Long ago a couple of my girlfriends and I created vision boards. The idea was to find photos to represent a life wanted in the future, paste them on a cork board and visualize a similar outcome. I put pictures of mountains on my vision board.

Winding trails. Little cabins tucked beneath evergreens. Wildflowers along dirt roads. People standing at the edge of a mountain, looking out at a landscape that seemed to go on forever.

I wasn’t just dreaming about mountains. I was dreaming about a different version of myself.

Someone who woke up wanting to be outside. Someone who traded city life for wandering. Someone who kept muddy boots by the door and noticed the changing seasons.

For a long time, that life felt far away.

I looked at those pictures and told myself, Someday. Yet I didn’t really know what that meant.

And now I catch myself having these little moments when I realize that someday actually came.

I look out and see the mountains, and there’s still a part of me that can’t believe I get to call this normal.

There are boots by my door now, with dirt on them. Jackets hang where they probably shouldn’t. Bear spray and work gloves strewn about. Some mornings I step outside just to feel the cold air on my face. Some evenings I stop what I’m doing because the sky has changed color over the peaks.

None of it feels particularly extraordinary anymore.

And somehow, that makes it even more meaningful.

Because I think what I was really wishing for wasn’t a picture-perfect life. It was a life where nature became part of my everyday.

Nature used to be something I escaped to.

Now it’s woven into my life.

The pictures never showed the muddy days, the cold mornings, or the plans changed by weather. They couldn’t capture the quiet, ordinary moments that have ended up meaning the most.

Sometimes I think about the person who dreamed of this life and wish I could sit beside her for a minute.

I’d tell her not to worry so much about when it would happen.

One day, she wouldn’t need to imagine herself here.

She’d simply look out the window.

And she’d be living it.

And I am.

I remember when I dreamed about this.

Now I get to live it.