year of the bus life will be finding simple happiness every day– making life a daily adventure.

My heart resinates with the words of Thoreau:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”