discovering Archie’s purpose

3/26/2021

Beginning the day we (myself, my wife, two dogs … and Archie, lol) got settled into our new home the story of Archie started to unfold.  With the arrival of each animal, adding their own uniquity, the story took constant twists and turns.  It was QUITE apparent from the get-go that Archie ran the yard.  It became a joke in the house that Archie would draw this group of animals to our backyard, whom all seemed so comfortable together, as if his piercing cackle yelled out the GPS coordinates!  It wasn’t until he left one day for good, very soon followed by the others, that we truly realized that what we had questioned and joked about was in fact, truth.  Nature cohabitating in all its wonderment!  The story though … my story … at this point, was caught between wild prophesizing and a dead-end bewilderment. 

The yard remains beautiful and active with a broad variety of wildlife which we enjoy and are grateful for.  But the “personality” of the yard created by Archie and his friends has been an unfillable void.

Fast forward two years …

The story of Archie, still always present in my head; and we are in the midst of doing a large upstairs renovation on the house.  Unable to live in the house during the work, it was by great fortune that my in-laws were gracious enough to loan us their beautiful motor home as our temporary shelter and sanity during the construction.  So, the four of us (Leslie, myself and our two dogs) lived in the motor home in our driveway for three months. 

Being that we were still at a very active point in the pandemic, I was home a lot more than usual. Between the comfy living quarters, perfect for creative processing, and the fact that we were literally parked and living on the edge of what had been Archie’s hangout, the words in my head soon began to find their way to paper.  Lots of paper!  Big pieces of paper.  Tiny pieces of paper.  Literally anything that would hold ink at the moment a thought came to mind, became my part of my collection to eventually be pieced together. 

It was during this time that I discovered and began to appreciate Archie’s true purpose.  Archie Finds His Voice, and I found the real story waiting to be told.