A Sylvan Dream

6/14/11

It has taken me quite some time to finally find the time, energy, and inspiration to get back to what I love more than most things. This year has brought me perhaps the most upheaval I have experienced, at least since days of adolescence. I have a child, a beautiful daughter now, a wonderfully loving and amazing wife, a job that promises the potential flourishing of many dreams, and I am in a place that will continually push me to seek out this path I began on who knows when.

Several times I left the Olympic Peninsula of Washington with trepidation, wondering if I could handle life away from there. On the Peninsula I feel at home, which, for me, is a place where no explanation of my beliefs or actions are necessary. It is a place where I feel understood, accepted, and encouraged to follow whatever path I perceive before me. I thought perhaps I could take this mentality and way of life with me elsewhere in hopes that I could spread this feeling to people in other areas of our country. This proved to be rather challenging. I found each time I left, something was missing immediately. Realizing this, I began to reflect on how the environment in which we live influences who we become, how we treat each other and ourselves, etc. I found that the environment in Washington tempered many people who live there in a way that seemed to fit me best. Lush, really lush vegetation shrouded by gray clouds, the peppering of storms and rain with fleeting moments of sunshine - it is in my heart and soul, part of my daily thoughts, yet I struggled to take that love anywhere else.

Now, I live in New Jersey, and I teach science in a high school only 20 miles from the Big Apple, and I am finally finding a time and place in which I am able to retain the life I relish in Washington. The hope is that I will be able to share some of that life, that Sylvan Dream, with those around me here. There are perspectives of life I don't believe we get until we look outward and deeply inwards. When I see some first glimmers of smiles of knowing wonder in the people around me, I feel some of the lush rain from the West falling inside me.

In this new place and time, I am finding I am learning and growing together as a part of something larger and very special as a father and a husband. Look where dreams take us...