The road to The Place Within

My career requires a lot of mental effort. So much gets packed into a single hour just to get all tasks completed by week's end, that I find I have to detach from who I am at my core a great deal to pull it off and do what needs to be done each day. So when the weekend, or any time away from work comes, I try to use the time to reacquaint with that woman who I am at my core- I stitch back together the spinal threads of what matters to me, collect the flashes of inspiration into a reel I glimpse as a spark to rekindle some inner flame, I draw the energy down out of my head and back into my body, my hands, hips, heart. 

I was thinking this morning, as we wound over a mountain pass and through dense snow-forests on our way to visit our favorite antique shop, how that pathway back to our own unique creative otherworld is crucial. When I feel that it's time to visit that place of my own mind-making, that place that restocks the inner coffers, I have certain imagery, certain poems, certain books and films and music that act as little waymarkers, lanterns to light the way back home. 

That otherworld-creative-home of mine is hard to describe- it can feel Celtic, but then Saami, medieval, then ancient Egyptian. It contains sun and storm, mossy oak and desert rose, quiet solitude and energized connection, sitting in a tobacco-smelling book-filled room in thoughtful conversation with Tolkien, then in ritual dance around a fire as part of a wild tribe, my feet stomping up clouds of dust under the starrier-than-ever sky. Serene and unbridled. Sacred to the core.

It is a feeling, of course, not an actual place, there is no specific time, no specific characters or location, but I feel when it is right, when it comes together just so, and when it is familiar, and it is this place I go to that connects me back to myself, and to the glorious pulse of life lived deeply. 

I heard an artist I love mention this route back to the creative place we must cobble together for ourselves, those of us who are maybe more short on time, and need a quick road in so that we can sit and feast for a moment in that nourishing ethereal space that we imagine into existence, that sustains us and is essential. I wondered, do most people have this? Do most people need this? Is it rare, or common? Do some drown out the deep impulse with drink and corruption? Then I thought, wouldn't it be just incredible if we could somehow bring another into this feeling-place of our own making, the imaginative landscape of our inner world? Just so they could feel our inspirations? Would it closen or estrange us?

Now I am off to visit that world for a while before the just-as-mysterious sleep world beckons. Today I found a vibrant green kantha quilt, a painted Mexican crock, and a medieval memoir at the antique store. Two weeks ago, I attended a workshop with the loveliest women and attained my birth doula certification. In a couple of months, my husband and I will take a boat to Alaska where he'll be getting recertified as a massage therapist, a craft that he truly excels at. Bit by bit, pieces are being moved into place, for a future on the horizon that comes more into view each day. The path really does go ever on and on.

“Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called 'the love of your fate.' Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, 'This is what I need.' It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment--not discouragement--you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow.

Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes. “

~Joseph Campbell

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.

Autumn's silver and gold

Two nights ago, I wended my way through the just-dark countryside, having completed the mission of gathering over 20 gallons of springwater (local, straight from underneath a tree root) for the week ahead. As I drove slowly back through an area heavily populated with Amish families, I took my time, slowing down and dimming my lights for horse-drawn buggies full of waving hands and bearded smiles, enjoying the woodsmoke wafting through my cracked windows, woodsmoke from homes where only the warm light from oil lanterns poked orange holes in the deep blue fabric of night, a woodsmoke from hardwoods- one I hadn't smelled in a long time, one steeped in nostalgia from earlier eras of this same life. Nowadays, in my mountain home far off in the Inland Northwest, the woodsmoke smell is of conifers- Ponderosa Pine, Larch, Douglas Fir. 

But for this season, I'm not there, I'm in my hometown instead, devoting time to family and to friendships measured in decades. 

Here, things are much much faster and louder than back home. There's less space- a clutter of homes and roads and tin warehouses and shopping centers. And, as becomes so apparently obvious the more you go away and come back, a marked and obvious degeneration of humans that agitates me at times, frightens me at others, and then breaks my heart. But it isn't just here, it seems to be anywhere with a sizeable population, and such a stark contrast when you spend most of your year in a faraway place with an average of 3 people per square mile. 

Alas! Here we are, and complaining is hardly ever helpful or good for the spirit, so!

How about we wind back the clock to earlier this season, before we left home, as Autumn's silver and gold began to settle over the Okanogan Highlands...

Sometime around the end of October, the trees began to grow sleepy. Some, like the western Larch and Aspen, turned to gold and as the golden forest crept up the mountain, the first silvery dustings of snow gently made their way down, until gold was united with silver, and we found ourselves part of a bejeweled and glistening wonderscape.

And the language of light whispered its poetry over the land and into our grins all those Autumn days ablaze.

While leaves fell and that rarity, the Western Larch, blurring the line between conifer and deciduous, brushed golden strokes through the otherwise evergreen forests...

we were busying away... repairing fences trampled over by cattle (the joys of open range territory), burying apples [3 feet deep!] for wintertime experiments, tossing wildflower seed balls around (prayers they take hold and sprout come Spring)...

and as Eric worked clearing brush and dead trees, I decided to build our first raised bed, challenging myself to use no hardware and spend no money while doing so! I did put some chicken wire (that we already had) inside on Eric's advice to help keep burrowing critters out, but the rest was made using a hatchet and a handsaw. I enjoy this kind of thing, and I like the primitive look best anyway. It's a hugelkultur bed, so lots of sticks and logs as the first layer under there, and composted goat manure a gift from a friend whose farm I helped on this year. It's quite medieval looking isn't it? 

Chicken wire covering the bottom and sides

Then filled with sticks and logs, hugelkultur style

Next I added a fluffy carbon layer using dried grass we had cut weeks prior

Finished with goat manure and used coffee grounds

.::*::.

One early November morning I filled a thermos with coffee and took out to delight in this flaxen gold landscape before the snows arrived the following night. My path took me through thick forests, lonely gravel roads and ghost towns, alongside rivers with magpies darting through the woodsmoked air, passing only a handful of vehicles the whole day. It felt as though I lived inside a painting- one done of egg tempera like Andrew Wyeth, Pieter Brueghel, and the medieval masters knew and used. This land is more than a place, it's a feeling, a visual and spiritual feast for the seeker of real nourishment, a medium through which I can more easily sense God- always calling me into a state of reverence, awe, and solace.

The first snowfall meant it was finally safe to burn the big brush pile we'd amassed over the summer of clearing trails, downed trees, and fallen limbs. So with the temperatures plummeting into the teens, we wrapped ourselves snug enough and went to set fire to it all. I loved working on and witnessing the land in her new coat of white, in this oldest of seasons before the cycle resets.

Then later in the evening, our fire turned into a  little community event with friends gathered 'round!

And it was a joy to be out on this wild land, with mountains towering over us, stars aplenty overhead and howls echoing out from the nearby forests, with a roaring fire keeping us warm and the wood-bright light making honeyed lantern-like figures of us all in the moon-blue and bone-white landscape.

Photo by my friend Kerri

Photo also by Kerri

.::*::.

The place we live is protected by mountain passes on all sides. I say protected because a lot of the ways of getting there shut down from November - April, some with official road closures and a couple just become too treacherous to attempt, leaving a feeling of being gated in, or gated off, from the rest of the world, which I quite like and would prefer just to settle into... but, for now winter involves migrations and that means eventually having to go over one of those mountain passes.

So, in mid-November, when we should've been hunkering down and settling into slower days and our own forms of hibernation, instead we were crossing those mountain passes with packed suitcases and making our way east, via the south and the west. 

We waved good-bye to the Okanogan Highlands, in her twinkling new white adornment...

And greeted Idaho, then Montana...

Then down into Utah where the sun could be felt stronger coming through the vehicle windows. We followed the Mormon Trail and stopped to stretch our legs at Butch Cassidy's childhood home...

And then down into Arizona's red rock desert, where we lived for a short time many years ago, and here we spent some extra time just enjoying the solar charge on our skin and each other. Letting the light in.

And here is the secret spot we climbed up to one afternoon, which we aptly named Smith Mound, though I can't tell you why.

.::*::.

Now we find ourselves back east, where we're from, where the not-evergreened forests sing with oaken and hickoried voices, and the Sycamore, not the Birch nor Aspen, writes white lines through the dreary winter woods. Yet it's familiar here too, and sometimes when I'm out walking, the earthen smells roll up from the ground into my nostrils and I'm nearly knocked over by a sudden cyclone of nostalgia, as though I had just walked right through ghosts of a former life. It's strange to revisit one's original home and for it to feel both totally familiar, and at the same time not at all. A disorienting and curious thing indeed.

For now, this wick of words has been burnt to the wax. I leave you with the final draught from my mug: some films I've enjoyed lately, and a wish and a blessing that we manage to view the world through numinous eyes this season and beyond, no matter where or how we find ourselves. 

Films:

The Banshees of Inisherin

Grandfather 

Maudie

Alone in the Wilderness (to watch the whole thing, you have to purchase the DVD) 

A Love Song

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga