Lives and Longings

At the end of March, a wild little whim grabbed hold, a whim that smelled of old maritime magic and fishy brine, a whim whose cold salty wind beat against our cheeks and froze the tips of our noses, a whim to head over to the coast, to our former home, that we loved a lot, and still do.

From our high dry highlands it's a 7-8 hour drive and a substantial chunk of change, but we decided it was worth it to quelch the longing (longings are like that, aren't they?- easy to justify). 

The whim took hold on a Wednesday afternoon, and by Thursday at midnight we were driving--a little cross-eyed--alongside the Hood Canal, almost to our destination, and to the promise of rest.

Something I think about a lot is this: that there are many, many lives worth living. I imagine all of them for myself, sometimes in the span of one week- I could live my life on a Greek island, my bare feet against the warm stone each day as I walk to the market; or back in my home state of Kentucky, in a little country house, caving in to the humidity and allergies, but being there; or I can see myself as a mother, loving so deeply and glowing with that self-sacrificing beauty that only mothers possess; or I could move to a city and put all my efforts into career, enjoying the city offerings such as dance classes, theatre, philosophy meetups, cafes...; I could forsake it all and become a nun in Montana, or Tibet; I could be a surfer on Tahiti or Hawaii, living in a little bungalow, my skin stained sunny gold; I could live happily in a little adobe casita in the desert southwest as an incense-maker; and then there is the vision of myself wandering the heathered Scottish highlands or the Yorkshire Dales, my little white stone cottage and farm in the distance à la Hannah Hauxwell or I could certainly be a lighthouse keeper except the era for that in earnest is really over; or, another one that I ponder very often: I could live a maritime life, on a boat or some stormy northern coast, pulling my food from the water, learning the ins and outs of my vessel and of marine navigation, rocking back and forth to sleep at night, swallowed up in that old brackish aroma, my mornings smelling, like Dylan Thomas wrote, "seaweed and breakfast." 

All of these, and more, I could do. But it is my nature that no matter which of the paths I went down, I would always find myself longing for parts of another.

So this particular trip was not only revisiting an old home, but immersing once again in that northern maritime sea-life imagining.

We hopped onto ferries and whale watching boats, our noses well-coated in salt and our eyes delighting in light waves of azure blue.

And when our feet were on solid ground again, we'd smile across the table at each other with tired but invigorated adventurers eyes and relish in some delicious fare before heading back to our little yurt for an evening of hot baths and reading.

Some afternoons we'd dip into a peculiar shop or two and hunt for unusual little treasures to take back home.

A drawerful of crosses

Himalayan marionettes!

And more than once, we walked to the lighthouse, a favorite spot from the past, and sat on the rock wall, gazing out across the mystery, imagining what we would do if a tsunami came (we'd fully embrace one another and surrender to our fate), and watching the full moon set over the North Cascades to the east.

And I started a new book, a fiction this time, a maritime classic, appropriately with the sea lashing the rocks beneath me.

(I finished this trilogy just last week, a little under two months later, and do heartily recommend it if you're in the mood for a good story that really transports).

And finally, we took our wobbly sea legs and coaxed them into navigating brake and gas pedals and getting us back over the mountains to our home in the blonde highlands.

Here in the high, dry Okanogan Highlands, Spring is waltzing in charming us all as usual. You can feel the buzzing energy everywhere, in everything.

Sometimes I sit beside a glacial erratic or a pine, and feel a love and warmth that is like family, and like belonging. I smell the Ponderosa Pine baking in the warm sunshine and am dizzied by the sensation of passing through another life that sometimes feels more real than this one. It is like I know this ground, like the mountains were my grandparents, and I've been steered back here by some unseen force, a formless path that I walk and turn to matter. 

Here it is rugged and difficult and right to the bone, like boulders the size of sheds that crash down onto roads you travel often, or like what happened on easter Sunday...the symbolic day of death and rebirth - when we came upon a young bull elk, still as large as an adult buck deer, lying on the side of the road with his foot tangled in a barbed wire fence. My husband and another man held him down and managed to get his foot out of the fence, much to our relief, but as we backed away expecting him to jump up and run off, he instead just continued to lay there. We thought maybe he was in shock and just needed some time, so we backed away and talked gently, giving him space to gather himself again. 

A few minutes passed and we inspected further, piecing together marks in the road, a scuff on the neck, a puss-filled eye, and an inability to move, realizing he had been hit and knocked into that barbed wire fence. 

Something seemed to be wrong with his neck, causing him not to be able to rise despite an urge to try every few minutes. 

It was brutal for me to watch. 

We are hunters, but I've come to believe that a wild animal facing its end by a well-placed bullet is the most kind form of death available to them - the other options are being eaten alive by wolves or a cougar, a drawn out injury that slowly separates them from their herd and likely leads to the aforementioned scenario, or --as we witnessed with our young bull elk here--is hit by a vehicle and left to lay on the side of the road with something broken, unable to move. In that scenario, a bullet is a welcomed respite. But despite, it is still a difficult experience to handle. And on that particular day I was already feeling especially tender. 

The herd of about 40 or 50 had moved up to a far hillside, but when we started working with the injured elk, they rallied and ran back toward us- a sight to behold! Raw, intuitive, unspoken power. I could've taken pictures, but the moment felt so potent and real that I only wanted to show up in respect, not capturing, despite the cinematic scene all around us. 

At last they settled close-by, watching attentively and eventually easing into grazing and looking up toward us from time to time. After the young bull elk was freed from his suffering, they slowly began to move away again, as if they sensed the completion. I hope that we were able to bring comfort to the elk, despite his horrific situation. I do know that as I stroked his head, and talked softly to him, that he began to close his eyes and drift off, being rubbed at all by a hand was an altogether new sensation to this wild creature, and I hope comforted and eased his passage before my husband performed the inevitable dispatch. 

It is easy for me to read this and wonder if I'm being too soft, but when we can assist a helpless being, or any other being, shouldn't we? 

We could've just walked up and shot him and moved on, but as a firm walker on the spiritual path, the non-physical world that is always in concert around us, impacting and interacting with us constantly, is very real to me. I know that I can change the field around me, and I know that the spirit, or essence, or soul, of that creature could benefit from a hopeful peace being brought to him, prayers, comfort, and wishes for the after-journey. 

This is how I choose to live my life- with depth as much as possible, and with consideration for all that conducts reality, not just the five senses we perceive, and certainly not just the abrupt and rational American way where time is money, so don't waste any time comforting an elk, silly girl, just be done with him, butcher, and move on. Surely there is a middle ground, too, but on this day, I felt tender and had the time, and wanted to pass on whatever comfort and benefit I could. 

I'll never forget that little bull elk.

This feels like home on such a deep level for us, and we have endured and been patient for years attempting to build a certain kind of life here, but it feels like this phase of life might be coming to an end soon.

 

There is so much chest-heavy sadness in this realization, but with a new plan laid for the winter, we're focusing our vision on the future and opening again to the world, to engagement with others, and to service.

It is far too soon to speak publicly of this plan right now, but suffice to say our sadness in potentially having to leave this area is balanced with a forward-looking excitement of the possibilities ahead.

Until then, all we have is now anyway, so we submerge into the seasons and the place as always- pulling fish dinners from cold mountain lakes, dipping in the snow melt rapids of Sherman Creek, and soaking the sunshine back into our bones. 

No matter where the path of life leads, it's hard to imagine ever finding such a special place, one that feels like it is us and we are it, yet something in the breeze whispers that it's time for change.

It is a blessing and it is hard to love so many things, and so I circle back around to how I started this post, with different lives and longings, yet we must choose and go full in to that choice, otherwise we never show up intimately to any of it.

So here's to being able to love where we are--physically, mentally, emotionally--so completely, being ever present, and when the time comes to detach and fork off on a separate path, to then transfer and redirect that love and presence, taking it with us fully, not letting parts of ourselves linger. If we linger across too many paths, we become scattered and incomplete, deducting something from every place and interaction. We owe it to ourselves and to others and to every place to arrive whole.