Q is for Quest

What are you searching for?

Me, I’m searching for peace and yet,

living in the desert was almost too much peace.

Our neighbors were snowbirds—

A sighting was as rare as seeing a White-winged Scoter 

or a Red-breasted Merganser.

The only sounds were golf carts and maintenance men with grass blowers.

 

(Google images-white winged scoters)

Can there be too much peace?

Right now, we live a mile to the freeway and in our bedroom it almost sounds like the ocean. We can walk to the store and many restaurants. A hospital is one mile away. So are traffic filled roads and all kinds of realities. Yes, Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Before we lived in the desert, we lived a few miles from this current location and remember it as bucolic horse ranches. Ancient oaks now only a memory, the builders have stripped this romantic land and filled it with two story homes. Ours of course, is one of them.

While content in the desert, we had to move for personal reasons. Temperatures reaching 129 degrees didn't help my case. I was the ostrich with my head in an air-conditioned home--writing--thinking everything ‘rocks’ but not everyone agreed. We were at least six miles to any store, church or hospital. Oh, and nighttime temperatures didn't cool off. At 120 in the day, it would be 98 at night. The gorgeous clay mountains surrounding our home held onto the heat like an oven. Needless to say, I wasn't complaining. I’d rather be warm than cold but it was never all about me.

Our quest is not over. Perhaps we will find the serenity we're looking for here on Earth and if not, there's that promise of a place in Our Father’s house. I imagine it as peaceful, without any road noise or grass blowers. I imagine the temperature is perfect and the view divine.

 We were searching for something when we came here. Are you on a quest too?