A little downtime on the bayou

There is a certain kind of magic that happens when you travel out of your comfort zone - both physically and mentally. Mountains and hills bring a kind of steady, solid comfort. They've been there forever, they change slowly. So slowly that we don't notice. We do notice the changing of the seasons here on Theta Mountain. The leaves change color and drop to reveal the starkness of the bare branches in winter. Spring brings renewed life, green buds start to burst into leaves of all shades of green, flowers bring a riot of color and form, inviting bees and other insects to come drink their fill of nectar. We know summer is on the way when the hummingbirds show up to dazzle us with their jewel-tones feathers.

There is a comfort in these changes. We notice them and can track the changing of the seasons, the turning of the Wheel of the Year. We notice these changes and think "All is right with the world" even though we know it's not because the changes are coming at different times now. Our storms are getting stronger and lasting longer, summer droughts are harsher and longer. Things are getting strange because our climate is changing, and not for the better.

I say all this because sometimes we need to go somewhere we've never gone before, some place strange to us, in order to reset our own clocks and recharge our batteries. Because we need to see something different, so that when we come back home we notice the little things we've forgotten about.

I took an entirely too short trip down to Ocean Springs, Mississippi to visit family the weekend before last. I needed to get away to a place where I wasn't the one making decisions, a place where I could see new things and eat different food - let's face it, mountain food is different than coastal food - and explore a new place. It was exactly the break I needed and I am grateful I had the time and resources to go. A couple of lazy mornings drinking coffee on the veranda overlooking the bayou, going to the docks to buy shrimp and crab fresh off the boats, going to the beach to put my toes in the Gulf of Mexico. It was amazing! Even the air tasted different, felt different in my lungs when I inhaled deeply. Here on the mountain, life is starting to feel crowded and hectic. Down on the bayou, everything felt slower.

This all led me to understand something deeper. We, as a society, seem to have lost our connection to ourselves, our SELF. We have just accepted that we are supposed to work ourselves to death to enrich the people who own the companies, that we are just supposed to trade hours for money - which is almost never enough to pay bills and save. I see this happening a lot here on the mountain. Not far from where we live, a developer is building a subdivision that is made up entirely of rental houses, no one living there will ever own the house in which they live. It feels like we are back to depending on the company store. While we bust our asses trying to keep our heads above water, the owners of the companies for which we work are busy buying their fourth vacation homes or sending penis-shaped rockets into space.

Coming back from Ocean Springs, I made the decision that I was ready to slow down, to quit over-scheduling myself. I needed some hygge in my life.

taking time away from the daily rush to be together with people you care about - or even by yourself - to relax and enjoy life's quieter pleasures.

It's a very Danish concept, and usually applies to their winters. However, I live in the South, where we don't get those kinds of harsh, incredibly cold winters. I am now determined to figure out how to bring hygge into my life, in a very Southern kind of way. I hope you'll join me as we really get into celebrating the turning of the Wheel of the Year and bringing a touch of the South into a hygge lifestyle.