Rest Area by mary elizabeth

This week is a contemplative one for me.  With my daughter at camp, I’m on my own for ten days.  I’m actually camping for most of it – hard to believe, I know, but it’s true! And – I’m actually kind of enjoying it.  I have lots of time (well…all of the time) to myself to read and write and I’m in such a lovely place.  When I think of all the different environments I’ve been in in the last three weeks it really amazes me.  The colorful southwest and then the south for the first time.   I now get why Faulkner wrote the way he did.  Then Ohio and Pennsylvania. It’s all been so different and so beautiful.  And now I’m here in Westhampton, Massachusetts – a true bucolic paradise. It’s all green fields, red barns and white flowers.  And Northampton is just up the road and truly – it looks like a New England movie set.  And guess what?  I found a place to get green juice!

All this driving around through different places has made me appreciate how foreign Fort Bragg must feel to lots of our students.  For one thing, I can vouch for how much cooler it is than most of the rest of this country.  And I’m sure it’s missing all sorts of things our students are used to having around.  Traveling is fun and exciting, but it can also be strange and scary.  I’ll definitely have a new level of compassion for the students I work with as they make that life changing decision to come study with us at Living Light.