I don't know if it's fall or just the general busyness of life, but all I want to do it go be a hermit in the mountains. My kids are healthy, active, and oh so busy that the minute I'm home from work, it's nonstop running until 8pm or later. I'm *not* really complaining, just kind of reminiscing about the easier days when we did live in the woods and we had school, karate and church, and that was it. But as their interests have expanded and diversified, so have my driving routes.
While I'm wildly sentimental about some things, for whatever reason, my kids growing up doesn't really hit me as hard as other things. I've never been sad at a birthday, or a new grade, or whatever, it's the way it's supposed to be. Kids grow. (However, if I think too long about Henry being a senior next year...) But, for whatever reason, I do miss the quietness of our life there on Hagey Hill in the woods of New Hampshire. I don't romanticize my memories either. We had some very challenging times there, loss, pain, and heartache. But we also had a lot of wonderful times, magical ones, and so some days, I miss the simplicity of it.
Part of it is that many days I just want to sit and write my brains out (literally, that's how I write, just brain dump after brain dump), and that's so hard with so many demands. I have a job, seven children, a husband, and so many things that must be done. So often, my own desire to just create is left to wait until another day. (It never ceases to amaze me that I wrote a 100K novel among all that. When did I manage that? And the second one too... waiting to be edited...)
Still. I will take a moment to look at real estate in Montana's mountain towns, because damn it, I miss that life.