Thursday, November 12, 2009

Morning Walks


I have so much gratitude for where I live.  Coeur d' Alene Lake is my home.  As a kid, my family came to this lake from a hot and dry Walla Walla.  My sister and I would vie to be the first to see the lake as we came around the last corner.  The smells of the pines and the lake water were quite different than the dry pea and wheat fields that surrounded our town, and it completely filled our senses. 

Little did I realize that the place I swam in when I was less than a year old, learned to water ski on, the same place where at the age of 15 my girlfriend Linda Taggart and I, with 2 boys from Pullman, magically found a 6 pack of beer floating in the lake, and the spiritual place where I went to church camp at N-Sid-Sen, would be the place I would live many years later.  The place is my true spiritual home. 

My husband's family had a cabin on this lake when he was growing up.  I've thought many times about the possibility as we took my aunt and uncle's boat past their place that I might have glimpsed at the little kid I was going to spend my life with.  I met Nick many years later on a snowy ski slope high up 40 miles east of the lake.  The snow pack of Silver Mt. feeds the rivers that flow into this lake - which is symbolic for me.  Nick, a boat captain, lived on his big wood boat and me his mooring (my maiden name is Moring) came along to bring safe harbor.

Coeur d' Alene Lake has been everything for me, a thread that has woven itself through my whole life.  I have learned to trust here, to love here, to create and connect, and I might just burst into song - and I learned to breathe the air here.  I opened up an art gallery that overlooked the lake, calling it, appropriately, Sunset Gallery.  I raised an orphaned wild goose here and taught her to fly on this lake.  To teach Lucy to fly I had to become adept at driving and parking the boat.  After Lucy left with the wild geese the boat became my "car" to go to and from the gallery.  The goose and the lake have inspired my life, a film, and now a book and the inspiration seems endless.

I love my funky, comfy, fun home and my morning walks with our new dog.  Life could not have turned out any better and I have so much gratitude for all the decisions and choices and friends I made along the way that got me right here. 

1 comment:

Joie Moring said...

Living your true self in your true home...being close to and now a part of something so cherished...nothing could be better. You are living the dream...