I dream of my six-year old self perching on a rock in a Utah canyon, or perhaps cross-legged on sand in a cave. Why there? Why anywhere. Location doesn’t matter. I am a traveler, internally and externally. If not there, it would be along a river in the Texas Hill Country, or hiking the high peaks of Colorado or New Hampshire. Every place is a new start, a new understanding.
The warmth of the sun drapes over my younger self's little body as she explores the rock, and then walks along the stream through the canyon. Her curiosity bubbles up like the running of the water nearby. She wants to trust the sun to keep her protected, so she can be free to giggle.
Trust for her is about safety. Feeling safe to speak, to be, to act from within her heart. Nothing slapped back and gas-lighted. Nothing judged pre-maturely, rejected unsoundly.
And from that place of innocence, and of mine with life's experience, she and I shake loose what no longer validates so that we might invite what wants to come. And the mystery is the important part of the process of my travels.
The warmth of the sun drapes over my younger self's little body as she explores the rock, and then walks along the stream through the canyon. Her curiosity bubbles up like the running of the water nearby. She wants to trust the sun to keep her protected, so she can be free to giggle.
Trust for her is about safety. Feeling safe to speak, to be, to act from within her heart. Nothing slapped back and gas-lighted. Nothing judged pre-maturely, rejected unsoundly.
And from that place of innocence, and of mine with life's experience, she and I shake loose what no longer validates so that we might invite what wants to come. And the mystery is the important part of the process of my travels.
Her vision, as she plays, is to invite the stars to align, and beauty to erupt through nature, art, language, dance, friendships, life. I return to Moab to visit with a dear friend, to remember her soul up close and personal. Together, we pry open the dark crevices within each of us as we reach into the canyon below where she lives. It is an honoring to feel the presence of those who have been down here before us.
This is where I feel most alive in my conversation between the civilized and the wild. The hurried and the mindful. This is where I drop the minutae of what contracts me, contains me, forces my hand. I seek the intersection between community/culture, and the creation of my feral reality within wilderness.
This is where I feel most alive in my conversation between the civilized and the wild. The hurried and the mindful. This is where I drop the minutae of what contracts me, contains me, forces my hand. I seek the intersection between community/culture, and the creation of my feral reality within wilderness.
I yearn to see the bear scat along the trail. The moose print in the mud. The partridge hopping through the dense underbrush. I crave the thunder traveling behind the graying cloud. The untamed river slashing downstream from still-melting snow in the higher elevations.
This is where I un-yoke my freedom, even from myself. But, that has been my hiding place, too. So, I return to the straddle between two worlds: the primal and the cultivated. Solitude and my resonance with others.
This is where I un-yoke my freedom, even from myself. But, that has been my hiding place, too. So, I return to the straddle between two worlds: the primal and the cultivated. Solitude and my resonance with others.
This is my time to create, re-create, invent, re-invent, calibrate, re-calibrate, the next phase of my life. The snake shedding its old skin, to “whole” the self even more. To balance the heart, the mind, and the body. To remember who I have been, and who I wish to become. |
To remember how others traveled their journey, and to allow new directions to integrate into mine: through love, creativity, and courage. And from those moments within my memories, dreams, and experiences, I find grace. My friend and I always do, and we make our way out of Moab into the sparsely visited Horseshoe Canyon, descending into the wash, to visit centuries old rock paintings of those having traveled and lived here in this hidden place.