Speaking of meaning, while I was sewing, I recalled a conversation from years ago: I was at the time in an intensive language training program just outside Brattleboro, VT. (If you have been to Vermont, you know that it is called the Green Mountain state for a reason – it is mostly mountains.) This young woman was unhappy because of the environment. She was from Oklahoma. She felt “shut in” by the mountains; she needed more space, more sky. I was baffled.

However, a few years later, I took an extended road trip through the prairies of Canada. So flat. I was acutely aware that I could not live there. Could not. It felt vacuous. All sky. A line for the earth.

I grew up surrounded by hills and mountains. Where I live now is even more so. When I look out, it’s not a simple horizon. It takes time to view the close, the middle, and then the far distance. So much earth to see.

So full of meaning.