Living the Life Imagined

I learnt this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. - Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Oh yes, love, I will go with you, leave Wisconsin behind
Though my parents think little of my life on a farm,
For to leave the gay city life, and be buried on a farm,
But I'll watch the orchards bloom in spring,
Spend the winter warm in your arms. - from "Lovely Agnes," a song by Sally Rogers.

Unlike a fair number of young people my age, especially back in college, I was not at all uncertain about where I saw myself in, say, ten years. The vision of my future, while lacking particular details, was nevertheless fairly clear to me - it was going to involve living in the rural area, preferably in the United States, and being involved in education in one way or another. Simple as that. I didn't especially want to go to school, nor did I really want to have an office job all that much, but, above all, I didn't see myself constricted within the concrete-dominated urban setting. It's just something about having my space. It was the need to look out and be able to see far, far in the distance, to allow my gaze glide across the open fields and meadows, without "bumping" into buildings. It's was the urge to start each spring morning to the songbird explosion. You know what I mean.

It wasn't always my dream, however. The lust for rural setting came to me in a moment of epiphany, turning my vision of life upside down within moments. You see, like a lot of you, I grew up in a city. I didn't know the difference, and I was never really exposed to the countryside in any way until the age of 20 (sic!). Yet, by the time I turned 23, I put my roots firmly into the rich black dirt of the rural Southwestern Wisconsin. What led to this seemingly sudden change of heart?

Perhaps it was chance, but I am more inclined to think of it as divine providence. It was in my third year of college that Southwestern Bulgaria went through a drought, and the start of the school year was put off for a month. As a result, the kids from CIS who had already arrived in Bulgaria and were too far from home to be sent back in a cost-effective manner, were put in a rural getaway in the beautiful Rila Mountains, in a place called Govedarche.

And a funny thing happened. The night we arrived there, I was immediately struck by the peaceful quiet of the setting and the physical beauty of the environment. I saw a forest. Come to think of it, I have never experienced being in the woods before .

"Look, it's a forest!" - I told my roommates.
"It's only a forest," they replied. "Haven't you seen a forest before?"
"I guess I didn't," I thought, mesmerized, and already drunk on the clean mountain air - something very unusual after growing up in the city saturated with the oil-refinery fumes and car exhaust.

I spent the next two weeks (or however long that was) wandering the meadows alone. I would bring a book along, but I rarely touched it. Instead, I soaked up the sun and all the sounds and smells that the meadow had to offer. At all times it was alive with activity - grasshoppers, bugs, grasses moving in the wind. All of these represented an entirely new way of experiencing the world. And it moved me. It really did. From then on, I knew that I would look for a place reminiscent of this quiet mountain resort. I was going to spend my life in the country.

Most of my family was, and still is, more or less shocked by my choice. A few of them have real difficultly understanding what would a smart, multi-lingual, well-educated woman do on a farm. Especially back in Europe, I am used to people looking down on "the peasants," whether they show it or not. Now, it's not a dream that is as easy to actualize.

Yet, I am as stubborn as I am eccentric, and discouragement and peer pressure have very little do with my choices in general. So strong was my desire and my vision so clear that it only took a year before I was well on a path of turning that dream into a reality. In an insane struck of luck (or divine providence), I met a man who happened to be a combination of sophisticated mind, good education, farming background, and, most importantly, planning to return back home to the rural Wisconsin and start a family there.

It took about five minutes or less of our very first conversation for it to become apparent that our visions of the future aligned. "You see," I told him, without knowing anything about his background, "all I really wanna do is live in a small town and be a teacher." - "You, know," he said, "I grew up in a small town. On a farm, actually." Immediately, the vision was formed in my head - the one where the stranger I had just met and myself were married and were raising some livestock on a farm together.

And that's exactly what we are still doing today.

I'm gonna live where the green grass grows
Watchin' my corn pop up in rows
Every night be tucked in close to you
Raise our kids where the good Lord's blessed
Point our rocking chairs towards the west
Plant our dreams where the peaceful river flows
Where the green grass grows

From "Where the Green Grass Grows" by Tim McGraw.