My Walden, My Dream Life

In college, I lived in the middle of 200 acres of orange groves. It was the cabin my boyfriend had rehabbed and rented from the grove owners.  I was 19 and he was 30-something, a mature student, but a young-at-heart soul that, looking back, was my first true love.  But this isn’t a story about my first love.  It’s a narrative about a place that became home to me. 

The cabin sat half on land, half stilted lakeside with a dock flanking its right side. Motor boats could cut paths through our watery backyard, and we’d hear the splash on the underside of the wooden boards.  There was no central heat or air conditioning. The running water contained so much iron that it turned the toilet bowl orange, as it did the shower, and of course, my blonde hair.  Through most of college, I had pumpkin colored hair, but it was worth it.  When the water was out, we’d bathe in the lake with a bar of soap. From the bedroom, you could watch the 4pm afternoon migration of alligators from one shore to the other.  They were lingering along the path of the sunlight, and perhaps looking for a snack.  We had a multitude of cats that were both our pets and our best attempt at pest control.  When it rained, the bugs found refuge in-between the floorboards or in the crevices of the crooked wooden panels.  In the winter, we’d sleep up in a little nook you could call a loft, although it was just a crawlspace.  In the summer, there was no escaping the heat but to jump off the dock and swim until we weren’t crazy with the heat any longer. Oh and springtime met us with the most intoxicating scent of orange blossoms. To this day, it smells like home to me. I was happy there. 

It’s a representation of how much, in that place, that I realized I didn’t need. 

I live in suburbia now.  Our lawns are well manicured. We are ruled by the iron fist of the HOA. Our mailbox is not a half mile away where the dirt road ends and civilization begins. 

Too many of my acquaintances are about the accumulation of stuff.  The material life may be visually stimulating, but in the end, it’s just stuff. 

I belong in a cabin.  I should go read and embody some Emerson or Thoreau.  It feels like home to me.