The Year of Shadows....and Light...and What it Means....

Quite a few people have been surprised to see me around town. "I thought you were still on the road!"
In truth, I did not announce my return. When I decided to come home, I pulled the plug and was on the east coast in four intense days of driving. I did not post much. In the same way that the doors opened for me going out, they begin to close as I turned east. My last serious night out found me camped at altitude, in a snow line, a frosty 13 degrees just out of Grand Tetons National Park. The moon rose late, and I had as clear a look at the stars as I ever will again. Already, they were somewhat indistinct and I had trouble picking out constellations. I turned away with a tinge of sadness and loss, a surge of joy at having made the quest, and a firm desire to be home again.
I drove for hundreds of miles in silence, then letting the music or the news flow. I spent a lot of time replaying "Holding On" by the War on Drugs and "What it Means" by the Drive by Truckers.
I had hoped for revelation on this trip. Maybe I would finally know what I wanted to be when I grew up! Instead, I found myself with more questions. What does it mean? Do I hold on too long, too hard? By holding on, do I block the possibility of new revelation or energy?  What do I want to be when I grow up? Since I am still on the road, can I just eat nachos or ice cream for every meal? 
The only clear revelation that I got on my travels was to stop looking into the future and just live in today. Make the best of this shadow time that I have between light and darkness. Hell, I have always known that! I didn't need to drive 10,000 miles to learn that...or maybe I did. This trip was a treasure. Some of the best visits I have ever had with friends and family along my path. The hospitality and love from each of you was outstanding, absolutely beautiful. Thank you. The stories of the literal miracles I was gifted with along the way bubble out of me. The beauty of the things I saw will never leave me. To each of you who held the fort while I was away, helped me, funded me, guided me, thank you!
And coming home. My yes. Home. As on my previous vision quests, I came home with the certain knowledge that this is my home. I am part of a wonderful community here...my family and my farm friends and art friends and meeting friends and gaming friends and friend-friends.....I arrived in time for the memorial of a long time friend and pillar in my world. I came home just in time to enjoy the fall produce and see the leaves change color here. A gift of knowing that I will travel internationally one more time at least.  I had the joy of music and celebration with friends last week. The contentment of seeing my cousin off as he left to assist hurricane victims in the islands.  They beauty of old friends stopping by and family around the wood stove. The amazement of working on new pieces of art, a place I thought was lost to me. The laughter this morning that is always part of the last farm market of the year and the hugs that hold you over until next season.  The joy of going to a friends farm today after wonderful meeting to pick up the beautiful Thanksgiving and Christmas Turkeys that they raised for me. 
So as Thanksgiving approaches I am dwelling solidly in the place between light and dark, holding on....

A Soul at Rest

Leaving home was both harder than and easier than usual. I have made these types of journeys before, and the preparations went as smoothly as any I have ever made. And clearly this trip was meant to be made. Still, there were important things unfolding at home that took a lot of faith and hope to lay down long enough to be gone a few months.

These voyages are often lonely affairs for me. The lessons and insights have been spot on, but the desolation and emotional cost for those lessons was high. They are often physically hard as well. Many of my travels were fraught by injury and physical discomfort.
 I haven't even been gone a week yet and I have had a month's worth of adventure. But already, this voyage is much, much different than any undertaken. 

The difference this time is community. Friends continue to reve al themselves along my journey and offer hospitality and connection. Friends continue to send ideas for destinations along the quest.

Random strangers out of the blue talk to me and accommodate me. I was blown away yesterday at the Minnesota state fair. The fair was crowded, a sea of people as far as you could see. There was a huge line to get into the bean competition. At the start was a woman doing a demonstration of how the art was made. I entered at the wrong end and saw all of this in reverse and pretty well blocked traffic to boot. It was hot. Everyone had reason to be cranky. Yet this artist still took the time to actually hold her fragile art up close enough for my eyes to focus on it. She was applying the tiny seeds with a toothpick, one at a time. It was wonderful to see it and to experience it.
Each of my stops thus far has included a joyous reunion with an old friend or family member with the added gift of their new friends and family that I have never met. The delight is so pure and raw that I almost can't describe it. I have never felt so connected or appreciative of the world I am a part of.
Astounding.
Love.
More to come.

40 Days Until I Walk Into the Desert.....Again

     At my age, I guess it is common to look back and ask yourself what you would change about your life. It seems to be a frequent Facebook question and discussion topic among friends. From a traditional viewpoint, my life hasn't been very successful. I married too young. I dropped out of college repeatedly. I got good jobs and left them, built businesses and let them go easier than an old pair of jeans to Goodwill. My marriage didn't last. I often spent more money than I really had. But what would I change?
     Offhand, my answer is not much. Other than not really loving and valuing myself until late in the game, I would say that everything worked out. The trials and hardships I endured made me strong and independent. I survived all sorts of crazy illness and accidents. I learned to value what I had and be astonished by what I could create with my own body and spirit, even when they were broken. I traveled the world. I had an awesome kid that somehow survived his vaguely feral childhood to become a sweet and charming man. I have a fabulous relationship with my parents and much of the rest of my family. I have incredible friends who have introduced me to wonderful things in the world. Many of these friends have stuck with me through thick and thin for decades. I am part of a rich and varied community. Diverse in age, origin, political and religious persuasion, ability, and spirit, my beautiful friends have sustained me. I have tried and done things most people never have a shot at.
     In the past twenty years, I have gone on regular walkabouts in an effort to discern my larger issues and feelings and to figure out what to do next. It is how I found the farm, Quakers, judo, stained glass painting, and many of the other things that enriched my life. Things that I wouldn't put down voluntarily. Things I love. Things that define who I am as a person.
     Some of you have followed my developing eye disease. In less than a year, reading has become increasingly difficult, as has understanding what I am actually seeing. When that happens, I feel anxious and uncomfortable.  I have had a very difficult time executing techniques in my art that were once a snap. I can no longer clearly see cracks and breaks or dates and names on antiques. I am having a harder time seeing defects in the eggs I sell when I candle them. Without my glasses, I receive almost no useful visual information.
     I also underwent a full knee replacement at the end of May. It is likely that the other knee will need to be replaced in the next year or three.
     In short, I am being forced to lay down many of the things I love. I have some time yet to enjoy some of them, but I need to figure out what comes next. Figure out some kind of strategy and interests that can be accommodated in my changing body. Figure out how to stay independent and vital. This is a discussion we are all going to have with our bodies. I just didn't expect to have it so soon. All of my grandparents but one, lived independently and drove until their very late 80's and early 90's. I always envisioned myself in the same way. I don't have that luxury. My life is going to change.
     So, on August 31, I'm going to embark on what is likely to be the last of my great solo explorations. My goal is to visit family and friends, with the understanding that some of these are likely to be final visits, to see beautiful things that I can press into my memory, and to get back to the fertile raw desert that has helped me figure out things before.

  The itinerary is as follows:

• Sept 1: Aurora Illinois. The big question here is whether I cheat on my celiac diet in favor of a Chicago Pizza....
• Sept 2: Into Minneapolis to see my son and his girl friend. We are attending the Minnesota State Fair, the second largest in the nation!
• Sept 5: Leawood Kansas to see this: https://qz.com/933416/artists-are-using-a-revolutionary-process-to-construct-the-worlds-largest-stained-glass-window/
• Sept 7: Boulder Co.
• Sept 9: Salt Lake City, Ut
• Sept 12: Camping in Idaho
• Sept 15: Tacoma, Wa.
• Sept 18: Olympia, Wa.
• Sept 19: Redding, Ca.
• Sept 23: Zion National Park, eventually ending up down in Joshua Tree

    From there, I am off the grid, planning to return home by mid October, before too much snow flies. I am already packing and working on my meditations. I hope to see many of you in the coming weeks before I take off!

When You Get There, Will You Know?

"When you get there, will you know?"- Robert Plant "Come Into My Life"

This apropos song came up I as walked today. 

So what does success look like in this journey? I don't know. The losses are all still there. Walking or not walking won't change them. I already know that I'll meet or beat whatever standards I'll set for myself. If someone asked for two traits I value in myself, I would assuredly pick loyalty and endurance. Still, despite the fact that work is piling up at home, it feels good to be out and about.

Today, it was easier to be detached from the world. I checked my notebook and phone rarely. I certainly noticed my body more. Despite carrying a gallon of liquid out with me, the heat and wind forced a constant battle with dehydration. There was maybe a mile of my journey to day that had any significant amount of shade. There were no services of any kind again. When I finally ran out of fluid altogether, I sat down at the edge of the road and called for an extraction. No heroics, no agonizing over being a few miles short of the goal I had hoped for. I'm moving more slowly than I'd like, but much faster than I could have imagined given my complete lack of training for this particular walk. I'm even secretly pleased that my pale,out of shape winter body has responded as well as it has. The miles come hard. At times I am keenly aware of the blisters and aches and wonder if I am just punishing myself. At other times, the walk does what it was designed to do, be the vehicle of meditation. And of course, a get away vehicle. It's hard to be profoundly sad when all along your journey, tadpoles are flashing through the puddles and marsh just inches from your feet, birds are circling overhead, and the relentless sun has found the two places on my arms and the one place on my neck that I did not adequately cover with sun screen. I saw baby vultures. All manner of flowers and plants are emerging. The soft earth along the roadside is covered with footprints and scat. New life. Am I running from life out here or joining it? When I get there, will I know?

Free Fall

     So....five years have flown past. A lifetime happened in those five years and now I find myself standing in a place I had hoped to never see again. A place of needing rebirth and redirection. A place where the sense of loss in the face of so many gifts and so much grace is bewildering. The horror of discovering that all these things I thought I had coped with so well in this half decade weren't coped with at all. They were just sitting in a calcified cavern in my soul and when one of the walls was moved by the departure of my longtime boyfriend, the insides came spilling out. About a moth ago, I started crying and can't really stop. An ocean of tears flowing under the surface that I never saw until they started spilling. I've kept moving while they flowed, working on building the farm stand, cleaning out the old house so it can come down and make way for my Mom and Dad's place, starting the spring chores that lead to a successful farm summer.....I've made and kept dates with many of you, kept putting foot in front of the other. And they are good times, truly. I'm just in some weird place where the beauty around me ....can't be treasured like it should. Many of you have reached out and made super human efforts to support me and keep me moving during this time. I'd still be picking at pieces of the poison purple glass in the farmhouse if Maggie, Gavin, Larry, Jamie et all hadn't kept me moving. Thanks also to Diana, for getting me moving again in the studio. I deeply appreciate each of you. Again, the stark contrast of so much love and support in the face of my own desolation.
     This is a rough time of year for me anyway. The days are short, the nights are too long, there is much that needs done and I rarely feel like doing it. Again, I'm moving around. I've lost a few pounds. I try and swim or do something active a few times a week. I'm cooking nutritious food. I'm even cooking it in small batches so it doesn't spoil while I continue to gnaw on it. It is not enough to sustain me.
     The anniversaries roll around. Cancer. I'm still healing and rarely acknowledge it. My tongue still feels weird as nerves regrow. I continue to suffer from dry mouth, particularly at night. It causes much discomfort. Sensation is ever so slowly returning to my face. I get cold easier, and I still seem to need more sleep. Mazie's death; there is still one nose print on the inside of my car I can't bring myself to clear off.  Grandparent Birthdays and death dates. Another anniversary for David's death, my cousin's death, and so on. Memories from my married life in every inch of the old house. Ghosts. Ghosts that suddenly come into focus through the lens of tears.
     So even as I tumble through space, knowing that so many of my friends have been through so much and worse, and that I really have no right to be carrying on about my small sufferings, I know that I have to do something to right myself and get back on with things.
     I'm going to start walking again. It is my intention right now to leave Wednesday morning. I'm walking south from New Castle with no destination or timetable in mind. Maybe I'll only walk to the end of the block and feel better. I just don't know.
     I know a lot of you will be hurt and confused that I haven't reached out. I even have appointments with some of you. I'll need to reschedule. It's not personal, depression does that. Right now, the mean voices in my head that like to point out that I am a freak and have no hope of ever finding peace or love or comfort are running rough shod. In the rational world, I know it's not true. Then the ghosts get to rattling their chains reminding me that life and love are temporary and we're all gonna die and the tears start again. Walking has worked for me before. Because of my schedule, the time of year (read lambing), and my poor physical condition, I am going to start by day hiking and return home via car each night. I trained for 18 months last time to heft that 40 pound pack and carry it into the mountains and I'm certainly not in that kind of condition right now.
      No, I don't want to talk about it, so please don't rush to your cell phones. I will be limiting my exposure to internet and phone on the road, but I will check in. If you want to join me and walk a few miles, I'll entertain that. If you want to volunteer to pick me up or take me back out one morning, that would be cool too.
     Much love to all.

   

Exit Strategy

In the end, I got barely thirty days in the wilderness, and virtually none of it as alone as I imagined. I suffered through some of my goals, saw more than I ever though possible, and in good American tradition, left a brilliant foundation for a sequel. By the time I post this, some of you will know that I have returned to America early to resume caring for my farm. Eric, already struggling to fill in for me, has accepted a full time position with Fiskers, the electric car company that took over the old GM plant. Despite the fact there will be no product until 2013, he started training immediately.
I've spent the last ten days exploring the west coast of Scotland, Isle of Skye , and the Outer Hebrides isle of Lewis & Harris with my friend David. Initially, he had planned to come up for a long weekend, but the vast remoteness of the country there, and the inaccessibility of attractions made a short trip pointless. The most fascinating sites are often separated by twenty or thirty miles, with few buses and no services or even places to refill a canteen with water. He rented a car after we missed the only bus of the day from an extremely remote destination. (We didn't actually miss it, the bus driver just rolled right by four of us, looking straight ahead, speeding away...) The car was enormously helpful, we put over 600 miles on it in less than a week.
So how do you condense a wonderful week and a half of exploration into a paragraph or three that won't make people grind their molars off as they read it? Part of the magic was the people we met; Sven, a humorous German fellow who rode with us for a few days.. Jarrod, a teen and avid fisherman in our hostel who turned 19 Friday night and who cooked two of the best trout I've ever eaten yesterday....a local woman at a craft festival who bought not, one but two heather plants....(for surely I've already mentioned the heather infested moors in a previous post?) and then waved them in my face, while I tried not to laugh, as she regaled us with stories about her trip to America...
The places? The standing stones (sort of like Stonehenge), the old churches or ruins? The rugged coastlines or endless trails to walk? Finding the first legal scotch distillery on the island in 200 years- but apparently it's not allowed to advertise? The guide books and tourist information for the area weren't comprehensive, so a lot of it was just piecing things together and stumbling onto other things.

Things Happen When You Let the Universe Choose for You

Last week, I took a day of rest. I elected to stay in the hostel and venture out only to get groceries and make a real chicken vegetable soup.
On of the guiding principles on this trip is that I need to read for pleasure again, something I just don't take time to do at home. There are some rules in my game though. I can only carry one book. After my initial thrift store book purchase, I'm not allowed to buy another book- I have to take what I find for free left behind in bus stations, hostels, or where ever. I have to finish the book. (When I do read at home, I often have multiple books going. ) The books I've taken on have all had something to offer, even if only minimally, and the game has been fun.
So.... my initial Ian Rankin (Scottish serial writer of mostly police stories) purchase was traded for a book called IDORU, a  not too distantly futuristic story where technology is more invasive, the net more interactive, with a cyber world that can interact with our world in very different ways. Not a great piece of literature, but evocative to me in the same way that Avatar was.
I traded that off for a story set in Malaysia about a hideous, dysfunctional family. Power, greed, incest, elder abuse, politics, unfaithfulness all had starring appearances. The book was well written, but the people were so horrifying, that I ended up writing a journal section clarifying my own personal life values.  (They included creating love, order, being busy and productive- but not overwhelmed, clear and honest  communication, the joy of new learning, and finding new ways to be more self sustaining/ less impactful of the earth.)
So finally, the dreadful book was finished, and I explained my game to a passing Australian tourist. She gave me a book called "Horse Boy," the story of a father who takes his autistic son to some shamans in Mongolia for healing. As I read, it occurred to me that I had read many similar stories over the years and had enjoyed them. When I was younger, it was so hard for me to relate to others and I felt so alienated from general society, that I feared that I was on that  autistic spectrum, or at least hoped there was some rational explanation for my being so different.... Now I realize that I like these types of stories because they are generally joyful anecdotes about people way outside the norm finally finding some way to overcome their barriers and integrate with society in a more meaningful way. I have the blessing of many supportive, loving friends and family members, so I no longer feel the total alienation that I once did, but finding a way to fit in is still a struggle. While that struggle to fit and redefine myself may be fascinating, what really moved me about this book was a bit from the boy's mom.
"It's like he's a born Buddhist," said Kristen. Over the last few years, Kristen's Buddhist practice had been merging more and more with her academic psychology work. Specifically, she had been conducting research into the Buddhist concept of self compassion; the idea being to cultivate kindness and forgiveness towards yourself, as well as others: no easy task, especially in times of suffering or failure. However, the studies she'd been publishing seemed to show that self compassion was better for mental health than the conventional psychological wisdom, which equates self esteem with positive mental health. Kristen had found that the constant pursuit of self esteem becomes, over time, an obsession with feeling special and superior, an emotional roller coaster you can never get off of. By contrast, self compassion allows you to look clearly at yourself, forgive yourself, and then make the necessary changes to achieve equilibrium.....she goes on to comment on her son, "It's as if he takes nothing personally. He suffers in the moment, then lets the suffering go. He doesn't carry on the story line and make a personal drama of it."
Wow. I think I just got a message from the universe!