Everwild

The title of this post is borrowed from comedian, Jeff Foxworthy. My mom-in-law does not like it when I refer to myself as a redneck, but having spent the latter half of my childhood living in the high desert, it must be true (cuz Wikipedia knows all, right?), and I’m happy to embrace such beautiful roots. I found the following here on Wikipedia, and it just tickled me so much, I had to share it:

In California, descendants of resettled white southerners whom are self-identified as Okies and Rednecks are widely numerous in agricultural and rural sections of the state such as San Joaquin Valley, areas of the Sacramento Valley the Sierra Nevadas, Mojave Desert and the North Coast. Those areas are deemed more politicallly conservative and more devoutly religious; lower in household income; and its cities tend to have fewer ethnic minorities vis-a-vis metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and more recently, urban Sacramento.

I’m also part hippie, part Amazon (dubbed thus by my dad’s friend, Frank), and part — as my grandma would say: “Czechoslovakian Gypsy”. I don’t know what this last bit truly means, but it was important to my grandma, and perhaps it explains, in part, my affinity for the California/Nevada high desert.
There are so many beautiful places in the world, but this is, was, and will always be home for me. Mountains to the west:

And desert to the east:

Home

So … yeah, redneck, and happily so.

I’ve been hanging out in my new Secret Hideout lately, trying to nurse myself back to health and some semblance of sanity. Creativity is a sluggish thing at times, but hope and tears are always cleansing.

Happy day.

P.S. Don’t forget to lend your strength to someone or something who might need it. It helps to remind us of our humanity.