First Steps, The Woods that made me

First post, here we go!

Starting this blog is a great way for me to share the adventure that has been my life, thus far. Someone recently reached out to me, and reminded me of where I'm from-a small town, in a small place, that a lot of people have never heard of(short of Cabbage Patch doll references) or visited. They pointed out to me that while the people around me grew to lead fulfilling lives, it's usually within a 30-50 mile radius of where they were born and raised. I envy these people.

Something in me has always craved adventure. Something in me has always pushed me to seek out whatever I can find in the world that is new, exciting, and fills my soul with joy-constantly in the pursuit of nature, knowledge, and happiness. I envy the people that will always scrunch their toes up in the dirt they first walked in, early in life, because I miss the smell of that same Georgia dirt, the stain of red clay on my feet. For me, I'll always be coming home to that, finding my place, while I explore and find where else my feet can go.


The decision to move West in my mid twenties came with excitement, anxiety, fear, and the ultimate sense of adventure. I'm a family gal, and that was the most difficult part for me, but I'll share with you the advice that I was lucky enough to receive from my quiet, veteran marine, cigar smoking grandpa. We sat on my Mom's front porch, sipping wine and staring up at the Georgia night sky while he puffed on a cigar that encompasses my memories of growing up around him. He told me, "Brooke, one thing that you'll always need to remember, is to never forget to look at the stars. You'll miss this place, you'll miss your family, but we are all looking up at the same night sky, all staring up at the same stars. Whenever you miss home, just know it's really not that far away."

That single moment gave me the confidence to begin my adventure....and so we went! My mom, my wolf girl Sookie, and myself packed up in my Xterra and headed out west. My dad and stepmom were kind enough to bring me my belongings in a U-haul a month later(and have their own westward adventure).

My mom, dog and I saw every inch of the country that leads from Georgia to Utah. We went through the forests in Kentucky, to the plains of Missouri that I thought would never end. We stopped and I got to see where my mom grew up in Missouri, in little St. Joe, already exploring a world new to me. We saw strange structures on the sides of the highways in Wyoming(apparently to keep snow drifts at bay, I later found out!), where speed limits (apparently) don't exist. It was easy to imagine the cowboys and settlers that made their way west, and how they must have felt with all that sky around, compared to the dense forests in the mountains where I grew up; how they must have felt seeing the gigantic, wild, calm bison that roam the west for the first time just like my Mom and I saw them for the first time in their open spaces.

Finally, we crossed over in to Utah, where the scenery took on a wild explosion of colors. I came to Utah in October, after all. We sat in silence and awe, staring up at the cliffside, the mountains, the deep reds and golds that accompany Utah in the fall, and I was in my new "home".

There's a bit more to the story, but we can save that for another day. The most meaningful lesson I was able to learn from leaving a steady, fun job and my entire family, the mountains of north Georgia that make up a part of my soul, is that sometimes we need to make our own path. We've got to roam wild in the great wilderness that was created for us, and explore the wildness within ourselves.