We rolled out of bed and rolled ourselves to the early morning lake, overflowing onto the early morning land of leaves and dead wood and naked trees. The sun was shining shining and it was oh so cold and delicious. I brought my coffee with me and I'm drinking it still and it tastes good this morning, like I never had coffee before, that kind of good.

All my life, I have quested after secret places. I would climb the tall, taller than my house, tree outside the living room window in Oneonta. I would get myself into my preferred branches and unload my pockets: book, candy. I would spend hours up there in my secret tree nook. At night I would sleep in the narrow space between my bed and the wall. Sometimes I would make a nest in the closet and sleep in there. We had the spookiest closets in that house--long long closets that connected rooms on opposite ends of the house. I loved them. I wanted to live my whole life in the closets, secret, behind the real world, the loud active boisterous world.

In high school I'd ride my bike, no hands (I was big on riding around no hands--I was a master at it, too--I could turn the tightest corners all with my hands at my sides, sister, I was good at riding bikes) down to the cemetery. That place was large and old and beautifully decrepit. I would find secret graves that no one cared for anymore, that no one had cared for in a hundred years, and I would lie down on them and unload my pockets: book, candy. My life, then, my real life, was lived all the way inside my head. I was a hermit and a mute in baggy clothes. I read all my hours of every day. I tore through books because books and cats and dogs were my only real trusted friends when I was in the throws of teenagerness.

We all need our secret places, don't we? At my old apartment on Joyner street, this was my secret place: sitting at my desk in my bedroom, staring out the window, I could see this tall white house with nobody in it, high on a lonesome hill. Looking at that house in the morning and writing new poems was my secret place then.

In Pittsboro: under the eagle nests, on the shores of the great lake, beside the small old algae-filled pond that made me think I was in Sherwood Forest when I walked along its edge.

At my parents' house I can walk straight into a Florida jungle, filled with dead wood and spiders and snakes too, I bet (and three gopher turtles, Shawn tells me) and I have made a small cozy place for myself there in the heart of the old wood where no one but me ever goes.

Shawn makes these amazing tall tepees out of hay and old wood in the big field with the bonfire pit. He sleeps out there in the winter when the nights are finally cool enough. He knows about secret places too.

Oh! Look at the way the light comes in through the slats of the blinds here. I have never been washed in such beauty before.

The map of my life, this year, this time, I laid it over the map of last year, tracing the differences and I see how I'm coming out ok, emerging from the darkness bathed in this friendly and fiercesome November light and I would not go back for anything. I do not love the darkness and I hate despair. But I wouldn't know this joy if I didn't have that map of my darkness and despair to throw on top, to bathe myself in this relief. Without longing and desire and dissatisfaction, life just ain't worth living. My life is a hard and mighty good thing, today.

I'm not telling about my secret place here. You probably think I already have, but it's not true. Later maybe, I'm going to see Frances and Jeff and Buddy down by the river. Like old Greg Brown says, that's the life for me.