Forty More Acres Gone

A couple of months back, I wrote about my emotional upheavals when we sold ninety-three acres of Hodge Ski Lodge. In case you missed it, you can scroll back to January 18, 2020 and read "The Place." It was for me another loss-- coming on the heels of losing Mom and Dad, of losing my ability to run and swim-- another monumental change, a blow of inestimable magnitude. I mourned; I grieved; I was off kilter.

Thursday we closed on forty more acres of the Lodge. This time the blow was not so hard, the loss not really a loss just a change.

The buyers, the Danos from the coast, were ecstatic at being new land owners. That helped. To see the smiles on their faces and know that someone would love the land and enjoy it, use it, made this strange event for me have just a touch of joy. I was happy for them and maybe the mourning I did over the first ninety-three acres we sold had partly exhausted my sorrow. Maybe I have by now accepted the new normal.

Now we have forty more acres to sell. Then that change will be complete, final, done for ever. I actually look forward to the last sell. For one thing, I am tired of showing land. I am tired of having a monkey wrench thrown into my day and messing up my training. I guess that reveals where my current priorities are. I don't hunt anymore. I don't fish anymore. I don't camp anymore. I train. I compete. I dream and exercise and sign up for events and plan and plot and do them. The land is now a memory, a link to my past, my boyhood, good memories of past experiences. 

Things change. As simple and as obvious as that statement is, to be able to accept change is one of life's great lessons. I suppose it is a sign of maturity of being grown up, of being an adult. I am sixty-three years old. I guess I am just now growing up. But even that is a matter of opinion. My wife says I am still a boy. Maybe I always will be. But in some ways things have changed, and I have accepted them. Maybe everybody else thinks I'm still a kid. Maybe they are right. But I'm proud of myself for now being able to life looking forward not backwards.

Thank you, Jesus.