So here the road begins

I was 43 years old - happily past the midlife crisis - but with 20+ years to go before retirement. The filling in the sandwich generation. My parents were old but not yet at the point of needing active assistance, and my girls had left home to seek their own path. I had post-partum depression. My resume had dropped the "mother" part. (Or so I naively thought at the time.)

I was working then at a wonderful gallery specializing in tribal arts, doing everything from research and advertising art to bookkeeping. It was my dream job. I got to work with delightful people and beautiful images, and boredom was never an issue. What more could one ask? Well - my husband, Jack, was a free-lance writer so health care and pension was an issue. I loved the work but could not really see myself doing it for another 20 years. So what to do? What if there was a better way of life out there and we would never know? Why not try something completely different?

Jack and I sat by the fire one night listening to the radio and dreaming of possibilities. I don't know what program we were listening to but someone was reading a poem to celebrate Valentines Day - Marlow's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
"Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks......."

Why not move to Scotland and live in a little cottage by the sea? Right! I started keeping a journal. And so it began.