“WHEN I IMAGINE where I want to live, the first thing that comes to mind is where I want to have that coffee in the morning. I picture the breakfast nook or the chair and the book and the coffee and the view. My second dream is where I will have a beer. I see afternoon light getting low and angled, sending yellow rays through the tree branches. Maybe on a back patio, or on a grassy bluff over the Pacific Ocean. The imagined locations of our happy places say something about us. About how we recharge or what we crave. I want a cottage on a boulder mountain. A bed and a quilt and an old stove with a teakettle on it. A telescope and a chart of constellations. Books everywhere. Removed from the world but also in it, caring about it and for it. Being old and thoughtful with a pipe to smoke on the porch and a few squirrels who trust me. A raven would be even better. And friends stopping in. Nieces and nephews making the trek to the mountain for a night of stories and some whiskey in their Dr Pepper. I’ll pour it and say, “This never happened.” Of course, I’m too social for that fantasy. I like being in the thick and churn of society. So I’d probably get up to that cabin on a mountain and leave after a month or two. But who knows what age will do to me. Who knows if I’ll slow down, less hungry and more content. Who knows if I’ll find a raven who’ll have me.”