In the rain, Maria and I took a walk, out into the woods, and I saw raindrops freezing in front of me, and catching the light reflecting off the leaves and the trees. A spiritual moment, it gave me a shiver.

More than a decade ago, I bought a cabin in Jackson, N.Y., and spent a year there with my dogs Julius and Stanley and wrote a book about the experience called “Running To The Mountain.” The late Trappist Monk was my spiritual guide. In many ways he still is. Merton never quite found what he was looking for, and never stopped looking.

I was alone in the cabin for most of the time, reading Merton’s journals and walking the dogs in the woods. I have been journaling ever since. My time with Julius and Stanley led me to begin writing about dogs, and about my search for a spiritual life, two themes that have been woven through my writing.

I am still looking. This year, I’ve taken thousands of photos, written two adult books, one children’s book, journaled almost every day in the blog, gotten married. When I bought the cabin on Kenyon Hill, I could not have imagined how much my life would change. I lost my mind, broke down, lost perspective, fell apart, gave birth to myself again in so many ways. I was led to writing about nature and our complex relationship with animals. I got divorced. I bought Bedlam Farm. I lost myself in the experience, getting cows, goats, chickens, four donkeys, dogs. Dogs came, dogs went. It was wonderful. It was awful. I never stopped seeking a spiritual life, a center, a grounding. Along the way, I got Rise, Izzy, Lenore and Frieda. I made and lost friends. I found guides, healers, prophets and mystics. I came slowly and painfully back to my life.

In many ways, I lost much of my life, and am coming to it now.

My life is settling. I have written books through 2011, and am negotiating to write some more. I have established myself in fiction as well as non-fiction. My photographic notecards are selling all over the country, photography now woven into my life. I became an artist. I had given up on love, and am now awash in it. I put the farm on the market, then took it off.

My friend Mary Kellogg said Maria would be good for me. “She will keep you in line, settle you down.” My friend Mary is wise.

So I am  taking some weeks off – roughly from now until the end of December. And I am resuming the spiritual search I began so intensely on the mountain. I am running to the mountain again, only now I don’t have to go anywhere, don’t have to leave my family. They are here. I am re-structuring my days for the next weeks to include meditation, to strike a new balance with technology, to manage the input of information from the outside world, to think about creativity, words and images,  consider the rest of my life and where I want it to, just as I did a decade ago. I hope I am more accurate than last time.

I’ve always believed that you have to step out of your life sometimes to see it, and that is what I will do. I won’t write a book about it this time, but I will journal here, on bedlamfarm.com, my living memoir. And I’m starting now, at 5 p.m., turning off the cell phone, the computer, putting away the Ipad. I will sit for an hour or so, center myself. I will be reading Walden. Perhaps Thoreau will be my guide.

I’ll be writing about this every day, and sharing what I am thinking, reading,  seeing, feeling and learning in the hopes it may encouraged or reflect not only my own search for spirituality, but that of others, a precious thing these days, one almost in danger of getting drowned out by all of the noise. Some hours a week, I will be in silence, other than shouting at my dogs to stay off the road. I’m excited.

As it always does, writing on the blog will give me a structure, a focus for this search. And this time, I am not alone.