Scotty Lee and Wyatt Might Be Tree-Hugging Vegans Now.....

I haven't been here in blogland for some time now. We are very busy here in Florida trying to keep warm and deal with things we never thought we would have to here. The temps at night have been in the teens and low twenties and the daytime temps climb up like a 95 year-old with a walker and barely make it above freezing.

Our clothing and our pipes, and our campers pipes, are not really prepared for this. So, just keeping life thawed out is taking some time.

I have been thinking about how life keeps bringing me a kirgillion experiences and the seemingly fictional characters that go along with them and I am having so many of these special times that:

1-I don't have time to write about all of them

2-They don't seem so unusual anymore.

I could write an entire book on just the crazy cast of characters in my twice weekly yoga class at The Temple of Universe. (I DID NOT make up the name of the place.)

But before I can write about the yoginis at the temple, I have to get you caught up on some of the cast of characters from the last year or so....

I was cleaning up scraps of paper in the car and came across this little ditty I wrote down some months ago on the back of an oil change receipt:

We stopped to get gas at the SC/GA border. While JC is pumping the gas, I take the dogs out on their leashes to get them to a field nearby. A pick-up truck pulls over next to me and rolls down his window. Pointing down to his dog he says, “This here is Scotty Lee” (add your own DEEP Southern accent for this guy). Next, he points to the pink cell phone on the seat between him and Scotty Lee and says, “This here is my wife’s, not mine.” Then, he looks at me very serious and says, “There is something different about you. I can see it in your face.”

I ask him, “Is that good or bad?”

“That’s good,” he says, “and I can tell you know things. Yep, you know things.”

“Everyone knows things”, I answer.

“No, I mean you know things other people don’t,” he insists while leaning toward the open passenger window of his pick-up. Scotty Lee is a cute little scruffy dog looking at me with the same intensity as his person. “My name’s Wyatt”, he says while stretching out a hand to shake. After introductions, he pulls over and gets out of his truck. JC (my sweetie) has come by and introduced himself and then walked on. So it is me and our dogs and Wyatt and Scotty Lee standing there talking. Mostly it is Wyatt asking me questions. He wants one of our cards so he can look up our website.

“You and your husband are very free aren’t you?” he asks.

“Everyone is free.” I answer.

“But you got that something different”, he keeps insisting.

And of course I say, “Everyone has that thing…..whatever it is you see.”

He wants to know what we feed our dogs and how we live and what we eat. He wants to know what my religion is. I tell him I go to "The Church of Being Outdoors in Wild Places Without Humans" and my church is open 24/7 and I never met the pastor, but he always seems to be there. He chuckles a little and Scotty Lee licks my hand and sniffs my dog's butts. I can tell Wyatt is really not done with our conversation when I tell him it was nice to meet him and I continue with the dogs toward the big open field. JC asks me what Wyatt wanted. I tell him about our conversation. JC is used to this by now and just laughs at me.

This is normal life. This is not something unusual. This happens to me a lot.

Encounters and interactions that I used to think were just how life is for everyone….until I started to tell people about them. Most people do not have these kinds of interactions on a regular basis with strangers. I think today I realized what it might be. Most people have a routine. A familiar routine with familiar people around. They live in one place for a while and they go to the same places for years. Since I do not have that routine in one place, I am encountering more people in more places and the chances of this happening are greater.

I will share the story of the Concrete Buddha in another entry…..another one of theses brief encounters of the third kind.

So Wyatt and Scotty Lee have our card and our website and they are free...they always were.