I love to write. Articles, teachings, even sermons on occasion. But these past two years have been hard for all of us and I couldn’t think of anything to write about that would have purpose and meaning.
I had started writing a book a few years back, a memoir actually, about a period of my life fifty years ago when I was a young gal. Years that defined me and others around me, changed us forever. I had hit several stumbling blocks in the writing, so I had put the book aside to write blog articles and other stuff.
So for the past two years I pick up the book again, for some reason, highly motivated to finish it, partly because the things I’d learned from those difficult years seemed especially meaningful now. And then it seemed I couldn’t write anything else till until the darn book was done!
The Adventure begins now because the book has been edited, scrutinized by a professional and is ready to be put on Amazon or whatever other self-publishing company I choose. I tried traditional paths of publishing, finding an agent, and all that, but have decided to self-publish so that I have a voice in what happens to this most intimate and vulnerable telling of a part of my life.
All that is to say why you haven’t seen hardly anything from me on wildlyclara.com. But I have the writing bug again, have things to talk about once again and this feels pretty good.
And I’m back to having Adventures! I wanted to try camping by myself, alone in the woods in a tent. Not just a cabin where I can lock the door, but out there in a tent where I have few, if any, protections. And to not be scared to death all night long!
So I did it last week. Bought my tent from Reactive. What happens when a person is sick in bed for a month? They play on their phone and find neat stuff to go have adventures with! So I found this tent that you just unroll, lay out the posts, grab the big plastic knob at the top and yank it up and there you are! A tent all ready to crawl into. Wondered how it’d really work and I was super pleased that my tent did just as the video showed! Amazing!
So I took off for my trial, practice run of “sleep-in-the-woods-by-myself”. I wanted to see how survivalist I could be so I took minimal equipment and cooked all my meals on an open fire. Even took along an old percolator coffee maker! Well, it was fun, but it was a lot of work. Takes about a half hour to get the fire going in the morning and the water boiling before there’s any chance I might have coffee!
My “wrapped in aluminum foil” meals were nutritious, but oh, so bland! I have some learning to do here.
The best part is that I didn’t get scared even once. But I was cold and bored and hungry and tired – the funnest, best thing is that I did this thing that challenged me and I didn’t give up and come home early. I stuck it out the whole time I’d planned.
Will I do it again? You betcha! Only I will find some recipes to make my food tastier, and I’ll settle for instant coffee in the morning.
My next Adventure Challenge is a road trip in my car by myself. I’m gonna head west, stay off the main roads, check out little towns, local restaurants, whatever. People ask me where I’m going ? “I don’t know!” And when they ask how long I’ll be gone, “I don’t know!”
I’m just going to explore around and see what I can find. I’ll stay off the major highways because I’ve already seen what’s there. I’ll stay in motels and eat at restaurants, thankfully I can afford to do that for a time. Not for too long though! I’ll see new places and things and people, and have stories to cherish! When I get bored, I’ll come home!
The end of July I will be 79 years old. Wondering how many more years I have to be perky, energetic, and have stuff to say and places to go and things to do! Wondering about that.
But then I remember that everyone is on the same kind of timing. If I were 20 I still would not be sure I had a whole lot more years to do all the things I wanted.
Each of us has only today. Maybe today. How do I want to live the rest of my life? It’s a good question we all can ask ourselves regardless of how old we are. Regardless of anything. If this is the last summer I will be healthy and alive, how do I want to live it?
I’m going to have fun adventures. Some alone, some with others. I’m going to have a life that gives me stuff to write about!
Wildly Clara 
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