My home is just a cottage, but it’s located on an acre among ponderosa pines replete with singing birds. Blue and yellow wildflowers make their appearance in the spring. I often stop to appreciate the fact that although my house is not impressive, my eyes can roam an undomesticated landscape. Lots of critters play in the tall grass. From the office window at the back side of my home, I can see one of the smaller mountains in the Cascade range, Black Crater, snowcapped three seasons of the year. I keep on my desk the lava stones I picked up on a hike to its summit. They remind me that a view from the top—symbolizing the summits of my life—is worth the exhausting effort.
Occasionally my Pollyanna optimism about my humble residence gets deflated. I sometimes envy my close friend Abby, another single mom who lives nearby in a custom chateau with a view of the magnificent Three Sisters mountains. I know she too understands that a home is not about external realities but about the quality of perception and devotion. An attitude of passionate engagement combined with what is possible goes a long way. As much as I love dreaming over household wares from Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware, I’m fully aware that a “nice warm” does not come out of a catalog or with a mountain view. It is helped along by mud-pie mentality, the kind of thinking that can create chocolaty confections from raw material at the end of the garden.