O - Os Little Book of Happiness

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You can never be happy living someone elses dream. Live your own. And you will for sure know the meaning of happiness.

O PRAH W INFREY

Each moment in time we have it all, even when we dont.

M ELODY B EATTIE

The walk is not negotiable. No matter how full the days agenda, we gomy husband, my cow dog, and Idown our rural western Colorado road, past the neighbors property to the dead end, up the old dirt track grown over with sagebrush and pion saplings, to the top of the hill where the path ends under a red sandstone cliff. Ive watched sunset after sunset from this private perch, and each is the most beautiful Ive ever seen.

As an air force brat, a competitive ski racer, and then a journalist, Ive lived in three countries and more than a dozen cities; trekked up and down the Alps, through Central American rain forests, and along Mediterranean coasts, seeking novelty and adventure. But a kind of loneliness lurked in my perpetual motion. I could fit in anywhere, yet I belonged nowhere.

Seven years ago, I fell in love with Cedaredge, the small town where my husband, Dave, yearned to settle, and together we decided to put down roots on a sixteen-acre homestead. Still, I refused to retire my passport. There were so many faraway mountains to climb and foreign cultures to explore. Tying myself to a single place felt confininguntil finally, during a particularly irritating flight delay, it dawned on me that while I wasted time in crowded airport lounges, the life Id dreamed of was waiting for me on the farm.

Later that week, I told Dave that I would spend the next 365 days practicing the art of living in place, never venturing more than a hundred miles from home. It was my version of a Benedictine monks vow of stability, in which he promises to remain in the same monastery for life, resolving to accept his assigned home as it is.

Although a part of me believed I was making a sacrifice, I found that when I narrowed my boundaries, I expanded my horizons. The friendship I forged with my octogenarian neighbors taught me that a shared commitment to place can create ties far stronger than age. Joining my librarys board introduced me to bibliophiles I would have otherwise never met. And with a local activist whose politics make me cringe, I found common ground in our passion for growing raspberries.

But it was my dog who finally showed me the way home. Oskar inspired the ramble that would become our ritual. And after treading this little path for hundreds of days, Ive stopped longing for far-flung adventures. Here I have the aroma of sage and the bluebirds and the craggy peaks surrounding me like an embrace. I share this space with the beings whose footprints I see in the mudcoyotes, turkeys, elk, and mountain lionsand my presence has turned me into a creature of the habitat just like them.

It has taken me most of my life to learn how to inhabit a place, and I learned it, finally, by walkingup the hill and around the back side of our farm, day in and day out. The repetition is the point. My journey home was not a whirlwind excursion but a geological process: my soul mingling with the soil, step by step, over time.

I love the dark film that forms as cocoa cools in the pot. Break it up with a spoon, stir it in, and youve got dirty hot chocolate, unsmooth and imperfect, hence complex. There are those who will tell you dirty food does little to enhance presentation. But a brisket sandwich would be torment without pan scrapings. I like seeing and eating something that shows it was made by human hand in a slow old-fashioned way. When Im eating a lemon mousse, discovering a bit of pulp exhilarates. You never have to strain anything for me. Lumps are treasures, and so are little bits of black fat at the bottom of the roasting pan if onions are in it. In Yiddish, these carbonized fat-soaked threads are known as gribenes . People, families, have been known to fight over them. In France, burnt crumbs that collect at the bottom of the skillet when you saut floured food is fond . Gribenes and fond are why we have Lipitor. Congealed anything, stuff that leaks between the bread and gets frazzled on the panini maker, hard bits, dried bits, soggy bits, crunch, globs, gobs, and flecksanything you might toss even though it has more taste per concentrated morsel than the star of the mealI say bring it on. Theres a reason the word incredible contains the word edible .

Ive been a passionate reader since childhood. Print is beautiful to me. My eyes automatically seize on any text in the vicinity, whether a DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE sign or the side panel of a box of Cheerios. Some grown-ups remember the times they swam in a cold pond or raced their bikes along a country road as children. I remember going out to the beach one morning with The Once and Future King and looking up to find that the sun was setting. I remember the time I read The Outsiders , a book about disaffected teenagers, from cover to cover while draped upside down over a kitchen chair. My body hurt like hell, but I would have had to stop reading to get up.

I cant read with that level of absorption anymore. In fact, during much of the day there are things I cant read at all. The newspaper, a book review, a lively magazine profile are all fine. But even when I have the luxury of complete solitude, Im unable, before the hour of ten P.M. , to read a novel or a reflective essay.

Only after the children have gone to bed, my husband and I have performed triage on our to-be-discussed list, and my schedule for the next day has been organized can I sink into language with a capital L . I get into bed, adjust my thin pillow against my fat pillow. I put on my socks (its no fun reading with cold feet). I open my book, and the following thought allows me to begin: No one needs me . Maybe no one even remembers who I am! Its too late in the day for me to make any more mistakes, disappoint anyone, complete any uncompleted tasks. However I may have failed or fallen behind, Im off the hook until sunrise. And time, which all day has pressed like a tight band against my consciousness, slackens. The clock finds a thirteenth hour.

Sometimes I do stalk my bookshelves in the middle of the afternoon during an unexpected windfall of free time, eyes scanning the unread novels, essay collections, ruminations on God and love and historyall the biggies. My heart beats rapidly; I grow excited with possibility. Im in love with the many things that I have yet to feel and know. Im experiencing the idea of reading, which is generally so stimulating that I discover I cant begin at all.

But when the bedroom light is dimmed and the telecommunicatory hum of the universe has been smothered behind the closet door, Im ready for the reality of reading, which is less exalted but ultimately more satisfying. I find it in myself to begin; I open to page one. A man is standing in a bakery on a hot summer afternoon. I see the shirt the man is wearing, note the fact that his tie is folded in his pocket. I see the bakers wife at the cash register. Suddenly Im sheltered by a thicket of detail. The sights and sounds and smells of the book pull me in and slow me down in a way that those of the real world, oddly, often do not. Im no longer at the wishing-fearing-planning pace of my day. Im not running but walking. And where I wind up, book after book, is an unmatched state of bliss.