On a run at Monkey Valley recently, a magical thing happened. I was running up the road, and saw a magnificent female moose in the meadow beside the road. She saw me too, we looked at each other for a little, and then she moved away up the hill.
I felt awe and pleasure at this rare contact with Madame Moose, and continued on my run up the hill happily, keeping a lookout in case I saw her again. Sure enough, when I got up near the top gate I saw her up by the gate, and she saw me again too. I backed off a little, so she wouldn’t feel trapped or threatened, and then I thought I would take advantage of this opportunity to ask her a question.
“Should I sell Monkey Valley?” I asked her. I was feeling very discouraged about the amount of time I’d been spending on tending to the ranch this summer, and feeling burdened by it.
She said, “Don’t sell this land. Don’t sweat the small stuff.” Or as my brother-in-law Geoff Price told me, “Don’t sweat the petty stuff, don’t pet the sweaty stuff”!
Then she hopped the fence in a single stride. This seemed to confirm what she had said to me. To take the small stuff in stride.
A note to the poster who claimed to see a dead moose caught in the barbed wire fence on my south fence line: Not! The fence has been there thirty-plus years, and the moose and deer all know where it is. As I saw with my own eyes, these magnificent ungulates take such things in their stride.
I have not been so equanimous, and decided to probe the universe’s plans for me by putting Monkey Valley on the market, in spite of the moose’s advice (or, if you prefer, my own inner guidance as prompted by the moose encounter). I am feeling the call to have more freedom in my life, and keeping two homes has been feeling like a burden. Much as I love the quiet and privacy of Monkey Valley, I feel a stronger pull to the city, and it is a strain to keep both going. So I’m going to see what happens. If the place sells before snow flies, I will take that as a sure sign it is time to move on to new pastures. If it doesn’t sell, I’ll keep Monkey Valley and make a new plan.
In either case, I will continue to offer vision fasts. Either at Monkey Valley, or on the land near Monkey Valley.