Czas used to say that living out here felt like being in a fish bowl. i thought i knew what she meant. but i think maybe i feel it in a different way.

when we decided to relocate Team Neidens to the edge of the frontier….to outer space, really…i did not give credit to the size and age they actually were. in this world. in reality.

cause in my head…we had babies when we lived in that little cabin in town, and we were moving out to the Moose Willow with KIDS. Even though Devlin was still in diapers…i considered our baby-phase in the past.

(Small aside: several weeks ago, while chilling with Devlin about town and in the camper trailer, he said “I’m going to call you Box. and you call me Box, okay?”

and we did. all day long…and for a few days after…then he began trailing off…but i still called him Box, and Crit picked up, and so did DW. so he’s been BOX around here since before Christmas. i told him the other day i wasn’t comfortable calling him Squawk anymore on the BLOG because he has become quite the articulate fox. i asked him if it were cool if i changed his name to BOX since that’s what he’s been going by out here at the Moose Willow. he said he had to think about it. then he came back with “you should call me BEAST. call me BEAST on the blog.” and i said “Okay, Box…I’ll let the world know you’d like to be called BEAST now, Puzzle Master, Buddy Boy, Fingers, Debul, Squawking Buffalo the Destroyer, Layne Neidens.)

I get it now that they were actually still babies, and i was actually still a new mom. still am, i reckon.

the first winer we were here, i went from window to window gawking all around, and learning the landscape. i yearned in each direction, for the day i could set out to explore. but i was tethered by the ghost-sensation of the severed umbilical cord. and the reality of venturing too far from home base on my own.

but i did. i loaded us up in the chariot and with skis and went as far as i possibly could. i struggled sometimes on the return, but it was always worth it. and we have been able to stretch the cord past its elastic threshold, which has set us free.

when i’m inside the fishbowl, and feeling like a fish, i see only the peaks that have yet to be climbed and the paradise i feel sheltered from.

when i’m inside this fishbowl, and feeling like myself, i see all the trails we’ve walked and biked and skied together, and the few i’ve tackled on my own. i see the smallest deviation from the landscape and notice when a moose or an elk is close-by. i’m grateful for the fishbowl for keeping us safe and secure, but I’m ready to bust on out at any moment. because, unlike a fish, i know i do not require one special environment in which to thrive.