Road Stories, Part 2: The Land

When we crossed those state lines, the cheerful signs telling us to come back soon, welcome to, enjoy the land, I held my breath.  Running down the checklist of my body, waiting for small flurries, expecting the shift beneath my feet to signal something deeper than the eye can see.

The first time I visited Seattle was the first time I truly felt it.  The magnetic pull that grips something deeper than your organs, deeper than your marrow, down past even the molecular level.  It radiated up through my whole being and I realized I have been called to that land.  Perhaps our very DNA knows the rhythm and tides of certain places and those places know us more intimately than any lover.  Something preverbal that awakens, perhaps remembering that you began work here long ago and now is the time to pick up those old footprints.  That first time I landed in the Pacific Northwest, the leaving nearly ripped my heart out.  Driving back to the airport under the glacial glory of Mt. Rainier I choked back tears I didn't understand.  It was beautiful, it was confusing.  It was like playing with magnets for the first time, except that one half of that drawing force was buried deep within my chest.

I feel it every time I pass under the redwood curtain in Northern California.  That softly padded red bark and those prehistoric ferns know things about me I have yet to discover for myself.  They welcome me back like the prodigal daughter, full well knowing I may leave again.  But even still, they set to work healing the fissures in my souls and kniting together the broken links in my cells.  I understand Northern California as part of my genetic make-up; my direct bloodline has called that land home for many generations.  But it's more than that.  It is the way the trees sound that makes sense to me, like I can almost remember how to sing their song.

Yet even with this, I expected to feel that same pull as we crossed into Montana.  The truth is, I've been expecting to call Montana home for nearly two decades and a covert piece of the road trip was determining if the next chapter of our lives should take place in those rocky mountains and pine forests.  But every time I held out that internal compass, the needle spun West.

Truly there was such a gift in this.  The question of the future that was simply put on hold in order to be fully engaged in the present.  It was at that point, some nine days into the trip that I loosened my grip on those ulterior motives.  It was at that point, that I began hearing the songs of the aspens.  To stand so perfectly still, rooting down from the soles of my feet, to audibly observe the wind rolling up mountainsides until it lifted my hair to join the quaking of leaves.  To see the sacred geometry of pinecones scattered so purposefully through the woods.  To watch with rapt attention the triple strikes of lightning on the land and feel the buzz of electricity in my pulse.  To lose myself entirely in books while a summer monsoon shook the tent walls.  To outrun the storm.  To shiver and shriek and later laugh at leeches in the water.  To feel my own glorious smallness in the expanse of sky (that sky!).  To drink whiskey at night and coffee in the morning and know that even if nothing else happened in-between, it was still perfect.

Road Stories, Part 1: Idaho

[Two weeks on the road, driving through the interior West, sleeping under the stars, living out of the Jeep, watching our skin turn brown, racing to the next lake, food cooked over flames, scratching bug bites, and most of all, just living.  Seeing.  Hearing.  Intaking.  There was far too much, and simultaneously just enough.  These are the smallest snippets of sketchbook writings, list makings, and memories.]

Here is the thing about those first few days: It was all about the Lake.  Driving east that first day, six hours later than we had planned but leaving one spotless house behind, I felt the pangs of excitement rising up right alongside the temperature and the altitude.  But it was diving into that chest-clenching initial shock of clear water that loosened something too tight for too long.  It was all about those gleeful moments of ridiculous hysteria when the scales that cover your throat fall off and the only noise to be heard is laughter.  Laughter at the joy of swimming with your dobie, laughter at the way too-big bikini bottoms put on a show for shorebirds, laughter at foot propellers, lies about water warmth, puppy package shrinkage, and the holy glory of seeing nothing but a thousand rippling waves under blue skies.

The second night we walked the lake edge during the golden hour, light slanting sideways through trees and illuminating the choicest wildflowers.  I felt the second layer of scales fall (how many do we have? how many do we simply live with?).  The shafts of sunset hung heavy and hot, the dogs were panting before we had even walked a mile and I regretted changing into jeans.  It was here, through the brush and bloom and aging deadfall we found a low spot in the banks.  Freyja barreling in as the fish-dog, swimming out towards foreign mountains for the sheer joy of it, Sancho tentative to swim deeper than his legs could reach.  For a moment I debated, but the beads of sweat behind my knees and the cool of the lake demanded stripping down to naught but skivvies and jumping all in.  Water on skin, pond grass between toes, hiding from the passing fishing boat with snorting laughter and again, that bubbling joy rising up to loosen the scales.

* * *

The air held that sticky heat, the kind that nestles into the folds of elbows and knees, the kind that renders down sleeping bags utterly useless.  Laying on my back, eyes closed, I could still the see the light of the waxing moon through my lids, through the trees.  He was hot.  We all were, but I rolled over anyways and laid my cheek on his chest.  The Giant Dipper spooned down between the ponderosa pines, reaching in vain towards the lake and I couldn't help but storytell myself to sleep.  I imagined the whole pantheon of heros and goddesses relegated to the night sky, sweltering in this high summer heat.  How one clever immortal must be up there, spooling down that great ladle of stardust to scoop up sweet cold, the bargains being struck for a single gulp of sweet, earthy waters.  I wondered if the Pleiades swam in this very lake, the same one I could still smell in my damp hair.  I wondered how may others, for how many thousands of years have laid on their backs in this same forest, gazing at these same stars, whiling away the evenings storytelling the morals of their ancestors.

I should ask the pines.  I know they've listened over countless fires for countless years.  I'm glad my voice has now too risen through their boughs, along with the sage I burned and the tale I spun.

* * *

Healing 'dem Bones

Today I found out my latest round of lab work has shown all of my tumor markers dropped into the normal zone. This means my blood looks like a real live human being and less like a cancer patient. This means for now, chemo is officially off the table. This means I can focus even deeper on now healing the structural issues in my bones. This means a celebratory dinner date and ecstatic dancing and probably some Pistol Annie's turned up loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Today is so so good.  Once again, I can feel my bones glowing.

It comes as no coincidence that last night I finished a new Healer Ring, filled up with words and prayers and small secrets:

Healer Ring, sterling silver and prehnite

You are invited to enter in that sacred temple we call the body.
Those hands, deeper lined than they used to be, have held much.
Those feet have carried you far along this journey.
That skin, smoothed, scarred, freckled, is yours and yours alone.
You may have left this body, you may have wandered far.
You may have felt pain, rage, shame or betrayal.  
(I understand this, because I have too)
But any time you want, you are invited to come back inside yourself.
Sink down, feel those hips, hear the blood rush.
Welcome home baby.  You can come back any time.

* * *

These are the words I've been pondering for myself.  This is the place I want to reside (right here, in this skin, I'm not interested in going anywhere else yet).  I've made Healer Rings in the past, but this one is more specific, deeply intended to be a talisman for one who is coming back into her body.  We're all so good at leaving, but it takes such focused will to come home.  I've sawn out the world's smallest pelvis, surrounded by new growth because that is the place I try to rest in my own body.  That cradle.  When I close my eyes and invite myself back into my body, I rest my hands across my hip bones and really feel the of that center of life.  May we all live in that space as often as feels good, as often as we're able.  

I wish you ALL the healing and then some.  Glow with me!

Just a pocketful

I keep pressing forward, keep creating, keep asking for more.  Somedays I sink down into the flow of work and the magic of process.  It feels like soul balm, it's even cathartic, but when I step back, I'm struck with the tinniest bit of disappointment.  It's missing something.  A radical, pulsing feeling, a wild abandon married to tender attention.  It's like trying to draw a picture of the way fresh baked bread smells; I can just make out the edges in my peripheral vision, but as soon as I try to touch it, it disappears.  Digging deep into your art is not for the faint of heart.  Days like yesterday I just have to scrap the work.  Seven canvases lay discarded in the studio.  The scrap silver jar is half full and there are no less than three necklaces awaiting dismantling.  In the past, this would have felt demoralizing, but today I feel a rising thrill:  My hands are still catching up with my mind, with the exponential expansion of a winter spent in meditation.  One day soon, I hope they'll even catch up.  If they do, the very mountains may tremble.

* * *

Coconut milk, coconut water, dates, fresh mint, frozen berries, a handful of spinach and a pinch of himalayan salt.  If you want an incredibly decadent treat, add a little raw cocoa powder and half a teaspoon of lavender.  Holy!  You can thank me later.  Blended and served for every single lunch this week.  With a side of homemade scone smeared with last year's raspberry jam.  You are what you eat and I'm pretty sure I taste delicious.

* * *

I'm still deep in internal processing.  Somedays, my words are few.  Life has been a forest fire that raged through my body all last year.  I'm still watching the ash settle and signs of new life sprout with wild abandon.  But the truth is, there is so much ash and every day I'm surprised when I hit those physical limits.  Perhaps even more so when I hit those belief limits, when the sneaking fears of "what if I crash again, what if the next round of lab work comes back worse, what if this is only a semblance of health?" slide back into the background noise.  I'm a champion optimist, so it has always come easy to package those thoughts in thick walled boxes hidden away in secret chambers.  But these days I yearn for truth and transparency, and to raise a waving hand, proclaiming total health does not honor that, nor you.  I've said it before, but we are such walking miracles: we are not perfect, we are not whole.  We are lined with the wear of existence, skin scarred, hearts cracked open.  But if we are very lucky, we fill those cracks with gold and go on living, ever more beautiful for having been broken.

So much has shifted: tectonic plates and vertebral disks, the opening of palms and third eyes.  I keep drawing out the cobwebs of old ideas, old beliefs, old myths handed down in DNA, those things that never belonged to me to begin with.  I'm ready to do more than just peer into the void.  I'm ready to expand into all the space my lungs and arms can reach.

I'm working on asking for that which I seek.  I supposed I've always done this for little things, but more and more I believe in the incredible abundance of the universe.  So why do I, why do we, remain small?  I believe in our expansion.  I believe that little tickle running down the center of my scapula is ancestral proof that women truly were once birds and the season for hatching will always come around.

* * *

Be well birds.  I wish you every good thing!

- U

Ancestral Mythology, Vol 4: People of the Bear

This is a story of long ago, beyond the time that you or I or even our great-grandmothers can remember, when our ancestors were only children.  The Children were small, slight, with bright eyes and quick feet.  They knew the scent of the river after the thaw, they understood the speed of coyotes and the night-song of the owls.  They ran hard on the open plains and padded silently in the deep forest.   By day they gathered thimbleberries and by night they sang to the stars.  But the Children did not sleep.  Day after day they traveled, ate, danced and watched, but they saw only the existence before them, the Ordinary Reality of life.  The world was too wild then, too reckless, too hungry, and the Children were too busy surviving.

As days, months, years passed, the Children grew tired.  They grew lean of leg and lean of heart, worn down by the harshness of the young earth.  On a late spring day, as they strode through twiggy forests thick with moss, their path led them to a narrow cleft in the mountainside.  This, they thought, may be a safe place to rest so one by one, they slipped into the dark.  Inside the passage widened and the Children found themselves in a warm cavern, dry and sweet smelling.  The birdsong outside grew hushed and the air made their eyelids heavy.  Just as the children were crouching down to sit, a voice deeper than honey rolled up from the back of the cave.  

"Who is this who enters my home?"

One small girl edged forward. "It is us, the Children of the Earth, and we wish you no harm but we are so tired.  Bone tired.  So tired we could cry.  Won't you let us rest here for the night?"

From the shadows a rustle of fur moved forward until a damp, black nose was inches from the girl's face.  It breathed deep, pulling in the scent of the Children along with the secrets of their hearts.  After a long moment, Bear stood up.  

"Children," she began, "why do you not sleep?  You wear exhaustion like sweat on skin, and your minds have not looked up from the effort of survival in far too long."  The girl spoke, "Dear Bear, when ever we close our eyes, we see only darkness without end and we have no one to protect us from the beasts of the world.  Please do not make us leave."

Bear softened.  "Children, come close.  I have long teeth and sharp claws for protecting the young.  I have deep fur and a strong heartbeat to warm your skin.  But most importantly, I have the secrets of the dark, the trail to follow into the Non-Ordinary World, the world where stars swim in lakes and humans fly in the night sky.  Rest your heads, close your eyes, and I will sing you into the dreamtime."  She spread wide her great paws and all the Children crowded close, faces nestled into her shaggy brown hide.  As soon as their breathing slowed, she began to sing.  Her voice rose up from the deepest roots of the mountain and echoed back from the farthest galaxy.  And for the first time, the Children closed their eyes and the darkness rolled back.  They flapped wings, spoke in unknown languages and understood secrets never seen before.  Mysteries were manifest in images and the stars revealed themselves as family.

No one knows how long Bear sang, or how long the Children slumbered in dreamtime.  But when they woke, the cavern was cool and empty.  They crawled out under the night sky, calling for Bear, when a twinkle above caught their eye.  Seven new stars shone out in the black and the Children saw Bear was watching out for them from high above the earth.  

Ancestral Mythology: People of the Bear  (sterling silver and Morenci Turquoise

From that day on, the Children knew whenever the sun sank and the moon rose, they could close their eyes to the ordinariness of this reality and swim into the magic of the non-ordinary world.  For Bear had bestowed the gift of dreams upon the Children, that they might always see more than meets the eye.

And that dear children, is how we became a People of the Bear.

* * *