There is the question of where to live next. I am putting my house up for sale in the spring. That’s the extent of my plan so far. As to where I will go after that, I have it narrowed down to a place where people are happy and a place that has a healthy appreciation for music. It’s an unspoken given that it must have an abundance of natural areas and I believe it will be in northern Michigan.
I do, of course, need to work, and unless the right job in the right place happens to come along, I may end up just moving myself, so that instead of traveling north to work each day, perhaps I’ll travel south, or east, with the job at the center of my circle. I have wanted to live in a town along Lake Michigan’s shore for many years, and experience the Big Lake for all four season, and keeping my current job would allow me that experience if I were to move myself temporarily to a place along the shore. It’s not as far north as my heart is calling, but it would certainly give me a bit of time getting to know the Lake on a daily basis, until I can move without the hindrance of my current job’s location, or until I know where I truly want to go.
These thoughts fill my mind as I find myself at the shore again this bitterly cold November day. I hike first up a steep path through the woods that takes me out to a great view of the lake from a high dune. The erosion is incredible – there is virtually no shoreline here anymore, in just one season, and the cliff edge that’s been created is a good 30 feet drop off, replacing what used to be a gradual decline to the water’s edge across a wide expanse of sandy beach. One season, and so much has changed.
The water is dark with sand and silt, as the huge swells heave and break again and again, bringing debris from possibly hundreds of miles away. It is a fitting display for my mood and churning thoughts, which seem to be dredging up desires ranging far and wide.
I head back inland and down to a second path that leads me on a winding forest trail, which will again take me to a high vantage point above the crashing water. The path is longer, and the forest seems to cloak itself around me in a quiet unusual for such a windy day, but the trees have mostly lost their leaves and there is only the creaking of the treetops high above and whoosh of the wind as I crunch along the path contemplating my past and my future.
Lately I’ve had people mention Hawaii to me, as a place I would “love”. This seems unlikely, other than the amazing hiking – but the lack of snow and fresh water I think would not be a good fit. Arizona has also been coming up a lot, specifically with people suggesting that I would love it there. I’ve been so set on Michigan that these wildly different suggestions are jarring me, which is probably good. I even happen to stumble on a potential job advertised in Flagstaff. A small little flame ignites, turning in my mind – could this be a sign? It doesn’t feel like it. In my gut, I don’t think Arizona is the right place, right now, but, what if it is? Could this be The Moment that I take an unknown path, a path that changes my life forever? Could this determination to remain in Michigan be The Moment that I miss the turn that could catapult my life into the stuff my dreams are made of?
There is no way to know, other than to trust that every decision we make is the right one. I recently heard a very wise woman say something along the lines of, we cannot continue to beat ourselves up for not knowing what we know now, because how in the world would we know now what we do, if we had not gone through what we did before we knew it?
I know that right now, I cannot rethink my past choices – I can learn from them, from the decisions I’ve made, the choices I chose, or chose to pass by. Who knows how many moments we miss as we barrel along through life, how many opportunities that “could have been”. It doesn’t really matter, because ultimately we will get where we are going, and if Arizona holds great promise for me, it will hold that fortune for me when I’m ready to go there. I have complete trust that I will find my way to the Right Place, and right now, that place is walking a sandy forest path along the shores of Lake Michigan on a bitingly cold November day, sorting out my desires, and appreciating the beauty that surrounds me.
