The Adventures of Charlotte Bliss. Bliss.

At night we laugh until our faces freeze red and there’s no sound left because we’re out of breath. Usually it’s cause Yalle is hanging out on the dating sight and she’s writing outrageous and shocking off the cuff responses to the unsuspecting dudes brave enough to email first. The rest of us are living through her. My favorite wine is whiskey. There’s one guy she really does like so those emails take at least an hour to write. We don’t have tv but there are lots of movies on dvd and also Mo figured out how to stream Jersey Shore. In the morning the sky is always blue and the redwoods are so tall I can’t see the dark tops from my bottom bunk when I first start to wake. I always can hear the music of the wind though, the orchestra of air moving through the high up bows. This is so, so good for me. I tell my friends here: for years I could see this wooded mountain place with yellow light and soft air on my skin. I could feel the deep rounded peace and how it was the mountains and the ocean was near. I get choked up periodically, especially in the mornings, doing yoga on the back deck of the cabin under the trees. Because this is it, I am here.


The woman who runs the house loves to cook and it’s joyous every night the way she feeds us all. She has a funny looking dog all muscley who behaves as if he’s really tough but curls in a ball on her chest whenever he can. Farm work is fun, the hours are long and the weather so fine, the company amazing. My body is always edged out, satiated from the regiment strength I give to this land and its bounty here, always pushing beyond what I think I am prepared to give. I sleep so well as if sleep is a brand new gift that I get to use as much as I can. The music, our music always plays. It echoes in the valley and the stories, then the silence…then the music then the sun-wind-music made by the trees. It all echoes, one lends to the other, it goes on and on. The stories. These people. The mountains and the sun.

This is so, so good for me.