Have been very busy during June getting ready to move from costly crowded Bay area to low housing cost rural area in Northeastern Oregon.

I’ve rented a cabin on a small horse ranch run by a friend I made through the local Sangha a few years ago. I’ve got a warm tidy, nicely appointed cabin settled amidst horse pasture, corrals, barns, outbuildings, a green house, small pond and small stream/irrigation ditch that flows next (10 feet) to the cabin, It comes of the Wallowa’s and the Eagle Cap Wilderness area with over 30 mountains over 8000 feet just 15 miles away.

The difference between the Bay are and here is stunning.

I finally caught on to the fact that I had my priorities upside down. Rather than be uncomfortable in the Bay area (despite the many good friend),  and visit here; I could live here and visit There. Epiphanies can be quite common-sensical. I’m sure there will be a lot write about in this coming year and many changes in the offing, but I see it first and foremost, as a spiritual decision, and as practical, mental health-wise, and economically. Prudent all around, really.

I just got through with a great intensive retreat at Shasta Abbey led by one of our remote monks with whom I took refuge and became with, when we lived near each other in northern Idaho/Washington.

He was the monk I called when my wife, Linda, died 2 1/2 years ago. He came in the middle of the night driving through heavy snow for almost two hours, and then we did the ceremony for  a layperson who has died; he also presided over her cremation, and her memorial and, the public funeral ceremony. We have close ties. The retreat was very helpful as a sort of springboard for this transition. Geographically and internally

I’ll go to the Bay area again next week for two weeks and tidy up some loose ends and bring some more stuff and then become a resident of Oregon and all that entails.

I’ll have a better sense of things at some point and will keep more regular postings up.