Its a Small World Afterall

I do not consider myself particularly New Agey, but the Woodland Valley, in which my cabin resides, does have a spirituality about it that every visitor immediately feels.  A friend of ours has said that everyone who moves here eventually rekindles their spiritual side even if they are not particularly religious.   Tammy might disagree but I do feel calmer when I am here.  And isn't that one of the points of religious devotion, to feel calm with the world and your place in it?  No matter what one believes happens when we die, we are all here together on Earth so we better make the best of it.  And the exact specifics of how we got here may not be so important at this point since we are here and shouldn't we just try to do our best with what we have?  No coach ever told his young charges to go home because they stink and what's the point anyway.  Do your best and be a good sport is always the advice.  Amen.

But that is not what this post is about.  My first cousin once removed  (my Mom's cousin), Frank, was in  from California visiting his good friend, Steve, who happens to live in Woodstock.  My Mother told him we just bought a home in Phoenicia so he called and invited us to a pot luck dinner get together in Woodstock.  (A quick plug for my wife here; she threw together a very chic quinoa and bean salad with ten minutes notice).
It just so happens that Steve is good friends with our friend and neighbor down the street, Carol.  This, in and of itself, is not the most fascinating small world story but it is the second one we have been involved with this week.

Earlier this week I received an e-mail from an old high school classmate who had stumbled upon my blog via Facebook.  It turns out she spends summers in a rental house here in Woodland Valley. She recognized the picture of my backyard since she had also looked at the cabin when it was for sale.  Well, upon closer inspection of my Facebook profile picture, which includes Tammy, she realized that, one day while taking a walk, she and her husband had stopped to chat with Tammy when they came upon her gardening.  (I was probably inside on the pot).  She told me in her e-mail that they, like us, "love everything about the valley".  It is just one more story that reinforces my view of this place as very spiritual.  If you click on the title of this post you will be brought to the Wikipedia link about our mountain (Panther) and how our two creeks were formed by a meteor.  A rare geologic event.  If you Google Earth Panther Mountain and zoom out, you will see the perfect circle formed by the Esopus and Woodland Streams around Panther Mountain.  I am not saying this means anything but it is very cool and perhaps there is some crazy gravitational thing going on.

There are plenty of beautiful valleys in the world but we are lucky enough to call this one home;  Even though we are only here on weekends for now, every time I put the key in the door, I feel as if I am finally home.
And by the way, the dinner party was excellent and we were welcomed as old friends.  If, from an earlier blog post, any one misconstrues my opinion of Woodstock and its denizens, I apologize.