What the Mountain Taught Me
We all have to come down eventually. It’s a gift to have a view, a place where you can catch your breath and watch the sun blossom each morning, then sink into the ocean at night. My soul has been reset by the clock of sunrise to sunset. I will miss that.
This is my descent. I’m leaving a wild place. It’s from here that I’ve endured a pandemic and a pregnancy — watching several worlds crumble while nurturing a miraculous new life. I want to believe I’m better. Wiser. Closer to the beat that moves me and more in tune with a rhythm I can follow. If you never change, are you ever alive? I’m typing this as wind blows through my hair and mixes with my warm exhale. Today, I am.
Some field notes along the way:
It’s possible to rise above. A metaphorical and literal perspective. See the pieces, then see how they fit together. What seems like a mass of trees is actually a forest of cells, each individual and every one reaching for the light, hoping to find it.
Silent stillness is the road to knowing. The answer, truly, is always within. There are so many voices I’ve allowed to crowd out my own. They don’t have to stay there. Simplicity is the tuning fork, because truth is always truth. Even if the words change — even if there ARE NO WORDS — we exist in the moment we choose to let it be. Noise complicates necessity.
Nature is natural. Even more so, I’m convinced that animals are our teachers. It’s a dominant, lower frequency energy that says man must conquer the beast. Have you see a doe with twins suckling at her tum? A bear stretch wide in the water, squinting his eyes in the sun? We are part of the story, woven from the same fabric as them. I can’t convince you if you feel differently, but for me, this has been a homecoming.
The moon is magical. And I’ve befriended her. I dare you to sit naked under a full moon and tell me you aren’t transformed. Is it weird? Who says? She is older than all of us, guiding the seeker to find what we need in the dark.
Things always bloom again. In September 2020, I watched the Bobcat Fire from our backyard. Eventually we were evacuated, and when we returned home nearly a month later, the mountain looked like a bald old lady. Razed and ashy, a few charred stumps dotted her pointy head. But wasn’t it just like her to begin the process again? The green quickly started to grow back. The birds returned to circle. That winter gave me the best oranges I’d ever tasted, right outside my door.
We can let things move us, shape us and sometimes — completely burn things down. It’s ok for things to be hard, survival is how we’re here. What comes next proves we were always greater than we thought we were.
Remind me of it. For into the valley I go.
