What’s Up?!?

25 years and I'm alive here still

Trying to get up that great big hill 

of hope

For a destination

I realized quickly when I knew I should

That the world was made up of this

Brotherhood of man

For whatever that means

And so I cry somethimes when I'm lying in bed

Just to get it all out 

what's in my head

And I'm, I am feeling a little peculiar

So I wake in the morning and I step outside

And I take deep breath and I get real high

And I scream from the top of my lungs

What's goin' on

And I say hey...

And I say hey what's goin' on

And I say hey...

I said hey what's goin' on

Oooh...

Oooh...

And I try, oh my God do I try

I try all the time

In this institution

And I pray, oh my God do I pray

I pray every single day

For a revolution

And so I cry sometimes when I'm lying in bed

Just to get it all out what's in my head

And I'm, I am feeling a little peculiar

So I wake in the morning and I step outside

And I take deep breath and I get real high

And I scream from the top of my lungs

What's goin'on

And I say hey...

And I say hey what's goin' on

And I say hey...

I said hey what's goin' on

And I say hey...

And I say hey what's goin' on

And I say hey...

I said hey what's goin' on

Oooh...

25 years and I'm alive here still

Trying to get up that great big hill of hope

For a destination . . . 

. . . And somehow, 33 years after 4 Non Blondes released “What’s Up?” in 1993, it doesn’t sound dated at all.

That’s what gets me about it. The song starts with this almost innocent idea: I’m alive, I’m climbing this hill, surely there’s a destination up there somewhere. Then comes adulthood’s terrible little revelation: you look around at the institution we’ve built, at this supposed “brotherhood of man,” and think, for whatever that means.

And then the question that never gets answered:

What the hell is going on?

Not “what’s wrong with me?”

Not even “how do I fix it?”

Just — WHAT IS GOING ON?

There’s something almost primal about the progression: lie in bed and cry because your head is too full. Get up. Walk outside. Breathe deeply. Alter your consciousness a little. Then scream into the enormous indifferent world.

And keep trying.

That may be the part that lands differently when you hear it decades later. She isn’t singing about having figured anything out. She’s singing about trying all the time. Praying for a revolution. Climbing that ridiculous great big hill of hope without ever being promised there’s actually something waiting at the top.

At 25, that sounds like youthful existential angst.

At 76, it can sound like a fucking life philosophy:

I’m alive here still.

I’m still climbing.

I still don’t understand what the hell we’re doing.

I’m under no illusion that everything is going to work out.

But I’m still looking. Still witnessing. Still asking:

WHAT’S GOING ON?

Maybe she will

Maybe one morning she’ll realize
there was never anyone standing at the gate,
clipboard in hand,
deciding whether she’d earned the right
to live the life she wanted.

Maybe she’ll stop waiting for permission
to leave,
to begin,
to change her mind,
to want more,
to want less,
to disappoint people,
to be inconvenient,
to choose herself.

Maybe she’ll finally understand:

the door was never locked.

I Appear to Have Purchased a Mountain

I have no idea what I’m doing.

People think I have a plan because I say things confidently.

This is an illusion.

Yesterday I spent twenty minutes researching the proper way to deadhead hydrangeas.

This morning I Googled, “Can chipmunks climb screen doors?”

Apparently they can.

I live on fifteen acres now. That still sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud. Fifteen acres. At my age most people are downsizing. I bought a ridge.

Not a mountain. I’m not getting delusions of grandeur.

A ridge.

It’s just enough elevation to make weather feel personal.

Guests arrive and immediately say, “Wow.”

I try to act like this is perfectly normal.

Inside I’m thinking, I know! Can you believe this?

Sometimes I walk outside after everyone has gone to bed just to make sure it’s still here.

The stars.

The silence.

The ridiculous privilege of owning a place where the loudest sound is frogs arguing about something that is apparently very important.

Owning Sky View Ridge has taught me many things.

For example, weeds don’t care how old you are.

Mulch reproduces when you’re not looking.

Garden hoses possess consciousness and use it exclusively for evil.

And there is no known scientific explanation for where all the dust comes from in a cabin no one has occupied for three days.

Guests see sunsets.

I see laundry.

Guests see swallows swooping.

I see peppers and tomatoes that desperately need weeding.

Guests see peace.

I see that the damn chipmunk is back.

Yet somehow…

They’re right.

It is peaceful.

Not because everything is perfect.

Because none of it is.

It’s peaceful because nobody here is pretending life isn’t messy.

Nature certainly doesn’t.

The chestnut doesn’t apologize for dropping leaves.

The goldfinches don’t file flight plans.

The coyotes don’t worry about their personal brand.

Meanwhile, I spent ten minutes yesterday wondering if my Google Business profile needed another photograph of the petunias.

Perhaps I’m the only species with this problem.

Anyway…

If you’re wondering what it’s like to build a tiny retreat in your seventies, the answer is surprisingly simple.

It’s mostly sweeping things.

Leaves.

Porches.

Cabins.

Self-doubt.

Not always in that order.

Doom With a View

The title made me laugh before it made me think.

A Room with a View holds old memories of discovering there were other ways to live. Sometimes all it takes is a different window. Sometimes you have to leave the whole damned room.

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with rooms built by other people. They tend to come furnished with expectations, respectability, and someone else’s idea of a proper life. I learned long ago that the view gets better the farther you walk from the floor plan.

Maybe that’s why Doom With a View amused me.

It names something I’ve come to recognize in myself.

Every morning, reality arrives carrying war, corruption, cruelty, ecological decline, and enough outrage to fill every room in the house. It invites me to believe that despair is the only rational response.

Some days, I almost agree.

Then I step outside.

The wind has no interest in the news cycle. Swallows still carve impossible arcs through the sky. The sunrise burns without asking who deserves it. At night, the Milky Way stretches across the darkness with the quiet confidence of something that has outlived every empire.

The world is wounded.

The view reminds me it is also breathtaking.

Those truths are not enemies. They simply refuse to cancel each other out.

I’ve spent enough of my life walking away—from expectations, from certainty, from rooms that demanded I shrink to fit them—to know that perspective is an act of freedom. Sometimes changing your life begins by changing where you stand.

The truth is, Doom With a View belongs to me.

It’s the private conversation I have with the world. The wrestling match between grief and beauty. Between despair and wonder. Between wanting to turn away and choosing, instead, to keep looking.

I don’t expect anyone else to carry that.

In fact, I hope they never have to.

Perhaps that’s why I built Sky View Ridge.

Not to escape the world.

Not to persuade anyone to see it as I do.

Simply to create a place where the horizon is wide enough to interrupt the noise. Where silence isn’t empty but restorative. Where people can wake to birdsong, watch the light move across the hills, follow the stars after dark, and remember—if only for a weekend—that they belong to something older and larger than their inbox, their timeline, or the latest crisis.

Guests don’t need my questions.

They only get the view.

And for me, that’s enough.