Why Do I Like to Fantasize?

At 76, I still catch myself dreaming of the next place. Maybe that’s not a problem. Maybe that’s the whole point.

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I have lived around Shreveport and the surrounding areas for about 27 years. I was born near Monroe and my family dates back over 100 years in Louisiana that I know of. Before that I spent 21 years in the Eastern Ouachita Mountains around Hot Springs, Arkansas and the surrounding little towns. That’s a long time in two places. That’s a whole life, really, divided up between two different kinds of landscape, two different kinds of quiet.

So why am I sitting here at 76 fantasizing about the Western Ouachita Mountains?

I don’t have a good answer. I just know it keeps happening.

It sneaks up on me. I’ll be sitting on my front porch in Louisiana with my coffee, watching the morning come up, perfectly content — and then something shifts. A thought. A pull. What would it be like out there. What would the light look like in the evenings. What would the air smell like in October. Before I know it I’m gone, not in my body but in my head, walking around some place I’ve never lived, arranging a life I haven’t built yet.

At 76. Still doing this.

I’ve asked myself if something is wrong with me. If a person my age is supposed to be settled by now, rooted, done with the restless wanting of new places. Maybe I missed that memo. Maybe it got lost somewhere between Shreveport and the Eastern Ouachitas and all those Walmart parking lots I’ve slept in along the way.

Here’s what I think is actually happening. I think the fantasy is not really about the Western Ouachitas. The Western Ouachitas are just the shape it takes right now. The fantasy is about possibility. About the idea that there is still something out there waiting. Another chapter. Another version of a life that could be mine if I wanted it badly enough to go get it.

That feeling has never left me. Not at 50. Not at 60. Not now.

And I’ve decided I don’t want it to.

The day I stop fantasizing is the day something essential goes out in me. The wanting is not a problem to be solved. It’s proof that I’m still here, still alive in the way that matters, still looking at the horizon and thinking about what’s on the other side of it.

But here’s where the fantasy gets real. I’m ready to declutter my former life. Those t-shirts and blue jeans I’ve been holding onto for the last ten years — gone. The sofa — gone. All of it. I only need what I can fit in a tiny house and my gray camper van. That’s not a sacrifice. That’s a liberation. Every thing I own that doesn’t serve the life I’m actually living is just weight I’m carrying for no good reason. I’m done carrying it.

I want early mornings with my coffee watching the rain blow in from the friendly Ouachitas. I want to sit with that and breathe it in and feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. I want to look up one morning and see a bald eagle riding the thermals overhead and feel that particular stillness that comes over you when nature reminds you how small and how lucky you are all at once.

I have my front porch. I have my Volvo. I have my camper van and my dog Thumper and a road that goes in every direction I choose. I have 27 years in one place and 21 years in another and a whole lot of life still unaccounted for.

Maybe the Western Ouachitas are next. Maybe they’re not. Maybe I’ll drive out there one afternoon just to see what the light does and come home to Louisiana and sit on my porch and be perfectly happy.

Or maybe I won’t come home right away.

That’s the thing about a fantasy. Sometimes it stays a dream. And sometimes you wake up one morning and realize you’re already living it.

I’ve done that before. I’ll probably do it again.

It’s time to spread my own wings while I still have the fire inside me. And I do still have it. I feel it every morning when I wake up and every mile I put behind me on the road. The fire is there. It hasn’t gone anywhere.

I’m not done living yet. Not even close.

Thanks for reading.

Kindly, Carol