Back in Real Life

I spent the last week or so catching up with all of the people and things I neglected during the run of The Prometheus Myth. I spent some time with my uncle here and had a long phone conversation with someone very far away and very near to my heart. I bought a book to help me study for the GRE and made flash cards to study vocabulary and started a batch of a new kind of mead (a hibiscus/apple mead that I think will be divine served cold on a summer evening). But what I've really wanted to do is to go away into the mountains and recharge for a while.

The exact feeling I want is the feeling you get when you wake up in a tent in the middle of nowhere. It's early--earlier than you'd usually wake up--and you've been sleeping on the ground and you're a little groggy, but you're rested and the morning is full of possibilities. You walk barefoot across wet, dewy grass to the remnants of your fire the night before where there are people already cooking breakfast and pouring coffee from a tin kettle (or maybe you slept next to the remnants of your fire the night before and you walk across the grass down to the spring for some water). And someone's got a guitar or folks are talking, but the key is everyone's there together.

I think I'll get that in a couple of months when I head off to Rochester for a couple of days, and I'll get it in spades in the fall when I head back down to Asheville. But for the time being, I'm here in real life and I've got this city and all of the people in it to enjoy. Life seems suddenly full of possibility, as it always does in the summer. It's a good feeling.