Far from the Maddening Crowd

Reawaken the Truth of your Heart

When I was growing up in suburbia in Los Angeles County and in traffic jams sometimes 100 miles long I longed for the country and few people and clean air and lakes and mountains growing up. Though we could afford to go places like that often on weekends or for 1 or 2 weeks or more during the summers, still I made it a goal to one day live in the mountains of Mt. Shasta and buy some land and live my dream. Though it took me until I was 27 years old to stay there the first time for over a year, I lived my dream of living far from the Maddening crowd. My first attempt was when my son was born in June of 1974. We lasted about a month then because I got heat prostration from planting trees in over 100 degrees in the mountains and had to return then to San Diego to work and to live. My second attempt my son was 3 years old and we stayed a year but then my marriage broke up and I got custody of my son. My third attempt to live in Mt. Shasta was in 1979 when I went to help build a house for a friend there. I stayed and got married to a lady I met there who already had two kids around my sons age and who was divorced like me. We raised our three kids together there from 1980 until 1985. We bought 2 1/2 acres of land and built an A-Frame for us to live in. We stayed there until we  decided to return to the coast and buy another business there. After living in Hawaii during 1989 and 1990 we returned once again to Mt. Shasta to live. This time we stayed until 1992. Living in the country was a dream of mine all those years. However, making a living and supporting a family living that far from civilization year around was much more difficult at every point than I had ever first imagined. But the memories especially of 1980 to 1985, when I was 32 to 37 and culminating in 1985 with the passing of my father and my whole family then 10,12 and 14 going to India, Nepal and Thailand for 4 months made my dream come true. Nothing lasts forever, but the time from 1980 to 1985 of swimming in pristine mountain lakes in the summer and skiing in winter and spring and sometimes skiing across those mountain lakes in the winter made my whole life feel worthwhile to me. Even though I now live in an affluent home near the beach those years from 1980 through 1987 are the ones that give the most meaning to my life and allow me to keep living now. Without those years of living my dreams I would have likely died by 1999.  Don't forget to live your dreams! Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind. Live those dreams! Make your dreams come true.