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A lot of people want me to write late at night, by moonlight, preferably in a dungeon. They picture my house a mix between a haunted house and a castle. In reality I prefer to write in the morning with sunlight streaming in through the many windows that take up three sides of my office. I have four skylights. I am a light junkie. I don’t get seasonal effective disorder, winter sunlight is as good to me as summer. It’s not how long the light lasts, because if you get up early enough you can catch the sun. My office is painted my favorite color – blue. I discovered just after college that I write better in rooms painted earthier pale green, or pale blue. I’ve experimented with this, and I can write in any color of room. I rented for many years and stared at my share of neutral wall colors, but my productivity and ideas multiply faster in rooms painted those two colors. When you find something that really helps you create, you don’t question it, you just make a note and paint your office.

The clock in my office is an Audubon bird clock. The one that plays different cards with different bird songs on it. I also have one with frogs and toads calling on it, but that one, though cool, isn’t conducive to writing. Besides, some of the amphibian noises are really weird, almost mechanical, and it will throw me out of my muse driven haze, and drop me abruptly back to reality. The birds I have in right now are field and meadow, that’s the title of the card. The idea is that the birds on it are likely to be found in that habitat. Two of the birds on the card are Meadowlarks. The Eastern and the Western, to be exact. I grew up where the Eastern Meadowlark existed, but it was rare. I loved seeing that flash of yellow, and thought it’s song was pretty, but it wasn’t until this year that I truly fell in love with the song of the Western Meadowlark. You have to be out west in the spring when they’re nesting and the males are singing to mark territory, find mates, or just to celebrate that it’s warm again. One of my fondest memories of the year is waking up in the house of our very good friends, and hearing the bird song through the open window of the bedroom. It’s cool enough there in the summer, most of the time, that windows open at night and during the day make the house comfortable. It works most of the time, and if they had had central air conditioning then we wouldn’t have woken to the feel of the breeze dancing through the window, and that bright, rising, falling, trill, of the Western Meadowlark. It makes me smile every time my clock rolls around to that song. The sound seems to buoy my spirits and I can take a deeper breath of that sweet air.

I could leave it all poetic, but honestly we, my husband Jon and I, could breath better out west. Two of our major allergies do not exist at high enough altitude and dry enough climate. No mold, no dust mites, and we just didn’t realize how much that impacts our ability to simply breath. To keep the elevation sickness at bay we drank tonnes of water, so after a couple of days of acclimating we were able to do white water rafting and other strenuous activities. The only time I had some trouble was when I was surrounded by a certain type of pine tree, hundreds of them, that I had allergy issues with, but other than that it was so much better.

Jon and I also fell in love with the land out there. I, especially, am enamored of mountains. I thought it was these particular mountains, until we went on the cabin trip to the Blue Ridge, and though very different from the rocky peaks of the west, I was still delighted with them. Jon declared, “You’re a dwarf.” I knew it meant dwarf as in gaming, not genetics, but still I asked, “What?”

“You like shiny objects, rocks, and mountains. You’re a dwarf.”

I actually said, “I always thought I was hobbit, but I don’t like food that much, I’m not that into the pastoral existence, and I’m not that social.” Hmm.

I’d have liked to argue, but in the end, I really couldn’t. We’ve decided that my dwarf ancestors were a rogue clan and interbred with the local elves, I guess the elves would have had to be pretty roguish themselves, either that or it was a very pretty bunch of dwarfs. So we got rid of the beards, added a little height, a love of sunlight and the great open spaces, but have never lost our love of mountains, jewelery, rocks and minerals, and a certain stubborn determination.

The sunlight has moved again and I have rainbows back on my wall. I have several crystals hanging around my office so they can catch the light and paint my work area with color. It’s sort of a mix of my two fantasy heritages stones and light. I’m also entirely too earthy to be a Tolkienesque elf. The dwarfs may have been played for humor some of the time, but they, and the hobbits seemed like they might actually have sex. The elves always seemed above that, and that would never do for me.

I also love the ocean, but I love mountains more, so how did I end up living in St. Louis where there hasn’t been ocean for a few hundred thousand years, and the closest mountains is hours drive away? My first husband found work here, and as a writer I can work anywhere, so we followed his work. If I’d chased mountains, or oceans, I would never have met now husband, Jon. Or, meeting would have been very unlikely, and if we had met, it would have been too late to be a couple as we are now, because we have impacted each other in so many ways. But as Trinity, our daughter, gets closer to being out of school I begin to think of mountains. I begin to wonder, could I? Could we? Have our mountains at last? Jon and I actually looked at houses out West, but when you have a whole family to move you have to consider things, plus I have people here that depend on their jobs being here. We came very close, and the near brush with moving brought me a deeper appreciation of the house we have, the land here, and the wildlife, because the birds here are not the same ones as out west. It’s not even the same squirrels. I’ll enjoy here for a while longer, but Jon and I keep thinking about mountains and breathing deep, and I leave the clock set so that at least twice a day, if I’m working long enough and lately I have been, I hear the song of the Western Meadowlark. It makes me smile, and remember the land. If it’s meant to be we’ll find the right house and the right timing to move, or maybe just a second home. People have cabins in the mountains; right?

I think we will look at houses again where the mountains rise taller than any I ever saw growing up, and the air is sweet and clean and there just seems to be more of it. And there was this one drive with our friends and a herd of mustangs beside the road, and a merlin that kept pace with the car. Now, if we could just get all that within driving distance of certain larger city amenities . . . but sometimes life is about compromise. The question is always what are you willing to compromise on, and what truly means the most to you? That’s always the question to answer; what means the most to you? What makes your heart lift? What makes you happy? Figure that out, be true to what really fills your heart up, no compromising on that part, and then go for it. I want mountains and meadowlarks.