It was one month before my 24th birthday. I had just left the large East Coast egalitarian commune I'd lived in for three years, and had spent the winter and early spring visiting some of the communes of the Pacific Northwest, learning about ways of living together, and having a high ol' time. Gorgeousness was mine - if only I had realized it at the time.
In May 1983, I had just settled down at a small farming commune in a very rural isolated part of the Midwest. Having grown up in the heart of New York City, and having hardly even held a hammer, I was suddenly learning everything new - construction, blacksmithing, farming, gardening, being socially and culturally isolated, living in nature.
In New York, talking about the weather was synonymous with having nothing to talk about. On the farm, talking about the weather was talking about what really mattered - what would determine our day, week, season, year.
I learned invaluable amounts there. Also met and left with the man who would become my first husband, but that didn't happen til 1987.