For The Middle Of Nowhere, Wisconsin, we certainly have some interesting evenings.

Tonight, we joined our dear friends for an evening at their farm. Dinner was an outdoor potluck in the cantina, and we all seemed to have the same ideas because it was noodles and rice all over the board. Delicious, though, as was the pineapple fizz sangria. Over dinner, we shared conversation with our good neighbors, some B&B guests and another fascinating couple that we could talk with all night. Conversation ranged from homeschooling to alternatives to conventional cars, from the complexities of buying local to real life impact in our own backyard of the monopoly-creating buying practices of a certain big box retailer whose name starts with W. Dinner was followed by a piñata for the children, then two cakes made by Lisa, the dessert queen, including my favorite frozen mocha cake.

As darkness fell, it was time for the main event. The B&B guests were a lovely couple from Chicago that do Maorian poi and staff fire dancing as a hobby. They performed for a group of us last year when they stayed at Inn Serendipity, and they graciously offered to do it again this year. It was such a treat last year that we have been anxiously awaiting their return. The grace and concentration shown by the dancers is stunning. It is a passionate, grounded form of dance and self-expression.

So, there an eclectic group of us sat, on chairs in a grassy old farm yard in Wisconsin, as Liz and Devan, the newlywed dancers, captivated us with the rhythm and the music (the noise of the fire whirling is a music unto itself) of fire dancing against a backdrop of an inky black sky and a strawbale greenhouse with slices of red and purple light shining through the windows.

A varied life is good.