Living the Dream...

I thought I was through creating pages for this update to my website, but while I was making some changes to the index on our main page, I discovered a couple of things that surprised me. One was that I hadn’t put any photos up in 2005, and the other was that there was a big gap in what appeared for 2006. This came about because I had changed the way I was creating the regular updates I send to friends via email. In 2006 I began imbedding photos in the email messages, so they didn’t go onto the website, and when I tried to put the files into a webpage, the photos didn’t come right, so they had to be deleted.

Since there are a lot of you out there who love the photos, I’ve decided to put together a page for 2006 that has a few photos and that tells more about what’s been happening with us. It was an exciting year, and it is now almost over, as we are into November already, somehow… it all seems to have flashed by very quickly, because so much happened this year.

The name for this page came to me as soon as I determined I'd create it, because we are "living the dream" now. How many of you can live where you love to vacation? We are living that dream here, for we both love the forest, a rural life, and since this is where Jim can step outside to pursue his love of gold prospecting, exploring and enjoying an outdoors as free of man's imprint as possible, this comes just about as close as you can get. Of course, Alaska was more "wild" but it had some serious drawbacks for us. From the onset of my cancer we began feeling time constraints - or more accurately, the loss of time that was wasted. The confinement of long, harsh winters there grew to be a burden. Here he can find activities outside at any time of year, the less harsh weather is better for my health, and the few drawbacks of this area are ones that we can live with; any area has drawbacks, you just have to find the ones that are most palatable. We love it here, and with almost every day we enjoy living here more, so we feel we are in the right place.

Photo above: The rental house we moved to in December, 2005 in Happy Camp, CA

Early in the year I was very ill, and as soon as I was feeling better I began working hard to gain strength and endurance. I was very frail. Then, beginning in May we began having company, a welcome relief from the painful months that preceded it, and the parade of company through our doors lasted until after summer’s end! We had company visiting from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and probably other states I’ve forgotten, as well as local friends and members of both my family and Jim’s. It was absolutely great. We spent a good deal of our time out on the deck of our rental house, and it was a wonderfully pleasing place to spend time. The huge trees shaded it most of the day, and there was pretty much a steady stream of beautiful flowers blooming, as well as dogwood trees, most of the summer. Even when there were no blooms the huge forest trees, the beautiful large ferns, shrubs and flowers against the cool bright green of the lawn made it very pleasant. I was able to bring a nice remembrance of the flowers in that yard when we moved. We had the largest Hydrangea bushes I’ve ever seen, approaching nine feet tall, with huge, beautiful blooms, so I cut many of them, and brought them with me. I dried them and found a great way to do this, especially since I had so many large ones. We have a clothesline that’s stretched from the front porch to a large cedar tree, with pulleys at each end. The line is actually circular, so if you pull on it, it moves the opposite side away from you. I clipped each bloom upside down to the line with clothespins and let them hang there to dry. Most of it is in shade so it worked well, and the circulation dried them fast, and they look just as they did fresh. I have bouquets of them scattered throughout the house, a treat for the eye.

We had a lot of animal life, but the real treat for us, as far as animals went while we were there, were the deer. Evidently a number of people living in that area feed them regularly, and we had four buck deer that spent a great deal of time at our place all summer long. These guys were there most days for lunch, and then to lie down on the cool lawn in the shade for a long nap. They often hung around for dinner, and most of them would eat from Jim’s hand. They were of varying ages, but the one who spent most time with us was one we called “The Old Man.” He was the oldest of them, and had seven points, total. He had a beautiful face, a majestic stance, and became a good friend. If we were eating lunch out on the deck he’d come right up to the fence and peek through wanting to try whatever we were having. He discovered he loved biscotti that way! They visited regularly right up until we moved, and when we made the last trip back to that house to finish cleaning it early in September, all four of them were up on the mountainside somewhere, and came thundering down to greet us as Jim, Anita and I sat on the deck eating the lunch we’d brought with us. We had little we could give them. Some lettuce and remains of our lunch, and a few precious biscotti for the old man we found in the truck. It was enough, however, and afterward they took a last nap on the lawn as we finished up at the house. It really wrenched our hearts to leave them they had become such close friends. We prayed for them all during hunting season, and hope they all made it through safely.

We had some birds here, but there is so much that blooms in this area, and so profusely, that we didn’t get the birds we normally do to the feeders. Except for the hummingbirds, that is. We put two hummingbird feeders on the deck just outside two of the living room windows, so they’d be very close for Missy, our cat to watch. She was only inches away from them, but separated by a window screen, of course (she’s an “inside” cat). She loved it and they soon learned that she could not reach them, and in fact seemed to taunt her – you could just hear them laughing as she “bonked” into the screen, while they flew away. There were almost a dozen of them here, and sometimes there would be six or eight of us sitting around the table on the deck, with hummingbirds busily buzzing through and around us as they protected their right to feed at the feeders. They didn’t let all the people deter them at all, and became very used to all of us.

The real treat of the summer was the people, of course, and I’m really sorry now that we don’t have photos of them all. At the time we were simply too busy visiting and having fun to take photos!

It was truly a summer to be remembered. Jim and I tried this morning to remember everyone who visited this summer, and came up with Scotty and Becky Whalin, George and Norma White, Tom and Julia Quintal, a miner called “Klink,” Ron and Joan Watson, Leonard Leeper, a couple from Santa Rosa whose names escape me (don’t you just hate it when that happens?), Jim’s sister Linnet Lockhart, my uncle John McClure, my brother Everett Rogers, my two sons and their families; Tom and Carol ???, Gerald and Judy Shirey, Harley and Mickey Mullen and last but not least, Lee and Anita Kracher (Crocker) who spent a whole lot of wonderful time with us off and on all summer, and AJ London, who is still here, and actually still spending a lot of time with us.

Because Lee and Anita were here a lot of the time, and Anita was so helpful to me, a lot of the credit for the gains I made in my health this summer goes to her. Her example inspired me to do more and more, and I made great strides instead of the smaller steps I’d have taken on my own. She was a wonderful help at all times, in all ways, and I am missing her companionship now.

I've spent quite a bit of time the last few years trying new foods, and that came about because I began watching The Food Network in those periods of time when I was ill and couldn’t do much moving around. So, when all these people began arriving this last summer, it was an excellent time to try some new recipes out on them. We had some wonderful meals, too. I only remember one recipe that didn’t go over with everyone, and since it was brand new I only tried it out on our friends Lee and Anita. It was a potato dish that sounded interesting, and involved a tangy sauce they marinated in, and then were served in, at room temperature. Anita and I loved it, but it was too tangy for Jim and Lee. We certainly expanded our food palettes this year, and since we’d finally purchased a new grill (after leaving our other one in Alaska 3 years ago), Jim began making more of our foods on the grill. He began roasting larger cuts of meat out there like whole chickens, pork loin roasts, and beef. He also grilled more vegetables out there, because we discovered we loved roasted vegetables last year, and all of those came out great, too. I also don’t have any photos of the food, but I’ll work on that in the future.

The summer ended on a very sad note, however, when longtime friend Lesa Barton died early in September, of the same cancer I have. Lesa was a truly wonderful person, and as sweet as they come. She will be greatly missed by a lot of people, and I found myself slipping into depression shortly afterward when I became ill.

After we moved the end of August I eventually did too much, got into too much dust for my allergies, and ended up in October with bronchitis. It was disappointing to me because I loved all the activity of the summer, and had many plans for my "new-found" strength and energy. I’m still trying to get over it, and in the meantime it has given me the time needed to make all these updates to my website, so there are blessings in all that happen. We’ve been enjoying the wonderful fall colors here now, the return of cool weather and crisp days, and just in the last two days finally, the rain has come. Not hard rain, but the slow steady rain that is the norm for this area. Everything will have a good drink now, and will brighten up again after the heat of late summer. It’s a lovely time of year. Now it's time to gain back what I've lost, and go on to add to it.

Okay, now you have a better picture of how we spent our summer! It was glorious, it was fun, and it was hectic. We have wonderful memories, made lots of new friends, and for the first time in many years, at times at least, we could forget the word "cancer." Thank you to all of you who helped make that possible.

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